Life. And rocket science.

Life in a startup

I have been working in this startup for four months now, and the learning curve has been wonderful.

The discussions, the lunch breaks, the food jokes, the office mail threads, the environment - everything has been a good experience. As a company also, I think we are doing all right.

But what I find the most exhilarating is the width of learning startups offer. For example, I can discuss on need for an inventory predictor, and how we can design it with someone with huge experience. Or I can talk about a customer communication system and how we can integrate order and call data. To be able to share thoughts with someone heading very high positions, to discuss thoughts so freely, with people far more experienced than you, thats what has made the startup experience worth having.

I talk to my friends, and many of them ask me, are you getting a hike. I know hikes are important, but  such an atmosphere is enough to convince yourself that you are not working here for a hike or the money. Money is important, but there are more important lessons I am learning, which a hike cant compensate for.

Questions to ponder over

I tore away the two questions that I had put on the wall. 

Did I give it my all today? Is this the best I can do?

In practise, I found them to be an overkill. I can't expect myself to give my all everyday, nor can I expect to do the best everyday of my life, both are beyond human limits.

I can only try to give it my all today, and I can only try to give it my best everyday. Sometimes, the result may be beyond me for externalities I don't control, and which I may not realize at the time.

I think this was result of an important realization, one cant keep touching the bar everyday, and raise it simultaneously, forever. Heck, this wasn't even the target, the aim was to higher my own standard, and its better to allow some inefficiency in the system, rather than be burnt out while trying to mechanically achieve something repetitively.

Its more about a state of mind. I realized its not about the peaks I achieve but life is an area under the curve problem. Hence, a less precise but more prolonged state of mind is better than a highly precise, but temporally diminished state of mind.