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Continuing our stories of the Jedi Warriors of the tech-world, we present Amith George, a creator and innovator, whose journey and love for coding started when he was still in school.
Q: When did you start coding and what part about being in tech gives you the most “kick”?
AG: I was introduced to programming by my elder brother when I was still in school, almost 15 years ago. It transitioned from a hobby to a passion, sometime during my engineering. Some of my friends and I started developing software apps purely for learning. We started with simple MS-DOS based graphic games like Snakes, Chess, Poker. Over 3 years, we moved on to graphical Windows software and Web applications. One such application we built was awarded the 1st prize at a Microsoft student competition held in Paris. The validation we got for our product at the world stage led to us starting our first product startup, while still in college. We got funded by Microsoft and IIT Bombay. We did the B2B startup for three years. I ran my second startup, a SaaS practice management software for Chartered Accountants, for another three years, before deciding to work at my current company, Quintype.
I believe, as a software engineer, I am enabled to create, innovate, iterate much faster than any other discipline. The reach that a SaaS platform, or a mobile app has cannot be achieved by other means. Building a product that can positively change the lives of millions, that is what I find most exciting about being in tech.
Q: What technologies are you a fan of and what do you dislike?
AG: Newer tools will outshine the older ones. Newer methodologies will replace the older way. I think more than a specific tool or technology, it is important to understand the why and how of it. What underlying principles made it popular, what underlying shortcomings did its successor overcome?
As such, I am a fan of functional programming paradigm. I think it is amazing, how Javascript has become ubiquitous. It has lowered the barrier for people to get introduced to programming. We could definitely do with a more diverse set of developers.
Q: Most interesting tech challenge you’ve faced so far?
AG: I joined Quintype at a relatively early stage. Over the last 2.5 years, we have grown tremendously. It was part of the reason I joined Quintype – to experience the joy and pains that come with a fast growing company. The challenge of scaling. Scaling not just the tech, but the people, the processes, the hiring and the culture.
With respect to tech, I have worked in different areas, like the core product platform, analytics, infrastructure, customer web app development, performance-tuning our APIs, and it would be difficult to pick out one. An ongoing effort that I am currently part of, is building our own webapp framework for customers wanting to integrate with our platform. Creating a highly performant webapp with all the best practices encoded in it, is a difficult task to do from scratch. With our framework, we have built a pit of success. By default everything is blazing fast and it should be difficult to do otherwise.
Q: If you could give your younger self some tech advice what would it be?
AG:
Build a brand around yourself. You spend a lot of time learning, improving yourself. Talk about it, share it with the world, participate in discussions on twitter/meetups. Not only would your own knowledge increase a lot, a lot more people would know that they can depend on you.
Not a tech advice, but still I feel it is very related. Being financially independent is important to be able to follow your dreams. Start investing as soon as you start earning. Compound interest really works magic for you, only if you give it time. A recent article in a financial newspaper had this example – If you start investing Rs 10,000 every month starting at the age of 25 till the age of 60, assuming a steady 12% rate of interest per year, your final corpus would be worth around Rs 6 crore. But if you delay investing till the age of 30, assuming the same conditions, at the age of 60, your final corpus will be worth only around Rs 3 crore. Start early.
Q: Startups or enterprises? And why?
AG: I have never worked at a “big” company. Having only seen and experienced one side of the story, I would still pick an early stage startup.
An early startup needs a lot of generalists, people who can wear multiple hats and get stuff done. As an engineer it is an exhilarating time. As a startup grows, it needs a lot more specialists. Either way, I think startups are still the place where a lot of innovation is happening.
Q: Thoughts on the Indian tech scene?
AG: I think this is an exciting time. Seven or eight years ago, there weren’t as many successful or funded startups as you have now. Working in a startup, or founding one is no longer a different or “hatke” choice. It has become far more “normal” and accepted. There is so much more support as well as resources available. Everyone is excited about AI and big data, but we must remember they are not the goal. They are simply one of the many means to get to the goal. The goal still needs to be solving local problems – problems affecting a country of a billion people. That is a huge market. I believe there are still so many areas where efficiency could be brought about, it just needs people willing to think outside the box.
Q: Other interests?
AG: I am passionate about Software Development. If I am not reading technical articles or books or watching videos, I am relaxing by streaming TV shows, reading fiction on my Kindle, playing role-playing games on PC, going on mini-vacations with my wife (thank you unlimited leave 🙂 ). Incidentally, I met my wife at Quintype. We both joined the company within a month of each other. So yeah, I am really glad I made the decision to leave Bombay and shift to Bangalore 🙂
Q: Would you like to share your experience with Geektrust?
AG: I really liked the idea of solving a coding problem and that being used as a baseline for judging your skill as a software developer for further interviews. Applying via GT feels like a much more efficient and skill-focused process. It probably took less than half the time it takes through a regular job portal, and definitely more streamlined, and efficient.
I keep recommending GT to my friends. Compared to horror stories I hear of people spending months hunting for a job through regular portals, getting bad offers, I had a very pleasant experience finding a job and that too within two weeks. GT is definitely worth a shot for them.
About Geektrust
Geektrust is a platform for technologists to connect with interesting opportunities. We meet inspiring people and companies every day, and we see some great code written by our users. So we started the Dev Stories blog post series to bring stories of different developers to the world. Our hunt to find more such inspiring and interesting stories carries on. Stay tuned for more!
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