Saif Ali Shaik

Hey, I'm Saif. Writing is one of my favorite habits. I journal about my learnings for the world to read. Some appreciate it if that adds value. This page you are seeing is my only social media. Welcome to my World of shower thoughts!
February 22, 2024

Parents grow up to become kids. Just not as curious.

Parents are strange. Why do they grow to become kids again? But not as curious. They appear more intelligent at an age when we have to tilt our heads up and talk to them. Now, they've become wiser. They care too much about us compared to how much they care about themselves. We praise their attitude and behavior. We reward them so much ...
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January 22, 2024

Breeze of 2023 🍃

Salvi hosted a house party and all of us were in Bangalore. After a beautiful trip after all those gloomy years of COVID, this is the start we all want. A room full of yellow and orange lights, chatting with the cold breeze at the 8th-floor balcony. So, who's the first one to get married in the class? That's the million-dollar question...
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November 28, 2023

Struggle to be driven

Navigating the last six months has been challenging in many different ways. Constantly, ambiguity and hope come together to force me to pick a calm, stable path that carries no risk. Even months later, I'm bothered to tells me — maybe I'm not one of those who settles. I'm afraid of seeing a time when I might give up and not hustle in f...
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August 2, 2023

Over the years

There is something that I don’t want to remind myself of very often. Sometimes those flash in my head and take down my optimism to my knees. I guess that is a by-product of my nature being thoughtful most of the time. Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash 12 years ago I joined a school in my hometown. It was new and had a reputation. My fa...
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July 20, 2023

Happy Birthday, Saif!

I had some happy birthdays and some sad ones. Sometimes all my friends and family were there, while it was just me the rest of the time. It appears career is falling on track while, on the other hand, the crisis is all over. It felt like all of it is part of growing up, or nothing is in my control. Every other birthday, I see a differe...
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July 20, 2023

Interning at Udacity at the expense college placements

Written on April 14, 2019 It's always fun to share what we learn from our experiences. People always take it and don't for various reasons depending on their beliefs and values. This article will be a perspective of my experience, which I already had in engineering, to my first Internship office experience. August 2018: My placement se...
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May 12, 2023

Work with Joy: Discovering the Satwik Hebbar Way

(Satwik is that person with Orange Color T-Shirt) At 20 years old, I joined Satwik's team at Freshworks as the second developer advocate. We aimed to create a developer community, and ever since, we've made notable strides in defining the developer experience. As the saying goes, one's first manager often shapes their career outlook, a...
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April 29, 2023

Comet: A practice for generalist DevRel teams [Part 2]

Once you join a DevRel team in an organization, the chances are that you realize the practices are less mature than you would typically expect. It's natural because the DX industry is very young compared to others. To better understand the context, it might be helpful to learn a little history. Who are generalist DevRel teams? A genera...
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April 21, 2023

Optimizing DevRel for Generalists: A New Team Practice [Part 1]

The evolving developer ecosystem convinced Satwik & Rohit that Freshworks needed a developer relations team. They set up one four years ago. Although they had no formal DevRel experience, they would figure things out independently. They took a leap of faith. One of the things that kept me excited about the fronting developer experience...
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March 10, 2023

I am risking a sense of accomplishment. Is it worth it?

When I do not know the outcomes of my work (from the outside world), I see results through an optimistic lens. It would be the case for anyone in the first two years of their career. Eventually, as I climbed up to do the work above, my pay grade it's a circus. It's all Optics. It's been four years. I am proud of where I've come from as...
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January 22, 2023

Looking five years back after leading a developer student club

Student activities gave me more energy. It is satisfying to chase objectives with a bunch of friends working together as a team. In 2017-2018, Developer Student Clubs gave me an excuse to do more of it at my University. I took up the opportunity. Today, I run alongside a team to build an ecosystem of business developers because they de...
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December 24, 2022

2022

I will remember 2022 as one of those years that evolved who I am. I had lot of habits that carried on from last year. I wake up in the morning, book a rapido and go to office. The world was seeing light post covid and I'm getting back on a daily track. March challenged me like never before in life when it comes to emotional quotient. I...
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October 25, 2022

Closure

About three months ago, I came to Hyderabad from Chennai. I met a friend a few months ago. She wanted to meet me because she wanted a bit of closure. I felt really weird because I do not understand what that exactly means to her. I met her at a Cafe. The conversation was one of the nicest I've had in a long time. I moved to Hyderabad f...
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September 4, 2022

Twenty Four

Nowadays, I find joy alone. I think it's part of growing up. I am starting to accept change is constant. I am learning not to distract from feelings but to walk through them. It will be the most significant transformation I will be proud of myself. I don't see a need for validation. I treat myself as someone I'm responsible for helping...
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July 21, 2022

Three years of Freshworks'

Elementary school, Middle school, High school, and College combined, we give at least 17 years (excluding early years) of our lives. But I will probably retire at 60; that's about 39 years to go. Today I became 24 years old (Happy Birthday to me!), leaving 36 years in my pocket. I may not know how to spend them yet, but it appears like...
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July 10, 2022

Walking amidst Chaos & Order

When we look back on our childhood, most of us feel nostalgic. Why don't we feel similar to that — maybe last month? Do you think it should cost us years before we recognize what is happening today will be a memory someday? We end up reminiscing the golden days and missing them if that's a good memory, or have all the negative emotions...
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April 17, 2022

Time that Still

I never developed a habit of sharing grief with people around me, although I fluently vision, plan, and strategy. I guess I got this habit from my dad. Like my manager says, I write what I think. He identified I express myself in writing before I am self-aware about it. I can't write about anything if I'm in. • Confusion • Grief Today ...
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January 26, 2022

Two most reasonable ROI ideologies for Self Improvement

This month's completion makes me three years into my career. Let me be honest, and it wasn't a roller-coaster ride. It is was like most purposeful companies building some genuine software. It was my kind of routine. #1 - The career doesn't have to happen simply on its own So I joined Freshworks in Jan 2019. I got a fantastic manager wh...
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December 26, 2021

I got a founder create a lifetime subscription plan (for me)

2021 is primarily a year where I took action to improve my productivity. It has been a very tough job. I am still not perfect at it. But my efforts during this process have helped me do something which otherwise I would never even bother. In this Journal, I will write about a small story of me writing to an app on the Android App Store...
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November 28, 2021

The Routine

I stayed about ~ 4 months alone in a single flat in Chennai when the government imposed COVID travel restrictions. It was easy in the beginning until my first 45 days. Most of all, it helped me become a more independent thinker. Today, I wanted to talk about the last 45 days at home and my transition back to work from the office. Being...
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October 20, 2021

Toxic Legalse & CX — Zolo Stays and Walnut

A few months ago, I started reading a book — Tools and Weapons. I don't remember how I started reading this book. Brad Smith, Chief Legal Officer at Microsoft, wrote this book. Curious about our legal works in the tech industry, I started reading this book. I still haven't completed it. But this book has shaped a perspective that helpe...
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October 10, 2021

I only knew direction, not destination

By default, people often as us - What do you want to become when you grow up? Maybe that moment when we were a kid. The teacher comes in and asks us this question. I quickly said something I don't even clearly remember - an electrician? An engineer? The same question is in different ways as we grow. More general question one should ask...
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August 29, 2021

When I took my parents to my workplace

Living hundreds of kilometers away from home is something I've gotten used to within a few months after moving to Chennai. Parents. They don't really get a chance to sit side by side in class to see me interacting with friends, classmates, or situations. The ones who raised me over two decades can only picture what day-to-day looks and...
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August 21, 2021

Learning from mistakes is overrated

I read that failure is the stepping stone to success before even I know what loss is or what success is. I remember first reading this statement somewhere in a classmate's notebook and then on a wall at my school. I never thought about it until the next exam, and I got lower marks than my expectations. I somehow perceived it as a failu...
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July 25, 2021

Independent? Then there's Interdependence.

My whole life, I developed this lousy paradigm to become as independent as possible. We feel restrained to do a lot of things from a very young age. • If I need to buy a new bag, I need to ask my parents for it. • If I need to go on a holiday trip, I need to seek permission for it. • If I need money, I need to request it. • If I need t...
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July 11, 2021

The Curl-Hand Org Culture

Every single person in the world will want to live a better life as they leave the planet than with the life they were born. After the world adopted the currency culture, it incentivizes every person to build and make almost anything that makes the world better. • If person A sings a song and person B enjoys it, the currency culture al...
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July 4, 2021

Next phase of fame

I have always wondered how people in business like Elon Musk became celebrities. In the early days, rulers of kingdoms used to be celebrities. They were recognized for their discipline, bravery, and commitment to serve their people. At the beginning of the industrial revolution, it's the inventors who were celebrities. They were recogn...
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June 13, 2021

Be selfish on what matters

Over 2.5 years since I graduated from my college, there are only a few close friends with whom I could keep in touch every week (Despite every little effort I put in). Sometimes conversations with these friends end up accusing me of being selfish in my college days except my closest ones. In a fun way. :) So I began to comprehend how I...
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May 15, 2021

The good career strategy

For the first time in my life, my inbox saw 12 recruiters knocking on the door to initiate a conversation offering better pay and job role within the last two weeks. These companies range from SaaS companies to the Blockchain space. I never thought I needed to save a template email to nicely say I am not looking for a career switch at ...
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May 1, 2021

No currency to Cryptocurrency

Most of us may not remember our first interaction with money. But it should probably be going to a small shop to buy candy. I get candy. My mom or dad probably have paid ₹1 for it. Sooner it is simply accepted ₹ is a universal idea to buy and sell. So I decided to dig into this universal idea. It obviously takes us to the era that we n...
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