Get live statistics and analysis of Raj Dabre's profile on X / Twitter

There's an obscure market involving tutoring rich kids from UAE and Saudi. You can work 10 hours a week and make as much money as an entry level SWE in FAANG.

Nothing compared to my weekend project that got me an interview at Google.

This is how you grab my attention btw.

Still the best cold DM I got!

Google is now trying to poach people from itself.

I think I'm qualified to answer this: 1. Thanks to my efforts in my 20s, I am on a decent career path, and that means access to money. One less thing to worry about. 2. I was skinny in my 20s but thanks to regular work out and eating better, my body has filled out, and I think I have maxed out my physical appearance. I read somewhere that 30s is when muscles reach peak maturity. 3. Something happened the moment in my 30s whereby I was able to adapt my conversational style to almost anyone, allowing me to relate to a variety of people. 4. 1, 2 and 3 lead to a general improvement in confidence, making you attractive to people around you. Just be humble and kind. Now, this is specifically for my single straight male friends about to enter their 30s: Your popularity among women will shoot up in your 30s AS LONG AS you stay employed, maintain good hygiene and be in decent shape. TL;DR: If you spent your 20s grinding, then YES! (Regardless of gender/sex)

0 - Born 4 - Wanted to be a street beggar because I thought they were chilling 4 - Got an ass whooping for wanting to be a beggar 15 - Wanted to become a lawyer 15 - Got an ass whooping for wanting to be a lawyer 17 - Failed to get a JEE rank 20 - Became a lecturer in a tier 4 engineering college 21 - Got into IIT Bombay for masters and dealt with depression for 2 years 24 - Got into Kyoto university for PhD and dealt with depression and suicidal ideation for 3 years 28 - Graduated with a PhD and joined a Japanese government funded lab 32 - Joined AI4BHARAT 34 - Became adjunct faculty at IITM and IITB 36 - Got into Google My secret: I showed up everyday regardless of the challenge. Always show up!

FAANG recruiter emailed me about an opening for a RS position. Typical interview process is: 2 coding interviews, 2 research interviews, 1 tech talk, 1 FAANGness interview. Straight up told them that I am not motivated to do coding interviews since it's all about whether you end up getting a question from leetcode or something similar. That tells you nothing about their ability to handle large projects. Their GitHub history and repos they built will tell you better. Take an hour to talk to them about what they built to understand better. I myself usually test very basic coding skills and ask questions about what they built when I interview people since someone talented will show their capabilities on the job. Last time I went through the gauntlet only to be told that I didn't have sufficient ACL papers and that I didn't code fast enough to their liking. Makes no sense to shortlist someone based on their resume that looks good to you, get them to invest atleast 5 hours of interview time and god knows how many hours of prep, just to knock them off cause they didn't solve your randomly chosen leetcode problem quickly enough. Well I'm expecting to get a GTFO email but atleast this time I had the courage to say what I always wanted to say.

One of my friends is making close to 200 USD an hour by consulting for US companies wanting to use AI for their business. The mad part is that some people make 300 USD an hour. The AI hype is real and if you play your cards well you can make more than a Google research scientist. Fun fact: This is possible on LinkedIn. Perhaps I shouldn't shit on LinkedIn as much as I do. :)

Story time: After I moved out of my home in 2014 to live in Japan, initially I used to call my parents daily. But as I became more "internationalized" I started calling my parents less and less. I used to tell my mom "I have nothing to talk about so we don't need to call daily". She sounded sad, but I was way too engrossed in being "grown up". It got to a point where I called them only once or twice a week (which by Indian millennial standards is appalling). My parents never said anything to me, but I knew they were feeling disconnected from me. Fast-forward to 2019, when a new Indian co-worker joined NICT, and he asked me "Do you call your parents daily?". I said no, and he continued with, "Don't you think you should? Don't you think they miss you?". It got me thinking, and I decided to force myself to call my parents daily for a week. If it was not for me, I would go back to my once or twice a week calls. Even though I had nothing to say, I pushed myself to do some small talk, even though it was repetitive stuff. Finally on day 4, dad suddenly asked "son are you ok? You have been calling us daily these days". I told them that I just felt like it, not wanting to tell them that this was an experiment borne out of a convo with a colleague. Then dad said something that hit me like a ton of bricks, "We have been happy recently that you are calling us every day. It shows your love." They yearned for me, but I never paid attention. Since then, I have made it a point to call my parents EVERY SINGLE DAY. God knows when it will be the final time to talk to them. Cherish every moment. No matter how busy you are, even if you are some big shot, make time to talk to your parents. Sometimes they are afraid to ask for your love. Don't make them ask. Give it freely! If you are reading this, go call your parents and tell them that you love them!

Fields Medal up next!

My daughter is now officially registered as a Japanese national. Take that Japanese population crisis!

I studied at IIT Bombay. I chose to do my PhD. I was 24 years old and unhappy. I did my PhD at Kyoto University. Always dreamed of working at big tech. Couldn't get in. I was 28 and unhappy. Settled for my current work place with mediocre salary. No one expected anything from me and let me do whatever I wanted. Experienced explosive growth. Extremely happy. Lesson: forget big titles and salaries and contentment will follow. Funnily enough, I got multiple promotions leading to a decent salary. It's like Ranchordas said: Excellence and not success. Do what you love.

1. "Love of your life" is a fantasy. 2. The initial excitement of meeting someone new and interesting often leads to poor judgement and delulu. One of my friends nearly ruined their marriage because of temporary delulu. Took 2 years and a lot of therapy to fix it. 3. Real relationships are forged in trials by fire. 4. If you are in a marriage with the thinking that "the love of my life may be out there", then you might want to question your morals. 5. There is no global maxima for human relationships. Choose a local maxima and stand by it. Cars, however, feel free to dump that Toyota for a lambo if you can afford it. 6. Don't commoditize love and human relationships.

Got this an hour ago! :)

My wildest brag is that during my internship in Google in 2016, I showed some improvements in Google Translate for some low resource languages and Noam actually replied to my results thread calling my work "awesome". I think that was my peak. Fwiw, at that point of time, I had no idea who Noam was. I thought he was some rando.

If a coding applicant can't implement bubble sort from scratch in under 5 minutes—on a whiteboard, no IDE crutches—they're out. Instantly rejected. It's the ultimate filter: no hand-holding, no excuses about "real-world tools." If you can't nail the basics that fast, you're not a programmer; you're a copy-paster. I've built teams this way for years—zero regrets, only elite coders.

There's an obscure market involving tutoring rich kids from UAE and Saudi. You can work 10 hours a week and make as much money as an entry level SWE in FAANG.

If your Gemini experience doesn't improve in the next year you can crucify me.

About to become a dad! Wish me and my wife luck!

If you're from India and I had to convince you to switch from other models to Gemini, what would I have to do?

Nothing compared to my weekend project that got me an interview at Google.

Story time: After I moved out of my home in 2014 to live in Japan, initially I used to call my parents daily. But as I became more "internationalized" I started calling my parents less and less. I used to tell my mom "I have nothing to talk about so we don't need to call daily". She sounded sad, but I was way too engrossed in being "grown up". It got to a point where I called them only once or twice a week (which by Indian millennial standards is appalling). My parents never said anything to me, but I knew they were feeling disconnected from me. Fast-forward to 2019, when a new Indian co-worker joined NICT, and he asked me "Do you call your parents daily?". I said no, and he continued with, "Don't you think you should? Don't you think they miss you?". It got me thinking, and I decided to force myself to call my parents daily for a week. If it was not for me, I would go back to my once or twice a week calls. Even though I had nothing to say, I pushed myself to do some small talk, even though it was repetitive stuff. Finally on day 4, dad suddenly asked "son are you ok? You have been calling us daily these days". I told them that I just felt like it, not wanting to tell them that this was an experiment borne out of a convo with a colleague. Then dad said something that hit me like a ton of bricks, "We have been happy recently that you are calling us every day. It shows your love." They yearned for me, but I never paid attention. Since then, I have made it a point to call my parents EVERY SINGLE DAY. God knows when it will be the final time to talk to them. Cherish every moment. No matter how busy you are, even if you are some big shot, make time to talk to your parents. Sometimes they are afraid to ask for your love. Don't make them ask. Give it freely! If you are reading this, go call your parents and tell them that you love them!

FAANG recruiter emailed me about an opening for a RS position. Typical interview process is: 2 coding interviews, 2 research interviews, 1 tech talk, 1 FAANGness interview. Straight up told them that I am not motivated to do coding interviews since it's all about whether you end up getting a question from leetcode or something similar. That tells you nothing about their ability to handle large projects. Their GitHub history and repos they built will tell you better. Take an hour to talk to them about what they built to understand better. I myself usually test very basic coding skills and ask questions about what they built when I interview people since someone talented will show their capabilities on the job. Last time I went through the gauntlet only to be told that I didn't have sufficient ACL papers and that I didn't code fast enough to their liking. Makes no sense to shortlist someone based on their resume that looks good to you, get them to invest atleast 5 hours of interview time and god knows how many hours of prep, just to knock them off cause they didn't solve your randomly chosen leetcode problem quickly enough. Well I'm expecting to get a GTFO email but atleast this time I had the courage to say what I always wanted to say.

0 - Born 4 - Wanted to be a street beggar because I thought they were chilling 4 - Got an ass whooping for wanting to be a beggar 15 - Wanted to become a lawyer 15 - Got an ass whooping for wanting to be a lawyer 17 - Failed to get a JEE rank 20 - Became a lecturer in a tier 4 engineering college 21 - Got into IIT Bombay for masters and dealt with depression for 2 years 24 - Got into Kyoto university for PhD and dealt with depression and suicidal ideation for 3 years 28 - Graduated with a PhD and joined a Japanese government funded lab 32 - Joined AI4BHARAT 34 - Became adjunct faculty at IITM and IITB 36 - Got into Google My secret: I showed up everyday regardless of the challenge. Always show up!

I studied at IIT Bombay. I chose to do my PhD. I was 24 years old and unhappy. I did my PhD at Kyoto University. Always dreamed of working at big tech. Couldn't get in. I was 28 and unhappy. Settled for my current work place with mediocre salary. No one expected anything from me and let me do whatever I wanted. Experienced explosive growth. Extremely happy. Lesson: forget big titles and salaries and contentment will follow. Funnily enough, I got multiple promotions leading to a decent salary. It's like Ranchordas said: Excellence and not success. Do what you love.

Anyone who is feeling lost (academically or otherwise): AMA!

Got this an hour ago! :)

Google is now trying to poach people from itself.

One of my friends is making close to 200 USD an hour by consulting for US companies wanting to use AI for their business. The mad part is that some people make 300 USD an hour. The AI hype is real and if you play your cards well you can make more than a Google research scientist. Fun fact: This is possible on LinkedIn. Perhaps I shouldn't shit on LinkedIn as much as I do. :)

As a senior researcher who has both published in A* venues and has written toolkits himself and overseen the development of several others, it is humiliating to have to do leetcode grinding for a research scientist role in big tech. I have written more code than most people and I still will be judged for not being able to solve a coding question, WHICH BY THE WAY IS NOT SOMETHING YOU WILL DO A LOT IN BIG TECH BECAUSE WE HAVE CODING ASSISTANTS NOW FFS!