Writing

Essays about building, teaching and hiring, mostly for FutureLab. Poems in the night room. Written for the curious, thinking in public, never advice at people.

Start with this one

Getting There, and Proving It

An ICPC scoreboard under review, the grind behind my own rank, and what a student, a teacher or an engineer can show now that an AI can write the answer.

TeachingOct 20265 min read

The night room

19 poems, 2010 to 2021.

Struggle

Let’s talk today aboutStruggle, the wordAttributed in hindsightBut seldom in the now.

All tell you that’s the pathBy going through painWe make ourselvesWe grow and be better

But how I wonderWhen we’ve also been toldNever to do wrongNever get hurt.

Calculate all the positionsLearn to think aheadAnd you’re stepping onGenerational wealthThat it’s easy to forget

Where’s the struggleWe ask, so casually.Like a forgotten cloudyAfternoon in summer

Where’s the struggleWe ask, forgetting thatI’ve probably completed mineBut to reach where I amIs another man’s struggle.

And yet when we look backWe see the beads of sweatThe smell that washing machineCan remove from our clothesBut not our memories

We didn’t know it when itHappened in the nowBut we do know itWhen we see it in our pasts

The struggle isn’t necessaryTo grow us.To make us.We should just make sureNo one is struggling becauseOfYou.

Excerpt

Read the full poem Enter the night roomAug 2021

Everything

SearchTopicYear

14 of 14 pieces

Oct 2026Teachingcompetitive-programmingassessmentai5 min read
Getting There, and Proving It
An ICPC scoreboard under review, the grind behind my own rank, and what a student, a teacher or an engineer can show now that an AI can write the answer.
Sep 2026FutureLabsystemsagentic-engineeringnotesmeta4 min read
A Second Brain Before It Had a Name
Twelve years of notes to myself, from Google Keep in 2014 to the agents I run today, and why capturing everything was only ever the first half.
Sep 2026FutureLabaistartupsevals8 min read
How to Tell If Your AI Startup Actually Has a Moat
Notes from a FutureLab fireside with OpenAI’s Marc Manara on telling a moat from scaffolding that the next model will replace.
Sep 2026FutureLab, a talkaitalkdebate
Sovereign AI Debate
A debate at Bengaluru Tech Week, September 2026.
Jun 2026FutureLabaiagentic-engineering11 min read
You Already Run a Multi-Agent System
A FutureLab dispatch on the multi-agent system already running through your team’s everyday work.
Jun 2026FutureLabaiagentic-engineeringevals1 min read
The Anti-Theater Principle: Building Agent Systems That Tell the Truth
A FutureLab dispatch on building agent systems honest enough to fail loudly. The test I use: “If this wanted to lie to me, could it? If yes, it doesn’t ship.”
May 2026FutureLabagentic-engineeringaigoogle14 min read
The Day Google Stopped Selling Software
A FutureLab dispatch on Google I/O 2026: six layers of one agentic stack, and what engineering leaders should do on Monday morning.
May 2026FutureLabaiagentic-engineering10 min read
The Tokenmaxxing Tax
Apr 2026FutureLabaihiring11 min read
Nobody Knows What to Hire For. This is the Only Stable Bet.
A FutureLab dispatch on hiring once coding stops being the bottleneck, prompted by a line at FutureLab Pune: “We’re shipping faster, but everything is piling up at QA.”
Apr 2026FutureLabagentic-engineeringai14 min read
The Prep Work Is The Work
Apr 2026FutureLab, a talkagentic-engineeringaitalk
Vibe Coding Is Dead. Long Live Vibe Engineering.
A talk at RU campus, April 2026.
Mar 2026FutureLabai5 min read
FutureLab #2: Signals from the Room
A dispatch from the second FutureLab session, held with The Product Folks and product leader Tanmay Pandya.
Feb 2026FutureLabagentic-engineeringaispecsbmadsoftware-engineering10 min read
Vibe Coding Is Gambling. Here’s How I Made It Engineering.
A component passed every test, cleared review, and never ran. What I learned about building software with AI agents, and the spec-first harness I now use on every project.
Jan 2026FutureLabai3 min read
FutureLab: Signals from the Room
The first FutureLab dispatch, from the launch of FutureLab by NST at Hyatt Centric Bangalore.

Dispatches are from FutureLab by NST, an event series for founders and technology leaders that I co-run, and open on NST’s Substack.

Start with this one

Everything

2026

Sovereign AI Debate

Vibe Coding Is Dead. Long Live Vibe Engineering.