Source : ThoughtWorks

Namaste!

IPA /ˈnʌməsteɪ/ means a respectful greeting, said with hands joined together!

This is my readme file. I am Ajey Gore, and this is my manual or readme file, know me.

I am from India. I studied commerce, arts and later software engineering.

I have lived in Bangalore, London, Chicago, Pune, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, Jakarta and now I live in Singapore.

Started my career as a graphics designer, sold computers, ran a printing press, helped my elder brother in his cell phone and DTP business and finally settled writing software for the most of my life.

I learned many things along the way and met some amazing people over the years, I love to talk to people about technology, poeple, team and building organisations.

So this page is about “how to deal with me” as a person. because I fundamentally believe that everyone else is right about me and dealing with me is constant expectation mismatch and a cage fight in a very interesting way, where I might appear dogmatic and other person think that they are principled :-)

What do I do?

I’m a Software Engineer at the core. I love building teams and working with people. I work for people and people work with me

I see myself as swiss knife in tactical situations and an empowerment advocate in strategic terms. I have played various roles in my life and recently at GoJek, now I work with Sequoia Capital as Technology Partner.

In my role, I work with the CTOs and CPOs of Sequoia’s portfolio companies to provide insight and expertise in building and scaling engineering, data science, product, and design functions. In a crude terms, I tell them what not to do, about my mistake and learnings.

I fundamentally believe that I am a package of success and have a cargo full of failures with me, I might have 1 or 2 good success stories, but most of the time I will tell one of the failures from 100s of stories and incidents, I experienced through out last 2 decades or so.

I am sure the perspectives I am trying to put you through and context I am trying to give you are my side of stories and perception. They might be wrong - because one side of the story is never true, since it’s based on human perception, but you are welcome to correct me.

Because I learned that "Saying I don’t know, and accepting those mistakes" are few of many important traits one should have apart from being empathetic, curios and ready to learn.

Best Way to Communicate with Me

I am converted extrovert, so I sometimes put perceived information through my introverted lense, that means, sometimes I see what I want to see, so I try to confirm with people on what I perceive, the way I want you to tell me what you think is walk up to me and tell me what you feel.

I keep my professional life within the confines of office premise, that means that we can argue, agree to disagree, but still can have an amazing dinner! I don’t bring official matters to any personal meetings or outings.

I don’t initiate one on one conversations, just because I run out of time, in turn I am perceived as one of the most difficult people to get time from, but if you really want to talk to me, just call me! I almost immediately respond to calls, because I know you will call me only if it’s urgent. Sending me an email has response time ETA upto a week. I have gotten feedback that I am difficult to reach over the years, but here you go with my secret to reachability.

So I’m ok with being engaged however you are comfortable. Take as long as you need to. Use many words or few. Use chat, email or call me or meet me in person. Whatever works for you. I’ll adjust, and won’t judge.

Finally, I have strong opinions that I strive to hold as long as I am shown better ways, so I’m always easiest to persuade with logic and always ready to learn, I always look for traits in people who come with problem & solutions with it, always give me options to choose from and always tell their opinions on something before seeking mine.

To contact me, reaching through twitter works for now.

My Work Style

I really enjoy working on complex strategic product problems involving software engineering, design, data science or scaling. I have a strong interest in software design, team building and how they work with org design. I believe that the way product evolves over a period of time, organisation should evolve as well.

I have always followed John Ousterhaut and now he has a book around the same topic, please read A Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhaut.

I prefer being reasonable and transparent. I encourage transparency in general - especially around communication When you ask me a question, I will always ask you the context for the question, that helps give you more elaborate and explainable answers. I also prefer egalitarian meritocracy. As a consequence I work more effectively with people with whom I can straight-talk.

How I Think I Evaluate People

Evaluating performance is often the largest part of a leaders’ responsibilities.

• I don’t like anyone being judgemental.
• I don’t like biased or judgemental views.
• I don’t like people forming opinions about others based on few events or the way they behave.
• I believe in long term and transparent professional relationships, that means, you will find me very unbiased or aloof towards people.

I am working on reducing the bias in my own evaluation of any given person; I make a conscious effort to avoid forming an opinion based on what a handful of people tell me about someone.

I’m not great at this, and am always open to feedback.

Here’s a list of my people related biases I think matter most.

I am positively-biased towards:

• people who see their work as creativity and recognise that they need constant improvement.
• people who believe that what they do is a craft and they keep honing their skills around that.
• people who dedicate a lot of time deeply caring about other people and their professional success
• people who demonstrate clarity of purpose. (they always have a crisp answer to "what do you want to make happen?")
• people who I see accepting accountability for creating outcomes. (reverse spiderman rule: to those with great responsibility give great power)
• people who consistently create outcomes they signed up for
• people who visibly make their colleagues better at their jobs by teaching them their own skills. (these people are superb team builders)
• people who argue to find the right answer rather than to win.
• people who work regardless of who gets the credit for that work.
• people who are curious and ready to learn all the time
• people who see success are of the team and failure for themselves

I am negatively-biased against towards:

• people without skin flesh in the game that want a say.
• people who cause drama.
• people who don’t study and iterate but want to be treated as if they do.
• people who try to pull emotional levers to get their way, rather than using logic and practicality.