AltCampus, One Year Later

On 7th April 2019, I landed in Dharamshala, the foothills of the Himalayas to attend a six month coding bootcamp with AltCampus and on 7th June 2019, after spending sixty solid days on coding every single day and creating a ton of stuff, I quit the program. Today marks a year since I moved out of the program and I have had a chance to reflect on what happened to me during that entire year and whether it was a good decision to leave.

View from AltCampus on a normal day

From the moment I set foot in AltCampus, I felt like I was home. It reminds me of the feeling Harry Potter has when he says “I’m not going home, I’m going from home.” when boarding the train to leave Hogwarts after the first year. For the first time in my life, I found a community of people who spoke my language. They understood whatever I said and vice versa. This place felt like heaven and the tagline of AltCampus “The alternative to college you wish existed” was ratified. Spending time in a beautiful and peaceful setting with a panoramic view of the Himalayas along with people who have congregated for the purpose of learning how to code was probably the most amazing thing I can imagine.

If AC was so fabulous and I felt right at home, why did I quit the program after only two months? Why didn’t I finish the entire six month program and reap the benefits? The answer is personal to me and does not really reflect AltCampus’s education or life.

After spending two complete months coding intensively, I realised one major thing. Despite my interest in coding since age 11 or my presence on the internet since 1997, my penchant for coding has vanished. I want to live my life outside of the computer and coding doesn’t really allow you to do that, at least not in the beginning.

As you might be interested in how the course was at AltCampus, I will give you some details. The entire program is based around a concept of immersive coding, you learn from peers and from teachers (who are around your age) and you maximise learning through osmosis. You are provided with food and accommodation for a small fee every month and the course itself works on a fee model that involves you paying after you complete the program. To sweeten the deal, AltCampus promises you that you will get a job paying at least Rs 50,000 per month or you do NOT pay a single paisa. It doesn’t really get better than this in the real world.

I do feel that having little or no upfront payment also allows for some people to quit the program prematurely, maybe this was something that led to my decision, had I paid in full, maybe I would have had the incentive to stay. But by not having any large upfront payment, AltCampus is open to all regardless of income level.

My peers who were part of my batch (batch number 7 for the curious ones) who continued the program and graduated, got internships with a great company called BigBinary. I’ll go into the numbers later. After working with the company for a couple of months, they were each offered full time positions by the same company. AltCampus fulfilled its promise for them. The internship paid Rs 40,000/month and the full time job paid Rs 1,00,000/month.

By quitting the program, I could not fulfil my dream of building software products that I personally would like to see in the world and I will have to live with that because it is a tradeoff that I made. I decided that I do not want to sit in front of the computer for 15 hours a day trying to figure out where I forgot to insert the semicolon. My personal interests are more aligned towards telling stories through different media.

Do I regret leaving AltCampus?

No.

I loved the program, I made friends for life, I believe that it serves an important role in the future of the country and the world but for me, the decision is not one worth regretting.

Should you go to AltCampus?

Absolutely!

Having read this far, you probably sorely want to know whether AltCampus is worth picking up your bags and moving to Dharamshala for six months. The answer is a resounding yes! AltCampus is a fantastic place and the most affordable place to learn coding. It doesn’t get better than this for anyone. I wish this had existed when I finished my 12th in 2010. I would have jumped at the opportunity to learn the invaluable skills that I picked up at AC.

If you have questions, post them in the comments. You can head over to Altcampus.io to learn more about the program.

P.S. They had plans of launching an online program for coding. I don’t know anything about this. In personal view, they are special because of the live in-person classes and the immersive experience.

Was it worth it?

Locking down our country has resulted in mass suffering, I wonder if all the hullabaloo was worth it. Had there been no lockdown, would life be as painful for these migrant workers as it has been today?

Would everyday people have lost jobs?

Would people have lost sleep over their inability to pay instalments on their loans due to a cut in their salary?

Could we have continued with business as usual and avoided immeasurable human suffering?

Could the economic crisis have been averted which seems to be causing equally as many if not more problems than the health crisis?

Was it the right move?

why I do not like YouTube’s downgrading of comments

YouTube on it’s mobile app for iOS has made it extremely difficult to find and read comments (read: they don’t want you to read comments). This obsession of YouTube trying to increase the watch time on their platform is clearly showing and is not healthy.

Instead of trying to help facilitate a healthy discussion among people after watching a video, YT is interested only in getting people to watch the next video. The reason? They make no money if a person reads the comments but they get to show people ads and make money if they get them to watch more videos.

The way YouTube is lowering their standards is pathetic and I wish I had an alternative. This monopoly should be broken.

The Disturbance Manifesto

We seem to have entered an era when all the big companies seem to be thinking lesser and lesser about user experience. It all started when Amazon felt that they had the right to disturb the customers when delivering packages.

In the past, they used to get a signature of the person collecting the package (anyone at home) and facilitate a seamless delivery without needing to call. After a while the good ol’ signature became too passé for them and they stopped taking signatures altogether. This led to a slew of deliveries being made by handing it over to the wrong person or sometimes being “lost in transit”. To counter this, Amazon came up with a “genius” idea, they required that a One Time Password (OTP) be given to the delivery guy at the time of delivery by the customer.

This so called “Genius” solution which was probably devised by some engineer sitting in a plush office of Amazon who has little or no ability to fathom the real world ground realities is actually a disaster and is hell bent on trying to solve problems that do not exist with technological solutions. I am pretty sure he/she hasn’t heard what Bill Gates said about technology.

“Technology applied to an efficient operation, magnifies efficiency, technology applied to an inefficient operation magnifies inefficiency.” -Bill Gates

When before a delivery was made without needing any call or intervention of the customer whatsoever, now the customer needs to be bothered by either the delivery agent or the family member or roommate who is collecting the package. The person who wanted a simple delivery is now subjected to this unnecessary and convoluted process for the simple reason that Amazon thought it was too “low tech” to collect signatures on paper. I do not know if that is the real reason, but I can only assume that the reason is something as preposterous as that. And “No”, you cannot say it is for “security reasons”.

As if Amazon was not a big enough pain in the butt, I started getting these similar OTPs or PINs from different courier providers such as EcomExpress. It was supposed to be an ordinary delivery when the man asked for a PIN and I had to be disturbed in the middle of an important call only for this trivial matter.

Licious, the company that prides itself on providing quality meat to your door has instituted a new policy (as told to me by the delivery agent) that “the customer is required to pick up the phone or the order will be cancelled” and further that “the customer is supposed to pick up the meat from the security guard”. So much for “door delivery”.

As if man didn’t have enough disturbances in 2020, we get insensitive companies trying to squeeze more and more of our time. Apparently it is not enough to charge for a service in money, you also want to charge for it in time. What an idea!

The Gym Namaste: Why Working Out 3 Days a Week is Harder than Working Out 6 Days a Week

I woke up and was beginning to get ready to do my workout when I realised that it was a Tuesday and my workout wasn’t scheduled. I was only scheduled to work out on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I was so used to working out six days a week that it felt like cheating when I was now working out only three days a week. Who would have thought that working out less is actually more difficult than working out more? Confused? Let me explain.

I recently chanced upon an idea called Habit Graduation. It means that as humans if we try to start off with habits that are too much outside our comfort zone, we are highly likely to falter. Imagine if you had to pick up a document while returning from work that required you to travel thirty minutes extra each day. Compare that with picking up a document in your own neighbourhood which is a five minute walk from your house and you will pass by that place on the way back from work. Which one is easier? You might come up with a reason to avoid the extra commute for the first case but you might not be able to come up with any reason to justify not being able to pick up the document on your way back home.

If we start with a habit that is just outside the border of our comfort zone, we are extremely likely to continue with it and eventually build up a reservoir of habit energy to graduate into the main habit that we want.

In my case, I always wanted to workout three days a week. This has been a feat I was never able to pull off. Perhaps because it directly contradicts habit formation. In the initial days, enthusiasm is crucial to building good habits. For whatever reason, when you get all pumped up and decide to hit the gym for the rest of the year you are enthusiastic about the future. This motivated version of you needs to stay motivated and if you work out on alternate days, this motivation fizzles out and you end up where you started i.e doing nothing.

To prevent my motivation from fading away, I chose a simple metric. I was a success today if I just went to the gym. What kind of success metric is that? You might think, of course he is a success if he goes to the gym. In my success metric, I am only required to go to the gym and not do anything there. I need not workout at the gym, I need not spend time on the treadmill, I do not even have to put on gym clothes. My only success criteria is going to the gym and walking out. I went to the gym, greeted the receptionist and walked out. Is that easy to do? No, it is not.

Where do most people falter in their gym journey? Is it at the after they have reached the gym and they choose not to workout today or is it at home in bed contemplating why not to go to them? Which is more common? I do not know of a single person who feels that after reaching the gym, he is unable to workout. On the other hand, I know hundreds of people who sit home and decide on not visiting the gym by rationalising some reasons.

In my first month of hitting the gym, I chose my metric of success to be a pass/fail approach where I would pass if I just went to the gym. I had the option of leaving the gym at any time if I chose not to workout, I would still pass because my metric only tested whether I came to the gym.

In my second month, I had now gotten used to coming to the gym. At this point, I chose to add a workout journal to my routine. Everyday, I would write down the workouts that I did in a small notebook along with the weights and reps.

In the months that followed, I kept increasing the load little by little. I started measuring the food I ate, calculating my macros, noting my weight everyday etc. Only one new thing added in one month, there were a couple of months in which I did not add anything because I felt I needed more practice with my existing habits.

It was in month seven that I actually started reducing my workout days from six to three. Instead of working out from Monday to Saturday, I was now working out Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I had to earn enough habit credits to be able to graduate into a more difficult habit.

From my habit of working out six days a week, I had to graduate to three days a week because I didn’t have enough habit energy to do that one day one. Is it worth six months of waiting? Is there a faster way? Maybe. But I chose to stick with a way that definitely works rather than experiment with a route that might work. From my experience, I have figured out a far more effective strategy called the Gym Namaste.

The Gym Namaste
Remember where most people falter? It is at home when they are contemplating whether to attend the gym. What if this was no longer optional? What if going to the gym and not working out was a part of the schedule?

Introducing the Gym Namaste.

Namaste is a way of greeting people in India practised by the Hindu people. It involves joining your hands together and saying “Namaste”. Since going to the gym was the only requirement and I was allowed to use any mode of transport to go to the gym, I started using the Gym Namaste.

All one needs to do is go to the gym by walk/car/bike etc and say “Namaste” to the receptionist and leave.

If I do exactly that and nothing else, I consider the day a success and I get to mark an X on my calendar. No workout, no cardio, no gym clothes. Just say “Namaste” and get out of the gym.

Sounds silly? I’d be surprised if you said it wasn’t. This is one of the most silliest and counter intuitive things that ever occurred to me in my life. Does it work? It works like a charm. How often do you think you’d actually use the Gym Namaste? What do you think your brain feels like after it has invested the time to commute to the gym?

I used it only twice in six months. Doing the Gym Namaste creates a good feeling inside of you about that particular day. You no longer feel like a failure or feel like kicking yourself because you didn’t do what you said you would do. Another effect it has is one where you feel guilty about using it the next time. This guilt actually works in your favour and you end up coming to the gym and working out anyway.

If I were to think of starting to workout three days a week today, I might consider a schedule like this.

M: Workout
T: Gym Namaste
W: Workout
T: Gym Namaste
F: Workout

If I didn’t have too much confidence in myself, I would have added a Gym Namaste on Saturday as well. I am only human, I do not put my faith in my abilities, I put my faith in the system I have put together to ensure those abilities are exercised.

crucial conversations?

We have conversations every day but not all of them are important. Some are for plain fun while others are for business. Some of these seemingly ordinary conversations however turn to crucial conversations. A misread of the situation can turn a healthy relationship into one filled with suspicion. Knowing how to tackle these conversations is an art that needs developing, a realisation I have made only recently.

Crucial Conversations is the name of a famous book written by researchers who have put in more than a quarter of a century working in the top companies in America. In each place they found some gems who were able to get anything done by almost anyone. Be it the CEO or a grunt, they were able to get their way with all of them. What is it that these individuals had that others lacked? This is the entire focus of the book.

Although I haven’t been able to plough through this book in its entirety yet. I have reached a significant milestone in the book. A point that has been an aha moment for me. In the book the authors mention the disabling of the brain function as emotions begin to flood our brain. Our brains have not been wired to tackle modern day challenges like disagreements through verbal exchange but rather by combat. This ancient genetic makeup makes it nearly impossible for most people who haven’t trained themselves otherwise to react poorly in a high stress situation. It is no wonder that people think back at a situation and say “What was I thinking?”.

My reasons for not completing the book are that this is the kind of book that requires execution and execution of such tasks is going to take time. I’d rather take twenty four months to solve the this problem in my life by taking one element at a time every two months and incorporating it in my life.

This book was recommended to me by a man who has schooled himself in the art of crucial conversations over two decades and I thought if a man so successful is recommending it, it must be something good and indeed it is.

motivations

A friend of mine is excellent at her job and makes a very comfortable income. A little too comfortable I might add. Although she could get cosy with her position, she quits any job she picks up in less than a year. Her reason? “I was bored”. After hearing her rant about this a couple of times I recommended that she create a side project on a subject she was passionate about, I mean everyone is passionate about something. Right? That was three years ago. She still has no side project and still has the same complaint “I’m bored”.

What makes a software engineer making more than one hundred thousand dollars a year feel bored?

What can she do to stop her boredom?

Is she fulfilled?

Why isn’t she doing something about it?

These were questions that popped into my mind over the years after I saw her make absolutely zero progress in terms of her boredom and her fulfilment. She wants something from life but doesn’t know what it is. She has all the technical skill in the world but she doesn’t take a minute of her time to use it for anything apart from a paying job.

Her repeated rants about the topic caused me to wonder about two things. The first was that I couldn’t sell her well on the idea of a side hustle which could eventually become her main project and fund her for life. The second was that she is lying to herself (or to me).

I do not feel I did an awe-spiring job of getting her excited to start her own thing. However, I am a smart man and I do believe that she got my point that an own enterprise would give you a kind of respect that she would never get as an employee of the company.

The second factor is far more insidious and something that I would like to learn from. If she’s lying to herself, there isn’t much I can do as she is believing something that she wants to believe and nobody including god can make her believe anything else.

If she’s lying to me, she doesn’t have to take time to speak to me for hours on the phone and blatantly say that she’s not happy in her work despite being terribly good at it and that she’d like to do something else. If she is lying to me, and I’m not saying she is but if she is, she is deluding herself and possibly me about her plans for the future.

A question that I must ask at this point is that people do all sorts of crazy things in life and all of it is a result of their motivations. Her motivations are different from mine and she has had a different upbringing that I have had. It could be that something that is nirvana to me is blasphemy to her. I do however know one thing for sure. If one chooses to speak different versions using words and actions, actions are the ones to be trusted and not the words.

Therefore, she is lying about her passions or boredom or fulfilment. If that is not the case, she is just lying to me and wasting my time in which case I’m a dunce.

vague is?

Not actionable. That is what vague is.

Anything vague does not activate the reticular activating system of the brain which allows the brain to focus on one activity and make progress. Only specifics have that power to activate parts of the brain which now focus on getting you to act and get results.

Anything the human spirit needs must be actionable. Without actionable insights, a human being cannot do anything. If he does not do anything, he does not get results, if there are no results, he will never feel satisfied with himself.

So unless there is a plan a human is destined for perpetual misery. That is a place where nobody wants to be.

Retaining Control of My Habits

For a long time, I was allowing myself to use the free services of different companies. I was of the view that “Hey, it’s free, what is the worst that could happen?”. I couldn’t have been stupider.

Technology companies are the only ones apart from drug peddlars that refer to their customers as ‘users’. As innocent as this may sound, all tech companies and all companies in general are moving towards offering something to the ‘user’ for free. Why would they do this?

How do they make money if they offer goods and services for free?

What is their intent?

That is the right question. What could their intent possibly be behind offering a $50 worth of coupon for a service? The intent is clear as night and day if you know where to look and keep your eyes open. They want to ‘hook’ you to a product/service. Once you’re hooked, they anticipate that it would be too hard for anyone to break the chains of habit and they would reap the benefits in perpetuity.

I do not blame so much the traditional companies that actually provide some kind of physical goods/services as much as I like to blame the tech that offers little marginal value to all of us. No names need to be taken, they are all the same. They want eyeballs and they attempt to get them using every trick in the book. If they aren’t enough tricks in the book, they go ahead and write a new book. The evil underbelly of these companies is scary to look at.

I take a simple approach towards all these products, I use them sparingly and use them according to my choices. I use them via a computer so that I can control them vs the other way around if I use them on a mobile device.

I log out of the service after I’m done using it, this practice has long been forgotten by people but it is a superb way to get your focus back where it belongs.

I turn my phone into black and white to avoid the charge associated with magical eye popping colours and effects that are played by these attention hungry apps to keep people lured into them for hours together.

I can see people waste away their lives in these virtual worlds. I am sad for them, but I do not wish to patronise anyone. They will be taught a lesson by life when the time comes and it will hit some people too hard because they never spent all that time building up a valuable skillset.

Retaining Control in Business

When my business partner in the past was hesitant to use technology that locked us into a lengthy contract or created situations of vendor lock-in I thought he was being paranoid. After all, these companies were the biggest and best in the world at what they did and they were offering us all these services at a rockbottom cost, why would anyone suspect them? He was right, I was wrong. It took me five years to figure this out.

Businesses are run by people, they are not run by machines and people can change their minds. People can also be changed. Great companies started out with noble intentions but today the same people who had those intents have usually cashed their chips and moved on. Their replacements who are usually from big MBA schools have one goal and one goal only, maximise profitability at all cost. With this single minded focus, they push the boundaries and alienate their customer base but since the customer is locked in, he has little in terms of choice. The ones who do usually escape.

I’ve seen it time and again with companies. They have an IPO and now they need to generate cash. They explore new avenues to bring in revenue and they usually find a way to do exactly that. I’m not saying it is not right, as a business they are required to make profits. The more the better. But as a consumer, I want to keep my options open as much as possible, retain the control in my hands rather in the hands of a big name corporation which has sinister clauses inside of their terms and conditions that I never bothered reading.

If they can squeeze me out, they will squeeze me out. All we can do is to stay prepared for this kind of behaviour.