main account of @amuldotexe & @thatinrust
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Joined January 2023
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- Followers1.5K
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amul.code retweeted
@nikitabier this is such a good feature!
amul.code retweeted
I am working with @sheetalssr to convert the best of my 60k tweets into a book - these are the chapters list - sample - would love to know thoughts of folks who have read me for a while
The 34-Chapter Table of Contents
Prologue: The Apology
Part 1: The Country You're Actually Competing In
1. 25 Million
2. Geography Is Destiny (But Not Forever)
3. The Availability Bias Trap
Part 2: The Low Risk Career Map
4. The One-Variable Career Formula
5. Dev First
6. The PM Trap
7. Brand Names Are Future Money
8. Always Interviewing
Part 3: The Money Lessons You Learn in 30s
9. Salary Growth Beats Investment Returns (Until It Doesn't)
10. The FIRE Miscalculation
11. The Optionality Premium
Part 4: Health Is the Compound Function
12. The Six Months I'd Trade Everything For
13. NSDR and the Art of Slowing Time
14. Sleep, Not Hustle
Part 5: How Advice Actually Works
15. The Principal-Agent Problem in Your DMs
16. Likeable Advice Is Not Effective Advice
17. The Hypothesis Habit
18. Why I Won't Advise You If You Have Under Three Years of Experience
Part 6: Building Conviction Slowly
19. Marination
20. The 6-Year Joke
21. Build It, Don't Borrow It
Part 7: The Long Game (Operational)
22. 50 Mocks Before Your First Interview
23. Open Source as Proof of Work
24. The Trust Pipeline
25. Micro-Circles Over Mass Audiences
Part 8: Low Drama as a Philosophy
26. The Drama Tax
27. Effortless Over Hyper-Intentional
28. Low Intensity Language as Competitive Advantage
Part 9: Slowing Down Time
29. The Pre-7am Tea
30. The Work Station
31. "All We Can Do Is Slow Down Time"
Part 10 This Book Is Not For You It Is For Them
32. Competing Gracefully In 25MM Cohort
33. Don't Make Them Your Project
34. The Passport Question
amul.code retweeted
✨ New launch: more than 2000 product leaders, CxOs, founders have taken my Product Sense + Strategy course. After taking it, many have asked for a self-paced format for their teams
Request priority access for your team via this Google form (takes 2 min):
forms.gle/9v16SCrtRE64sTyB6
amul.code retweeted
Today first time I got a monthly payment for a developer contract, one of 480 instances, iykwim
tl;dr of my 45 days of Rust OSS sabbatical
- first b'day since 2011 when I am not gainfully employed
- money in bank feels good, but fresh salary feels much better
- how even if you have finances sorted, being without a logo feels odd to the 90s kid
- product to systems programming does not have precedence, so hiring is slower
- LLMs have increased the speed of acquiring systems programming knowledge
- Reading code is necessary for deeper quality contributions to large repositories
- larger + deeper codebase contributions are more important than individual libraries with viral potential, the individual personal projects are infact a distraction
- FDE exploration and interviews were a distraction, lost a few weeks on that direction, converged on the right narrative "senior product manager turned systems programmer"
- do fewer PR merges but make sure you understand your code, OSS maintainers are now
It's perhaps my first birthday in the last 16 years when I am not in full-time employment. Those of you who have always seen my posts on celebrating the 30th of the month salary credit thing would relate to this by default. Our careers are more non-linear than we like to admit, or at least for mediocre people they are not always an upward graph, and that is not adequately captured in the representation we see on the internet, I think. That is where I think I always had a gratitude for every month that you were remunerated so well for pressing keys, as I call it. All these years of planning everything very well financially, but the part that you are not prepared for is this feeling of not-being-of-value to the world. You have adequate finances, but you still feel like, because you are not paid a remuneration for this month, you are not of value to the world. And I do agree that now a sabbatical is generally not looked down upon as much and is often seen as a time to prepare yourself for a new gig, recharge yourself. Coming from the 90s, it surely feels very odd because you tend to define yourself by having a logo that you are working for.
I think in my particular case, while I have a reasonable amount of conviction, the precedence of a 10 years product manager pivoting to a pure systems programming role is not yet established. I would be surprised if there is somebody who has done this before without, say, relevant training. But I believe that systems programming is going to be a very fast-growing domain. Something which was not possible, say, even two or three years ago, because the LLMs are going to make code generation for systems programming significantly faster, even though the amount of context needed to write the code will still be non-trivial.
The part that excites me the most is the compression of time needed to acquire systems programming knowledge, because previously it would be difficult to marry it and understand concepts from books. A lot of that stuff is really dry, but with LLMs you can ask it to explain the same thing, the same code, again and again and again. That is why some of us like me are able to inch by inch build up our knowledge in systems programming.
More recently, though, my bigger challenge has been distraction. Almost every day I feel that there is some repo that I could have created which would have gone viral. I also see that those particular repositories are viral for a few days, get a lot of stars, but then after that nobody is working on them because the next cool thing has come in and people are using that. The shelf life of software products is decreasing, and only a few software products are actually surviving longer windows. That is where I also think anything on the front of systems programming will probably last longer if it is able to find a true 10x improvement in the existing system.
Today marks the 45th day of my Rust OSS Sabbatical
I think one of the major mistakes I made was going after the forward deployed engineer role or the FDE role. I should have had the conviction to directly go off to the systems programming roles
I think the surface area for Forward Deployed Engineer is very high, and also the depth is lower - I think the key reason I pursued FDE was because it seemed to align with my previous experience of product management. I think that's a classic mistake. You carry the baggage of whatever you have done previously, and it's only later that I realized that this is not the direction I should be taking, but yes, I lost a few weeks on that distraction
One of the challenges I am working on is learning to read a lot of code quickly enough so that I can make sense of it and review it, because code generation is reasonably solved in terms of ingesting the right context for what you want to write, but the verification is very subtle. It needs a lot of domain context, a lot of codebase context, and a lot of tribal knowledge of whatever you are contributing to. That is something which you cannot acquire in just a day.
So my current focus is on mastering code verification - and this means that for me higher ROI is in sticking to a particular language and going deep in that, hence Rust is my bet on that game that at least Rust codebases I will be able to build context on very quickly
The key uncertainty is in terms of precedence - everybody I speak to has probably never heard of somebody making such a pivot, and that obviously is not very encouraging. Doing it as the first person can be a nice dramatic narrative, but it also means that maybe the odds are stacked against you, or maybe the averages are not in your favor. But then again, I have to remind myself that my context is different. I've been planning for this work for quite some time. I have been preparing my knowledge base and my mindset of learning in this direction for quite some time, so maybe it is just a matter of a few hundred hours of effort before my product-market fit is discovered
You know, I could be painting this as a story that, yes, I must do it because it has not been done before, but that is an idiotic line. The reason I want to do it is because I genuinely think a system programming role suits me better and will give me a good quality of life, because I will enjoy it far more and work will feel less like work. Not to mention it will also ensure that, for somebody like me aging and going into the 40s, it will create a very consistent form of employment. The skills become more tangible than, say, a general product management role, which is very intangible, and the demand-supply gap is very different or unpredictable
Systems programming, though a niche, is still very, very measurable. In fact, open source software is a boon in that sense because it literally allows you to ship code that is viewable, that is vouchable, that is scrutinizable in a very tangible way.
I've been reaching out to employers, saying, "Hey, if you want an open source library that I can build for you, tell me a problem statement and let me see if I can build something out in Rust for you which might be of help to you."
The key idea is that an employer might benefit from the open source tool that I create, and I will obviously be able to claim that this is a tool or a library which is already a good product-market fit and is validated by somebody
But here is the thing about your personal projects: there is a very low probability of them going viral. Even if they go viral, the virality in today's time is very, very ephemeral. Hence, the main job for reputation building is now shifting over to large open source code bases which are already proven in terms of product-market fit, are probably under the Apache or a similar umbrella, or have been funded already. Anything else is probably a distraction right now. Even if you think your own personal project is going to go super viral and change the world, maybe in the interest of time the key idea is to contribute to a larger code base
The contributing to a larger codebase thing is also very relevant in terms of how an employer might see you. If you can grow a large codebase and make sense of it and start contributing effectively very quickly, that is also a proof that you will do the same at work, because that is what happens. You rarely build new stuff. You come to a large existing codebase, grow all the context deeply, and then, in sync with that, you kind of find those areas to do small fixes and improvements. You slowly build a threshold amount of knowledge that helps you solve bigger problems inside that codebase. Hence, reading the codebase, understanding the codebase, and grokking the codebase is almost everything.
--
All in all, it has been a meandering journey, but every few days I find more clarity in what to focus on next
for the next 14 days - it is "grokking the large codebase"
will you posted on how that goes ...
amul.code retweeted
When I interview for a company my objective is always to score the offer first and then judge the company - because my judgement might be an emotional upheaval but can lead to me "self-sabotaging" the interview process;
so even if I am a little annoyed with the process and the experience, I focus hard on making sure I put my best self in the conversation - we can always critique the experience later - but this is the only moment to convince people to pay top dollar for us;
observe don't judge
till you get the offer
amul.code retweeted
📈New milestone: crossed 5000+ students
in the past 3.5 years
over 3 different live courses I’ve taught.
I absolutely love teaching and I often get the question “but Shreyas, don’t you feel the itch to do something that has greater impact than teaching?”
It is a valid question (as in, I don’t blame whoever might be asking or wondering), but it comes from a place of not seeing what I see: thousands of highly talented leaders who, every day, are applying what they’ve learned to their products, their strategies, their proposals, their leadership approach, and their careers.
I don’t do this work primarily for the impact (something I learned only in my 40s: when I do it for love and from a place of mastery in what I do, the impact takes care of itself). But every day, I get notes from students about the staggeringly compounding impact on their companies, teams, and careers. Which means I get to smile every day 🙌
To every student who’s been part of this journey thus far: thank you for your trust, affection, and for sharing your experience 🙏
amul.code retweeted
🆕I am starting to do more Executive Coaching now that some more space has opened up in my personal life. Now coaching 3 founders (this is different from my startup advising work) and I am now opening it up for senior product leaders.
Details are here: maven.com/shreyas-doshi
amul.code retweeted
This recent @bchesky podcast with @patrick_oshag belongs to the hall of fame of tech podcast episodes. Very likely the deepest founder conversation after the Steve Jobs lost interview in the 90s.
Currently it has 90k views; it deserves 100X more views.
youtube.com/watch?v=eURcW5_u…
amul.code retweeted
“The skill that matters now across all three roles—PM, designer, engineer—is business acumen: understanding the company’s equation and knowing what to build next.” ✅✅✅
My biggest takeaways from @rabois:
1. The team you build is the company you build. Founders get distracted by markets, customers, and technology. If you have the right people, those problems get easier. If you have the wrong people, none of those things save you.
2. Build your company on undiscovered talent. The only way to scale an organization against incumbents with infinite budgets is to find talent that large companies’ hiring machines will misprocess. In practice, this often means skewing younger—not because young people are inherently better but because they have fewer data points, which means typical evaluation systems can’t categorize them accurately. This is where the alpha often is.
3. Hire more “barrels,” not “ammunition.” A “barrel” is someone who can take an idea from zero to outcome without hand-holding. Most companies have only a handful of these people. Hiring more people without expanding the number of barrels doesn’t increase output; it increases coordination tax and creates drag. The ratio of barrels to ammunition is what determines the number of important things a company can pursue simultaneously.
4. CMOs are becoming the #1 consumer of AI tokens. At a few of Keith’s top portfolio companies, the heaviest user of AI is the chief marketing officer. These CMOs are running analytics, shipping campaigns, and generating insights that previously required entire teams of deputies.
5. The three signs a company will win: operating tempo, internal talent development, and “the relentless application of force” from the top. Keith identifies a consistent pattern across his best portfolio companies. First, operating tempo: Ramp shipped physical cards in three months when the industry standard was 9 to 12. Second, talent development through internal promotion rather than senior external hires; the CMO at one of his top companies was the previous chief of staff. Third, the CEO’s willingness to push harder as things improve, not less. Mike Moritz told a friend of Keith’s that the most common trait of the best CEOs is “the relentless application of force.” Complacency is the natural by-product of success, and the CEO’s job is to offset it.
6. For consumer products, talking to customers is not just unhelpful; it’s actively harmful. Keith refuses to let companies he advises conduct consumer research. His argument: Consumer decisions are subconscious. Ask any Porsche owner why they bought the car, and 99% will cite every reason except the real one. Once misleading customer feedback enters the organization, it locks into people’s brains and distorts every subsequent decision.
7. Keith believes the PM role may not survive the AI era. Taking customer inputs, building a sequential year-long roadmap, and coordinating between teams are structurally incoherent when AI capabilities change weekly. The skill that matters now across all three roles—PM, designer, engineer—is business acumen: understanding the company’s equation and knowing what to build next.
8. Great hiring comes from great referencing. Run at least 20 references, and keep going until you hit negative feedback. Ask specific, forward-looking questions (e.g. “Would you start a company with them?”). If every reference is positive, you haven’t gone deep enough.
9. Use a 30-day feedback loop to sharpen your hiring instinct. Thirty days after every hire, ask: would I hire this person again? This is as predictive as waiting years, and dramatically faster for improving your judgment. Make this a habit, and your hiring quality will compound.
10. Criticize in public, not private—it optimizes for the system. Keith endorses a management practice that most people find confrontational: delivering negative feedback in front of the team, not behind closed doors. Private criticism optimizes for the individual, but the rest of the company doesn’t know the issue is being addressed, which breeds anxiety and suspicion. Public criticism lets colleagues see that leadership is aware, creates opportunities for others to volunteer help, and turns feedback into a team-building exercise.
Full conversation: youtube.com/watch?v=xCd9ykre…
amul.code retweeted
Honestly, I feel like a beginner again.
Learning what good scientific research is about and how to build a lab that creates impact.
Just like my first time building a startup in my 20s, I'm making mistakes, reflecting, iterating - all of it while shipping. It's so refreshing and fun.
The key difference from my startup days v/s now is that I feel (for good or bad) there are more eyes on me, so I have to keep reminding myself that it's okay to fail publicly occasionally as long as each iteration is better than the previous one.
Reputation, social image, legacy - all these are mental prisons and devices of fear.
What matters ultimately is if you're having fun playing at the edge of your capabilities, which prevents things from either becoming boring or impossible. And that's what I keep recalibrating to.
amul.code retweeted
It's been 4 weeks since I started my Rust OSS sabbatical: got my first PR merged in a large Apache project; spent time learning how to grok large Rust codebases & now I have started looking for developer gigs in the dev ecosystem knowing that getting hired might come with a couple of months lag of its own; if you know someone hiring for Rust or dev tools, please tag / RT for good karma
emphasis: looking for dev roles only, happy to do assignments to prove my craft, open to short term contracts
amul.code retweeted
If ever my writing has been of help to you, I'd be grateful if you could forward this note to someone who might be able to use my skills:
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I am Amul, a career PM who is trying to pivot to a pure dev role by making OSS contributions in Rust. I recently merged my first PR in Apache Iggy ( github.com/apache/iggy/pull/… )
Please find attached my CV for your reference
There's a tool I built that might interest you: github.com/that-in-rust/pars…
Parseltongue is my attempt at building a LSP for LLMs ( not humans )
It parses all of the code to build a Interface Signature Graph of the codebase, thus compressing the code to a higher abstraction similar to LLD. The reason this is different from ASTs is that only public interfaces are considered. And you can query this dependency graph using local http API queries like forward calls, reverse calls, blast radius etc. , thus achieving faster search / context exploration with fewer tokens because you now have a map of the codebase with forward calls, reverse calls etc. helping the LLMs reason through the LLD much better
If this piques your interest, please feel free to DM me
Regards,
Amul
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It's been 4 weeks since I started my Rust OSS sabbatical: got my first PR merged in a large Apache project; spent time learning how to grok large Rust codebases & now I have started looking for developer gigs in the dev ecosystem knowing that getting hired might come with a couple of months lag of its own; if you know someone hiring for Rust or dev tools, please tag / RT for good karma
emphasis: looking for dev roles only, happy to do assignments to prove my craft, open to short term contracts
amul.code retweeted
1. Do more in parallel
Spin up 3–5 git worktrees at once, each running its own Claude session in parallel. It's the single biggest productivity unlock, and the top tip from the team. Personally, I use multiple git checkouts, but most of the Claude Code team prefers worktrees -- it's the reason @amorriscode built native support for them into the Claude Desktop app!
Some people also name their worktrees and set up shell aliases (za, zb, zc) so they can hop between them in one keystroke. Others have a dedicated "analysis" worktree that's only for reading logs and running BigQuery
See code.claude.com/docs/en/comm…
amul.code retweeted
Lemme White pill you guys for a change:
In 1990, a visibly resigned VP Singh spoke from the ramparts of the red fort on the occasion of Independence Day, the entire speech was filled with hints of impending doom and gloom of the young republic
"Our hearts go to the people of Assam, Punjab, and Kashmir"
PM Singh was resigned to the fact that some kind of compromise has to be made to bring peace to these lands and maintain their status as an inalienable part of the Indian Republic
20 years later another PM spoke from the ramparts lace but this time it was filled with hope, White Pills and announcement of schemes which will catapult India to the centre of the world stage
What changed in these 2 decades?
It was the result of the blood, sweat and tears of our fathers and grandfathers, who willingly went into the mouth of death to ensure the Republic survives if they do not
Lakhs of Army men, Police and CAPF personnel gave their blood so that their children and then their children after can dream
We are here Frens, we are here to stay, whatever problems we have, we can solve
If not for us, then for our children, just like our father's did before us
This is our land we ain't leaving it 🤝
Wish you all a very Happy Independence Day 🇮🇳
