cc @fazlerocks & the Hashnode crew, and all other Indian developers! <3
(I live in Toronto and have worked in a few offices around here, but I've never had the chance to work in other countries. I would love to be a fly on the wall of the Hashnode offices and see what happens every day to put a site like this together, but I guess I'll have to find out by asking 😁)
Great Question !
1.Well , I work for TCS and a normal days starts at around 10:00 AM, mostly with normal project related / non-project related discussions with the team until we join the Agile Stand-Up call (team is distributed across 4+ locations) So we have the call on either VoIP or Video conference sometimes. Where everyone gives status of their work (How much their user stories are completed, challenges they are facing , what they are going to be working on today etc .. normal 2-3 mins per person).
Rest of the day i either write code for the requirement, prepare UTS, checkmarxs, sonar cube issues, other documentation regarding the requirement. Sometimes, if their is some production issue we need to check that also. As the requirement is fixed and we have fixed number of user-stories to work on .. Enough time is left with us (1-2 Hrs). So, i either spend it on Medium or watching some conference videos on Safari / youtube / lynda .
2.From education perceptive , i have done B.Tech in CS as most of the engineers in India do :P . I have a lot of interest in programming so everything is self taught apart from the little networking , ds algo's i have learned in college.
Current Tech Stack : Java, Spring, Spring Data, Postgre, Angular JS.
I love to work on these (Part time) : React, Node, PHP, Angular, MongoDB
3.I currently live in a tier 3 city and their are little to no tech conferences. So, never got chances to attend them. However, i love conferences and watch them regularly (JsConf, hasGeek, FrontEndTrends , Google developers Conf, Oreilly conferences). I'm planning to move to Silicon valley of India :D.
4.My advice to people moving into tech. Learn as much as you can their is no end. Self learning is the best and don't rely on someone to teach you or force you to learn something new. Watch conferences they really helps to enlarge your perspective thinking and keep you on track with the changing technology world. Try to work on side projects (Personal / Freelance dosen't matter) they will help you to speedup development of your skills.
I usually drag myself out of bed around 10:00 and treat myself to a cup of black coffee on my way in to office. Although I have never really been a morning person, over the last few years, I have tried (and increasingly succeeded) to strive for a consistent schedule, and have largely recovered from a messy chaotic lifestyle rampant with frequent late night caffeine-powered coding relays.
I am fortunate to work in a reputed investment management firm with some cool perks (great office location, free transportation, amazing on-premise breakfast/lunch etc.) and in parallel I get to work on relatively modern web technologies as a part of an infrastructure group that supports common application concerns of various other domain specific teams.
Alongside (a lot of) actual programming, my role requires a lot of collaboration with a team spread across continents and auxiliary support work, so my current work is not exactly the kind of hacker-in-a-dark-room picture that you might see in the movies.
I have been juggling responsibilities between startups and corporate roles over the last few years in different domains including a brief stint with the PL research team at IBM, a relatively longer gig with a marketing agency in bangalore (my first professional web-dev role) and a really amazing stint building backend infrastructure for a range of mathematics focussed apps for primary school kids.
I have pursued programming as a hobby for a long time - starting out with VB apps and eventually ending up very deeply fascinated with the web as a platform. I also happen to have an engineering degree from one of the most reputed colleges of the country, which has most certainly helped in the progression.
I also tend to find a lot of (so-called un-sexy) integration work very interesting, so I have found myself increasingly gravitating towards lower level infrastructure focussed roles.
What's the tech scene like where you live, and do you participate in tech-related events?
Tech scene in hyderabad is pretty good, though maybe not as vibrant as Bangalore. I don't actively participate in a lot of tech events - preferring to stay involved online as much as possible. I don't find them as engaging or useful as mainstream media would lead you to believe. YMMV.
Most of my free time is spent on reading fiction (almost all variants), or discussing it with fellow enthusiasts and occasional sketching.
Do you have advice for people following your footsteps in their career?
Yes, don't follow in anyone's footsteps :)
The entropy of the universe is perpetually exploding, and the industry itself changes with every day that passes by. Any recommendations you might get from a seasoned "expert" are already obsolete.
Hi Tommy Hodgins Here are my comments..
I fully agree with what Andre Staltz says:

Also, check out this AMA. Lots of interesting opinions.
Until a few weeks ago, my workdays used to look exactly like the ones Sid has mentioned in his answer (as I used to work at Hashnode :). These days I head an engineering team modernising legacy e-Governance applications — so my current workdays align with the ones Ritwik mentions — get in at around 10:30-11:00 AM in the morning, and I try to wrap it up by 10:30 PM.
I have always been in love with computers. My dad enrolled me in a C++ course when I was in 7th grade; this was around 2002, if I recollect it right!
Fortunately, I've graduated from a college — probably the only college in India with no required attendance whatsoever — which put a high emphasis on student freedom, and their all round development.
This meant that the curriculum for the first two years was almost the same irrespective of your chosen major — Programming & Algorithm Design Fundamentals, Basic Electrical Engineering, Intros to the aspects in Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering; through various courses!
Also the fact that you were free to choose any elective (from any major) you want meant a lot of Computer Science, and some Math electives for me. My favourite electives to date — Graph Theory; Multimedia Computing; Internetworking Technologies.
Oh, and I graduated with a dual honours degree — Bachelors in Pharmacy; and a Master of Science in Biological Sciences! :)
I have always thought I would end up as a Computer Networks engineer! Even back in college I used to work with a professor setting up IPv6 (when it was all new) test-beds, and studying a whole bunch of protocol RFCs.
This landed me an internship as a Network Security Intern, where all we did was setup CISCO NAC servers. It was complex in the sense of figuring out and setting up the configuration; but it was not cognitively complex, and was not mentally stimulating, as such. But I thought it was cool, nevertheless!
Something rubbed me the wrong way, and I figured Computer Networks aren't probably for me, this is when I decided to get back to programming; albeit just as a hobby
Fast forward a few years with hobby programming, attending related events, and being a speaker in a couple of them; I ended up in a Computational Biology lab. Here my main job was to create software to ease the life of the fellow biologists in the lab.
But with due permission; I have also chosen to impart the PhD scholars (they are super smart, so it was a right choice) with what little I know about programming. This by far was the most interesting work experience I had.
Thanks to my previous stints and hobby programming; by this time, I had dabbled with a fair number of programming languages and I was very proficient in these — Python, and JavaScript! And I wanted to jump into Web Development, and so I did!
Through a mutual acquaintance; I have come to know of a talented CTO (who is now a Masters student at MIT Media Lab), and a small Software firm that he used to head. I wanted to be his padowan, and he accepted my request! I give all the credit for my Frontend Engineering proficiency to this position!
But when I heard that Sanjay (the CTO chap) was leaving (for MIT), I knew I had to leave too!
When I first visited hashnode.com I was blown away! It was a super well designed, awesome, welcoming community! I saw that it is incorporated in Delaware.
Only later did I come to know that the team is from Bangalore; and my gut feeling was that whoever is making this has got to be insanely smart (SPOILER: they are!); and I needed to take a shot at joining this team. I did, and I did! I have learnt a lot at Hashnode!
Huge props to Sandeep, and Somasundaram; they are excellent engineers! While I learnt a lot about Mongo, and Database design from Sandeep; I have learnt a lot of awesome tooling from Somu for increased developer productivity, and aids to write clean code! I've found that the rest of the team is super amazing in what they can do too!
I'm still a full stack engineer, but at a different company... the journey is still on!
As Sid has pointed out, the tech scene here is pretty rich with everything (meetups, hackathons, conferences) for everything (all languages, technologies, etc...)
I frequent the React Bangalore Meetup, and have given a couple of talks here!
You might have heard of JSChannel which happened recently. JSFoo (along with ReactFoo, where I might be speaking) is coming right up! So yea, it is awesome here! :D
You're the average of the five people most close to you!
I work at a small startup called www.venuemonk.com where I was solo coder (CTO) till a few months back. It was due to a variety of reasons that I ended up learning coding in node js and learned a plethora of coding concepts and techniques.
What is a normal workday like for you?
I day start at 7:00 am and schedule all current orders of my startup. It's taken almost 2 hours for all stuff. And then I go to my office till 10:30 am. And take stand-up meeting day plan (discussed before leave the office) with coffee/tea. And around 2 pm to 3 pm I usually take lunch/phonecalls and also get order status from my vendors. Almost 6 pm I leave from office. Again come into my apartment and make sure all orders delivers to my clients. Then 8 pm to 12:00 am and many more Me and my co-founder do lots of code for new releases. Apart from that we had discussed the progress/new feature/marketing and lot's more. Some time on Friday we organise a little party (beer/food). On weekends we meet lots of people and get feedback of our service.
What past experience (school, work, training) helped you get into to the job role you're in today?
1.1 School
I was a bad boy in my school. And my handwriting was too bad. My academic is below average. But I was a top student in mathematic. I had done graduation in management. Then move in Banglore to get a job. I was there a sales guy, but after some time I realize that computer science changes the way of living. Then I back to New Delhi and studied computer science it was very tough for me. But I never give up.
1.2 Work
I had developed (HTML and CSS) a pizza ordering application during my studies time. but for some reason i quit from it and try to get job. I remember that i give around 20 to 25 interview but not getting job for software developer. One day miracle happen I pick a phone call and she said that you are selected for software developer (web) job.
1.3 Training
In starting of my career i do some PHP programming around 3 month and then move in NodeJS. They give me one year training and i learn basic and build some projects. That was very good time.
What's the tech scene like where you live, and do you participate in tech-related events?
I am in New Delhi. Here are lots of big company's offices. I little bit participate in tech-related events. But full focus on building my startup.
Do you have advice for people following your footsteps in their career?
1- Never, never, never give up, failure and success part of life.
2- Learn as much as you can.
3- Spend time with family.
4- Try to take 2 hr from week only for yourself only yourself. And relax.
Tommy Hodgins thanks for asking.