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rgovind

576 karma · joined August 12, 2011

Software Engineer & entrepreneur. Lives in bay area Backend engineer in a Ecommerce firm. (JAVA/RestFul APIS/Cassandra/Hadoop Big Data ecosystem)

Also experienced in compiler frontends, semiconductor industry, C/C++/Java/Python.

Also have experience in iOS programming, app development, LAMP stack etc.

iamanonymouscoward+hn@gmail.com

submissionscomments
rgovind··on Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
The post on why medium.com could have been profitable as a lifestyle business but since it took VC money, it should resort to spamming users with recommendations etc
rgovind··on Questions to ask at the end of a technical interview
If it is ok for managers to ask "Describe a time when you failed", it is fair game for interviewee to ask tough questions.
rgovind··on Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2017
And you can never be sure what questions will be asked from you during an interview, especially, since the only thing job description says is "Rockstar frontend Engineer"
rgovind··on Ask HN: Is there room for another search engine?
Since Greg was CXO at blekko, I would say for whoever is making search engine, its important!
rgovind··on Ask HN: Is there room for another search engine?
Yes. In today's search engines, I cannot give you a blacklist and say filter out these results. If I am looking for tutorials, I cannot say no video results. If I am looking for market research, I cannot filter out news websites from the links. For personalization, I cannot give google any suggestions on what I absolutely do not want to be included etc.
rgovind··on Ask HN: Best open-source projects for first time contributer?
can you please add an email at which we can contact you? I don't see one in the profile.
rgovind··on Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups
i.e. you can be both investor and employee in the company. But you have to run payroll which means company must be generating money or be VC funded
rgovind··on Is It Better to Be Poor in Bangladesh or the Mississippi Delta?
Government runs hospitals in every town but only poor people use them(though they put up with bribes here). Rich and middle class typically use private health care as its generally better. Private health care in cities is excellent even by western standards. In towns, its decent. Poor also turn to private hospitals when time is important or when government doctors fail. One thing government does well is giving vaccines to new born and infants.

Also, many times, you just walk up to a pharmacy and ask the pharmacist for a medicine instead of talking to the doctor. Saves money and time

rgovind··on Ask HN: How did employees do after the Jet.com acquisition?
If you go cheaper than that and wait, somebody else might snag them up!
rgovind··on Launch HN: Penny (YC W17) – a personal finance coach
For some of us in Bay area, we pay $5000 in rent, utilities, day care etc. I, by and large can't optimize on these things. I can only optimize on groceries, restaurant eating, vacation/weekend outings and few things like that. So, I hope these personal finance apps remove rent, utilities, day care etc from their analysis.

Also, one feature I would pay for is this. When I am entering a Walmart or Target or Whole Foods, it should warn me that I spent 'x' amount on groceries last week and that I should keep my spending below $y to stay within budget. Somehow, I see this feature missing in all apps I see so far.

rgovind··on Justin Kan: I'm starting a new startup incubator, Zero-F
W.r.t askwhale.com, seems like it is a mashup of Quora/Reddit and video based Q&A. Given that there is greater friction in video compared to text based Q&A sites, who would be interested in contributing this?
rgovind··on Startup School – YC’s Online Class
I find it quiet surprising that none of these startup classes teach how to do market research and market sizing. Yet when a new batch of startups demo every six weeks, the first thing they talk of is, size of opportunity. Market opportunity is one of the things to consider before deciding on a problem to work on. Please consider adding this info to your classes.

Also, None of them teach how Sam or any YC partner or any VC would approach or start thinking whether a startup is worth investing in or not. That would be hugely beneficial to some of us as it will help us in channeling our thoughts.

rgovind··on Ask HN: How microservices works?
Lets say you have an ecommerce firm. When a user is browsing an item(diapers?), at a mimimum he/she expects to see images, description, reviews, cost, tax, delivery dates, promotions, related items. In addition to what you see on frontend, in the backend, there may be jobs run for analytics, revenue reconciliation, warehouse management optimization, carrier management, fraud checks, item data setup and a host of other activities. Each of these tasks has its own complex business logic and typically has its own team. Each team runs a service, possibly in the form of a REST API call. You can call them microservices.
rgovind··on Ask HN: Did you pay Marc Andreessen for advice and was it worth it?
I believe Quora and Facebook tried it in various forms though there you could reach out just about anybody. I assume 21.co will do same thing going forward.
rgovind··on Dear Technical Recruiter
or a way for you to get into feedback from management. If you directly apply, you will never know why management did not pick up your resume.
rgovind··on Ask HN: Is it possible to make $200K/year base salary?
Principal engineer in Linkedin, Google, FB etc?
rgovind··on Can high ranking employees at Google view my personal information?
An easy way is to walk up to a QA or engineer, tell him "We are reviewing some sessions by customer and we keep getting this error". can you please help me replay customer sessions? This is an executive escalation?
rgovind··on Ask HN: What is the “stack” for streaming/transcoding video?
Can I use it for audio streaming as well?
rgovind··on Carmakers Are Learning Japan’s Tech Talent Doesn’t Come Cheap
Is real shortage possible? If what I am willing to pay is limitless, won't people catch up, learn the skills and shortage willl be gone?
rgovind··on Ask HN: Would any one pay for a python to objc transpiler, with iOS integration?
There is bigger question here. How many people are still make money from selling compiler/language tools? Like, write a static analyzer, or php optimizer or sell a Swift library for linux application or a language-X to language-Y transpiler. So, far, I have found this industry to be opaque, unlike web industry! And if they make money, how much?

Btw, there was YC company which sold PHP server optimizations. Anyone knows the name? (I think they are closed now but I am not sure)

rgovind··on Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
Its at least a structured analysis. Thanks for teaching something today.
rgovind··on Ask HN: How would you spend $100 a month for a year on professional development?
I would hire a career coach. One idea I have been kicking around is bi-weekly scrums for those who want to go up the ladder. You will go to the scrum, explain what you have done in last two weeks and explain what you will do in next two weeks. The scrum master/coach plus others will give you suggestions based on what your career goals are.
rgovind··on Books or video tutorial: the best way to learn coding?
Text hands down. We can easily scan and skip parts that we do not need. Videos are such a drain on time and are boring. Its hard to go back and forth.
rgovind··on Ask HN: How much you pay for servers?
Per month? Per year?
rgovind··on Ask HN: Restarting the YC Podcast – who would be most interesting to listen to?
Interviews with VCs and Entrepreneurs are dime a dozen nowadays. What I see missing is resources which help technical people think about business aspects. How does one understand/analyze competition, market size, customers etc.

I really liked AMA from YC partners here on hacker news. They answered a few questions about how one should things about early stage starting up. I would like to see more of such things.

rgovind··on Siemens to buy Mentor Graphics in $4.5B deal
I have a feeling Mentor had a finger in my pies. EDA, Embedded, automotive, compilers, PCB and what not. I feel Synopsys and Cadence are more focused.
rgovind··on Siemens to buy Mentor Graphics in $4.5B deal
Why would this happen given that semiconductor industry itself is shrinking? I used to work in EDA until recently, but since money in semiconductor is dwindling, people like me have no interest in pursuing ideas in EDA
rgovind··on Server APIs Project
Has anyone here made a living/killing selling compiler modification services? I want to contribute to Rust/Swift/Some other language with a view of selling consulting services. Can anyone here comment about their success in this regard?
rgovind··on The Thrill of Losing Money by Investing in a Manhattan Restaurant
What are some good resources to understand costs of setting up a restaurant in bay area? I know the general concepts involved, but its hard to get specific info like labour rates, rents etc
rgovind··on Ask HN: What happened to Facebook graph search?
Anyone knows how to get a dump of facebook's peoples directory? I would like to do name analysis for India and get for unique baby names.
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