A sit down with Neshay Ahmed

CTO and world traveler

This interview is very near and dear to me. The woman I am about to introduce to you has been a close and important part of the most formative decade of my life.

Meet Neshay Ahmed, Co-founder & CTO of Wavy, a tech start up based in Toronto.

Neshay and I have known each other since we were 10 years old. We went to school together in Lahore, Pakistan. We were never close but had friends in common. Then sometime in high school, Neshay moved to Canada.

Fast forward many years later I had moved to San Francisco, via London and was working at a tech startup. I happened across a picture on good ol’ Facebook of Neshay in San Francisco. On a whim, I reached out. And we met a couple of days later. Neshay took BART for the first time and almost got lost, but that's a story for another time.

The universe had conspired and brought us together and that meeting set into motion the closest friendship and sisterhood between us. We lived together, saw each other through career progressions, Zynga IPO, heartbreaks, joy and the most fun ride.

What made you decide to pursue a career in engineering?

I was always inclined towards math and computers. I remember learning about algorithms in the 10th grade. We had to write pseudocode that would act as an ATM machine. The problem completely threw me off, and I went to my dad for help. We sat at our dining table working through the problem. Once we got to the solution everything made so much sense! I knew I was onto something.

Fast forward a couple of years, when I was deciding what to do for my undergrad, initially, I wanted to work for a company like Pixar, doing animations. That skill set needed a college diploma, and my parents strongly advised me to get a degree and then pursue whatever career. My undergrad years were a rollercoaster, but at the end of it — the deeper I got into understanding systems and programs, the more I resonated with it. Sometimes, I actually think like a computer!

Did you face prejudice based on your gender? Tell us about your experience and how you dealt with it.

When I look back at my experiences, there’s a mix of gender and cultural biases that come to mind. Often difficult to distinguish one from another. It took me a while to figure this out. The Pakistani collectivist in me is always looking to gather context in an interaction, with a focus on building stronger relationships. Coming into the working world, I saw a stark contrast. The environment catered to an individualistic approach where my peers gave great recommendations and ideas, along with highlighting their achievements after the fact. Throughout my career, my peers and seniors encouraged me to speak up, with the preset that my intuitions and technical strengths are correct.

It was a few years later that I was able to recognize the differences in culture. I took a year off in the middle of my career and traveled parts of Australasia, East Asia and Europe. Some countries and cultures felt more familiar than others. The constant change of environment forced me to strip away all environmental influences, giving me the ability to recognize who I was vs how my environment influenced me.

After moving back to Canada, I joined a startup with female co-founders, one of them was the CTO and my boss. It was her leadership that showed me a different perspective on how a highly functional development team is able to run. It’s been a combination of seeing female leadership and learning more about what matters to me that has centered me, and given me the confidence to step up into a leadership position.

What are the most effective ways for an early stage founder to create an inclusive environment?

The most effective way is to build it into your business model. Wavy facilitates virtual events for corporate teams and large groups. We partner with experience providers like chefs, mixologists and wellness experts. We made a decision early on to have a diverse portfolio of experts. We’re starting to work closely with our experience providers to build out our content offering moving forward.

This builds inclusive values as we teach ourselves to actively listen and remain flexible. Internally, we work on the same set of values.

How do you keep yourself informed about the latest trends in tech?

Slack changed the game for me. I found a number of Slack channels and communities that have conversations and research about current trends. They also organize. meetups. Attending these meetups helps keep me informed and build my network.

You love to travel and have a demanding career, how do you balance the two?

I see travelling as an investment in myself. Any investment that helps me progress personally, will help my career as well.

Here’s how I look at a short-term vacation. Sometimes you’re stuck on a problem, you take a rest, and come back to it later with a fresh mind and it feels easier to solve; That’s short-term travelling for me. I often come back re-energized and refreshed, with a boost of productivity.

My travels that have lasted more than a month have always been between jobs. I either ended up working on some side project, learning a new technology, or bringing an idea to life.

Most recently, I volunteered in Indonesia at an ocean conservation organization for a couple of months. My key interest was to learn more about the underwater world and understand how conservation is done on the ground. However, I had a lot of free time, so I started helping with their digital marketing and administrative tasks at the organization. I also started working on building out a localized system for them to help keep track of their research. This project gave me the opportunity to learn more about various technologies that I’d been curious about.

What’s the hardest coding interview you’ve ever had? What’s some advice you’d give newcomers on preparing for interviews?

It was one of the big tech companies right after college. It was a virtual interview done over a shared Google doc.

This type of interview is designed to understand your problem solving skills, rather than getting to the right answer. I typically white board when I’m solving problems. So attempting a solution through a shared document while communicating it through the phone didn’t work out super well for me.

The biggest thing I would say to newcomers is, find what makes you comfortable. In retrospect, I would’ve first attempted a pen and paper solution before writing anything on the document. Anytime I’ve been comfortable in a room, I’ve done well. Sometimes, it means you asking questions to establish the proper context of the problem being solved.

What are some tips you wish you’d known as a new grad starting your career in tech?

If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not learning fast enough.

Once in awhile, you’ll break something in production. It’s okay. Rather than paralyzing yourself and slowing the process to push, think thru what could go wrong and how you would recover from it. Bring your peers into the conversation. You don’t need to have all the answers. Just know who to talk to, or where to look to if a question is asked.

Who inspires you?

I draw different inspirations from different members of my family.

My mother is a doctor and has either been working or studying ever since I can remember. Her independence, perseverance and strength are a constant source of inspiration for me.

My father is an engineer, businessman and sportsman. I see him constantly working on his business, learning up and coming technologies to keep his work current and competitive, all the while focusing on his health. His passion for golf is not one that I’ve seen otherwise and he is the sole reason for my interest in the game.

My grandfather is an example of someone who has reinvented himself well into his 90’s. His professional life started from being a civil worker, to starting his own business, completing his PhD, teaching in universities, and most recently writing books about business, our family history and poetry. For me, he is a living example of someone that has continuously been able to reimagine his life based on his current opportunities, which helps me instil a sense of confidence in myself.

If you were given all the resources in the world, what would you do with them?

I am deeply passionate about two things: education and the underwater world.

If given unlimited resources, I would start by building out a network of infrastructure, things like the internet, to build out a network of schools in countries with emerging economies. This would start in Pakistan and eventually move to other countries. The higher education curriculum would include apprenticeships. Through our high school, students would start working part-time, to build skill sets that they would be using in the real world and gain street smarts. Graduating from school, they would have the option of joining a business as an intern or go onwards to higher education. I’m inspired by Germany’s system of education here. It’s extremely versatile, offering many options on choosing and building out a career path that works for your interests.

Ocean conservation is a second initiative that is near to me. I still remember the first time I went underwater and realized “Holy S***!! Nemo is real”. There’s been no looking back since, and I’ve chased the best dives to see everything that the underwater world has to offer. Unfortunately, the 2015/16 bleaching event was a part of this, and I have since visited reefs that have been affected by it. Not to take away from the importance of any climate change events, but a forest fire is a lot more obvious and has a direct impact on the livelihood of people’s homes. A drastic rise in the ocean temperatures isn’t immediately obvious to the naked eye, neither is a reduction in fish life.

We’ve been able to master image recognition in everyday life, with the likes of various captchas and what not sourcing user generated content and training models. However, it is difficult to do that for the underwater world as the knowledge isn’t as commonplace as identifying traffic lights, or cars in an image. My unlimited resources here would collect user generated content from scuba divers that are photography enthusiasts. Collecting their photos, mapping them to various locations to eventually monitor underwater life and health.