“Love For Innovation And A Passion For Engineering.”

A Week into Lockdown 3.0, working from home has slowly started to seep in as our New Normal. We asked Priyanshu Das from our Software Engineering team about what makes him love working from home everyday.

A thing or two about me and where I come from.

I completed my B.Tech in Amrita University, Kerala. Been with Zeta for almost 2 years. I like to think of myself as a nomad; the longest time I have spent in a single city is four years. I also was a competitive programmer in my college days, having taken part in ICPC over 3 years.

My passion for engineering.

Since my college days, I have had an inclination towards theoretical research. There are a few theoretical Mathematical / Computational research problems that I have been trying to tackle in my spare time, resulting in a research article and another in progress.

I also believe that good code should speak for, and validate its own correctness. An ideal software developer should be able to communicate his ideas with his code. This is a goal that I have yet to achieve, but am constantly aiming towards.

My area of expertise and the things I work on.

My area of expertise is algorithms and complexity analysis. I consider myself to be quite thorough with proofs, and tend to identify edge-cases / scenarios that might break models. I work as a back end developer in the Enterprise Payments BU of Zeta. I enjoy building PoCs, models and fleshing out functionalities and real-world concepts as well as complex theoretical models and algorithms into code.

Refresh break at Zeta and my insights on how this initiative benefited me.

As I mentioned before, I have a heavy inclination towards theoretical research. However, a full-time job often doesn’t give one the clarity of mind and time to focus and explore theoretical concepts, problems and approaches. I used the two-weeks Refresh to explore, flesh out and code an improvement to an algorithm that had been in my mind for more than a year, and implemented the solution in Rust, learning a bit of the language in the process.

This resulted in a significantly improved and parallelised algorithm, that warrants another research article, but which I have not yet had the chance to flesh out, hopefully I’d get the time to focus on it in the next Refresh! :)

Is working from home coming along well for me? Insights on things like — How I manage my time and hacks that I have derived, and processes that I’ve created etc.

I feel Zeta as a company trusts in its employees to manage their own time efficiently. The goal being, to get things done correctly, regardless of where, when or how you get it done.

I have always been a self-driven person. In college, I had the advantage of not having compulsory attendance. Which translated into me never going to college. However, I was into competitive programming and research. Also, having the attendance waiver came with a condition that I had to maintain a 9+ CGPA. So, I got pretty good at managing my own time.

Let’s talk about this useful tool that I have been using in like forever. It’s called…….. (scroll) :P

It stipulates time management with 25 mins spent focusing on a single task with a 5 minute break in between, and one long 15 minute break after a few work-sessions. I have a tendency to lose track of time when I’m working on something. I have noticed that taking short breaks in small time gaps improves efficiency and health. This helps me take breaks and go for walks, step away, leading to more productivity when I return.

One thing I really like about the initiative we took was the swift and decisive response to Covid-19 that Zeta had. We had built an atmosphere already of good work from home ethics, that enabled us to switch to work from home efficiently. I think in the current day and age, a software development company has to be in a position where work from home should not affect an employee’s productivity”.

How do I work my way through a challenge? what steps do I take?

First step in any challenge or problem, whether it be theoretical or practical, work-life or private-life, involves verifying your premises. If your premises are wrong, your solution cannot be right. This step often involves identifying who the stakeholders are, what the problem is, whether there is a common understanding of the problem, whether the goal, constraints, etc. are well understood. If not, then this is the first item that needs to be addressed.

Once you have identified the problem, you know the line items that need to be addressed. A good solution almost always solves only the problems that need to be solved, deferring any other decisions, ie. don’t make any assumptions about things that you don’t have a complete idea about. It is also important to list down these deferred decisions, in order to promote discussion and resolution.

Instances of how Zeta has helped me achieve a lot within a short period of time?

Without a doubt, this has to be through— Refresh! :)