The protagonist of this thought piece was introduced to me by one of his former colleagues, an archetypal specimen of a self-consumed tribe, one of those fairly proficient developers who pack some really good bits in book form but expect the world to find profound bytes in their authorship where none exist. Yet, I am indebted to this middle man for doing me an altruistic favor: leading me to a rarest-of-rare maverick who is averse to the very idea of broadcasting his thought leadership as he believes he has nothing new to say! His humility aside, what he says is as profound as profound can get, and that too in the simplest of ways, a heartening contrast to the umpteen thoughtless leaders who say a lot only because they have a say by default, thanks to a carefully cultivated visibility, which in turn breeds automated influence.
Meet Baishampayan Ghose, or BG, as he is known to friends and peers, the non-conformist who lives life king size on royal terms in a consciously subaltern manner, a rare species in a league of his own, free of claims and stakes.
In this thought piece, I have steered clear of tracing his umpteen trials and triumphs of seeding and exiting companies. Instead, I focus on his restless soul that has kept him gainfully restive all along his life and work progression. A loner by choice in his formative years, he spent substantial time in his engineer uncle’s work den, toying with gadgets and instruments and unravelling their anatomies and mechanisms. His fascination for computers defied the humble, tech-free environs of his native Agartala, but he more than made up for the forced deprivation with his voracious reading and relentless experimentation with computing and web development. Notably, his affinity for engineering developed in a family of professionals from unlikely streams; his dad is a doctor and mother a government official.
BG’s search for a computer science course took him to Shivaji University in Kolhapur, a distant land far away from home. Disillusioned by the arid nature of the syllabus and the job-centric mindsets of peers and superiors, BG dropped out of college and carved his own syllabus based on the knowledge gathered from MIT OpenCourseWare and Stanford curricula. This was a trying phase of his life where he faced rampant social rejection and severe family admonishments but he braved it all led by his steely resolve and the decisive method in madness. Unlike most drop-out mavericks, BG re-joined college and duly graduated with honours, albeit also armed with actionable insights, thanks to his experiential learning as part of the free and open-source software projects, deep diving into Python on Ubuntu and Debian.
The rest is a lot of history, some geography, and a bit of civics. His corporate stints and track record as a founder are well covered in the public domain. There’s little point retracing a well-documented journey in linear fashion. Instead, what merits quality attention is his roving eye and probing mind in each stint and venture, fixated on unearthing insights on branches placed high above those yielding low-hanging fruits.
Like his penchant for learning a new language in quick succession– whether C, C++, PHP, Perl, Ruby, and Python, led by interest and not instruction
Like his first preferred language, Lisp, having been mesmerised by founder John McCarthy’s phenomenal AI strides
Like his first corporate stint which was guided by Lisp, not salary, perks, or position
Like his reverence for immutable data structures which germinated from the learnings of a business problem, wherein he made code changes to what he presumed were unique objects but which in actuality were references to the same object, causing the change to be applied n^x times instead of nx times. The business consequence: the website of his then employer, an online travel tech player company, flashed negative prices, and ended up losing INR 10 lakh in a mere two hours through free ticket sales
Like the priceless learnings of his start-up stints, which taught him that product value props thrive on the wings of financial sustainability of a ready (or willing) marketplace, not simply disruptive innovation
Like his faith in functional programming languages and his prodigious tryst with the lisp dialect ‘Clojure’, well known for its BDFLs and highly opinionated practitioners, which BG believes, keeps it alive and kicking, a language that helped him with software development at the speed of thought without bothering about classes, interfaces, and design patterns
Like the premium he puts on cultural fit ahead of skills and competencies. The former, unlike the latter, can’t be acquired. A good team player with organic humility and genuine empathy for users is an absolute must, given that software is built by people for people.
Like his firm belief in mulling over a problem instead of mauling it with mercurial quick fixes, as also in the judicious balance between aptitude and pragmatism
Like his clarion call to students urging them to articulate their real needs rather than waiting for the academic institutions to evolve, to develop the affinity for abstract concepts, to read original papers rather than showcase views based on Hacker News
Like his utopian prescription of a more industry-attuned education system striving to help students cultivate the ability and agility for original thinking and ethical explorations rather than manufacturing assembly line engineers to serve the vested interests shaping and steering a programmed shop floor
For BG, a language is good if it serves the said purpose, not because it is ranked higher by stakeholders. For him, good guys stand tall whether they come first or last, and knowledge is the only degree that counts; a PhD can’t help if FizzBuzz yet appears a daunting challenge.
One of his formative startups was called ‘Infinitely Beta’ given its work ethos of rapid learning and experimentation. The title suits him instead given his vision, mission, and values governing life and work. One of his goals going forward is to venture into agriculture by becoming a farmer.
Knowing him, he will make the most of the greener pasture, both literally and lyrically!