Hello World — My First Post

Hello World

I’ve been putting this off for a while.

Partly because writing feels slower than building. And partly because I wasn’t sure what this space should be — technical blog, personal journal, or something in between.

I’ve decided it doesn’t need to be cleanly categorized. It just needs to be honest.

Who I am

I’m a software engineer with a little over seven years in the industry. I started out at IBM, and today I work at McKinsey & Company building software for clients — mostly in the life sciences space.

A lot of my recent work has been around GenAI — not just experimenting with LLMs, but figuring out how they actually fit into real products. The interesting problems aren’t “can we use AI?”, but:

• Where does it actually add value?
• How do you design systems that don’t break under ambiguity?
• How do you make something feel reliable when the core primitive is probabilistic?

That balance between powerful ideas and practical systems is what I enjoy most.

What I like building

I’m drawn to products that feel good to use and do something meaningful underneath.

Clean UI alone doesn’t interest me. Neither does backend complexity for its own sake.

The sweet spot is where:

• the interface is simple and intuitive
• the system behind it is doing something non-trivial
• and the end result actually helps someone make a decision faster or better

That’s the kind of work I try to do, whether it’s internal tools, client platforms, or side projects.

Outside of work

Most of my thinking still revolves around building things, but not always in code. Outside of work, I find myself drawn to things that balance structure with creativity.

Photography, for instance, forces me to slow down and notice details I’d otherwise miss.

Riding my bike does the opposite — long stretches of road, usually without a fixed plan, where thinking becomes a bit more fluid.

Gaming has always fascinated me as a medium — some of the most thoughtfully designed interactive systems I’ve experienced live there.

And lately, I’ve been getting back into music production — something I used to spend a lot of time on before I got caught up in chasing IIT and engineering. I stepped away from it for years, but I’m now slowly finding my way back, still very much a beginner again, but enjoying the process of shaping something from scratch.

None of these feel separate from engineering to me. If anything, they sharpen how I think about systems, aesthetics, and experience.

What this blog will be

This will likely be a mix of a few things:

• Engineering deep dives Practical lessons from building real systems — especially around GenAI, workflows, and product design.

• System design thinking How I approach ambiguous problems, tradeoffs, and decisions.

• Project breakdowns What I built, what worked, what didn’t, and what I’d change.

• Occasional non-engineering posts Photography, rides, and anything else that ends up influencing how I think.

No fixed schedule. No content calendar. Just things worth writing about.

If you’re building things — or trying to — you’ll probably find something useful here.