List of companies where you are actually likely to have good time? Work decent hours, get paid well, with low chances of toxicity.

Sharing a list I made for job application with the criteria:
Google
Microsoft
Meta
Salesforce
Adobe
Cisco
NVIDIA
Intel
VMWare
ServiceNow
Coinbase
Paypal
Atlassian

I have ignored Indian startups because usually culture is iffy. These ones are known for decent culture and pay, tho I may be wrong.

Please add to the list, if any additional ones come to mind. It will help a great deal.

I've lived in Bangalore for five years now, but I've never seen anything like today. The rain has been relentless since morning.

As I left home, the rain was heavy but manageable. By the time I reached the Sony Signal, it started raining very heavily. The roads are extremely bad and the traffic is just not moving.

The worst part is that while I was on 80 Feet Road, my scooter stalled. The water had risen above the exhaust and my scooter got fucked.

So, I locked my scooter and parked it on the side. suddenly I saw an electrical cable fall on the ground and it started sparking just 10 meters away from me. I got really scared and started pushing my scooter to my friends place nearby. Once, I reached there, I ordered an Ola Auto. The worst thing is that it cost me 500 to travel 6kms today.

Once the driver came at my friends place he hiked up the price and said that he will cancel it otherwise. I was already so scared that I left my scooter at my friends place and reached home. I am literally shaking while writing this post.

ADVISORY: PLEASE DO NOT LWEAVE YOUR HOMES UNLESS YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO.

I am getting information from all over Bangalore that scammers are out there trying to make money from people in desperate need.

I am a Delhi person who has been living in Bangalore for the last 3 years. I like both cities (both have pros and cons) but I feel in a 10-15 year time frame, both are going to become unsustainable with traffic, safety, rising costs, infra issues and weather/air conditions (for Delhi)

From a long term POV, which Indian City is going to be the best city to live in? (factors)
1. Career Opportunities (could be job or a business as well)
2. Good infrastructure
3. Cleanliness and safety
4. Connectivity
5. Weather and sustainability
6. Living expenditure is average but has good quality of life


Which city will be the winner?

Big post rant !!!

32 years old Male, born and brought up in UP.
Parents native to Karnataka, post bachelor’s got job in Microsoft on third party payroll working as support engineer for Azure Identity.

Wanted to prove my worth to the organisation and make my parents proud, unfortunately things turned out bad had to leave in a years time.

8years into the industry i see my batchmates my friends and younger ones making 4X money at minimum what i make currently (16LPA), married but again things are not turning well for me.. I have lost all interest from life don’t feel like going out, learning new things no hobbies also just working on office tasks since it provides paycheques.

I really feel like I am left behind and will always be left behind. I know life’s not fair but I just have lost it at all corners of my life.

Its just that i am living for my parents !!

I am planning my next switch. I am originally a Delhi boy, but have lived in both NCR(Noida, GGN, Delhi) as well as BLR. Blr has its perks like it's ecosystem, weather, and vibe, but then, there is racism and bad Infra.

NCR, is a known ecosystem for me, but no one can deny that there are more jobs and opportunities in BLR, apart from NCRs shit weather etc.

For people who have been in similar situation, what do you think is the right step to take here? I have been a proponent of choosing a single place to work, hence moved back to Delhi from BLR, but I continuously feel the fomo of not being in BLR, wrt to opportunities etc.

Is BLR now the go to place for Tech Jobs, or should we try harder and find something in GGN/ DEL.

Just a month in new organisation and already lost motivation due to the upcoming layoffs. Senior Leadership of Product is laid off due to the company moving towards a different organisational view of being business led.

Started looking for a job already. If this is how private jobs work, then we'll only see people who deliver mediocre work and don't push themselves for the org.

Even the best performers will be reduced to task deliverers, as there is no assurance of anything.

Some lessons :

1. Work on your finances.
2. Learn the craft.
3. Always keep looking out. (Gone are the days about frequent career jumps. Now-a-days you have to do it to survive).
4. Don't be hard on your family. (Goes both ways. Your family member might be anxious because of their unstable job. Understand them. )
5. Be helpful.


Let's hope the world is kind to everyone.

I've been living in Bangalore for six years, but today made me seriously question my sanity. This city, with all its quirks, tests your patience every single day. Here is what happened to me last month.

I left for work at 8 AM that day thinking I'd beat the rush hour on **Outer Ring Road**. The corporate greed of building skyscrapers without improving the infrastructure has choked this city. By the time I hit the Silk Board signal, traffic was at a complete standstill. Not moving. Not inching. Just... nothing.

After two hours, TWO HOURS, of crawling at 1 km/h, I just became very angry I noticed people cutting in through the small gaps. Bikers, autos, cars, trying to get the smallest fucking advantage on the road, everyone out for themselves. And guess what?

My friends who had come to visit me from Chandigarh were phoning me that they will come from a cab but the cabbies were on another level, **Surge pricing** was through the roof, with Ola and Uber tripling their rates. Some drivers were even asking for extra cash and said they will cancel otherwise.

I saw a guy on a Royal Enfield, revving his engine aggressively as if the sound alone could ease the traffic. But it didn’t help obviously. You see, nobody was willing to follow the rules, or God forbid, cooperate that day.

In the end, Bangalore will collapse under the weight of its own unchecked growth. Mark my words.

Saw this unhinged take by @Gooner7 about How Software Engineers are grossly overpaid.
https://share.gvine.app/LK9MZAmyFcGJeA86A

Bruh, u serious? 😂 This hot take is so off base it's not even funny. Let me break it down for you and let me bury that opinion forever...

Posting after a long time but this got unhinged take got me tweaking. Drop an upvote if you think Software Engineering is underpaid. ⬆️

First off, weare not just "gluing libraries togehter" lmao. That's like saying chefs are just throwing ingredients in a pot. It takes madskills to know which libraries to use, how to integrate them, and how to build somthing that actually works and scales. Unlike a lot of PMs that just run around taking meetings and actually doing no work lol.

And don't even get me started on the "not solving world hunger" bullshit. Most jobs don't directly cure cancer or end world hunger. But guess what? The apps and systems we build make life easier for millions of peeps. Ever used Swiggy? Ordered food online? Watched Disney Hotstar? Yeah, you're welcome.

Also, let's talk about the value we bring to companies. One good dev can literaly make or break a startup. We're the ones turning ideas into reality, scaling systems to handle millions of users, and keeping everything running smooth. That is not just gluing stuff together lol. Seems like an inexperienced take from an Excel junkie [Either a PM or a Data analyst will think Software Engineering is like that.

So nah, we are not overpaid. If anything, considering the value we bring and the crazy demands of the job, most of us are probs underpaid.

But hey, if u think it's so easy, why don't u try it? I'll wait while u learn to code, build a complex system, and deal with production issues at 3am. 😉 I bet your cursor/no code indie project will work at scale hahaha.

Though we work for less hours as compared to our ancestors, we still spend less time enjoying leisure than them. What has eaten up our time ? Using phone ? Or our unending thrive to productivity where we try to 'maximise' leisure time by learning some skills ?
Leisure isn't a means to some other end, I think it is the end ! We need to start seeing leisure as not a tool to recharge to be able to work better, but to just enjoy.
The old story of a king and cattle farmer about work more so that you earn more so that you relax later, while the farmer is anyway relaxing is more relevant than ever.
Thoughts by the productivity geeks ?

I don’t know how to start this. Honestly, I never thought I’d be the guy writing a story about getting divorced. But here I am, sitting in my small apartment in Bangalore, staring at the walls, trying to make sense of how everything fell apart.

It wasn’t always like this. We were happy once. Or at least I thought we were. But I guess the cracks were always there, I just didn’t want to see them. I was too caught up with work, coding away for hours, trying to keep up with the deadlines my manager kept throwing at me. My life became a cycle of meetings, code reviews, sprints, and late nights.

My manager, let’s call him “R”, didn’t help. He was always there, hovering over my shoulder, sending pings at 11 PM asking for updates, expecting me to work on weekends because “the client deliverables are critical, and we’re short on time.” I kept pushing myself, thinking if I just put in a little more effort, things would get better. Spoiler: they didn’t.

I used to come home exhausted, mentally drained, and my wife... well, she got tired of waiting. She’d try to talk to me, and I’d say “later” or “just give me 10 minutes to finish this one thing,” but that one thing would turn into another hour, and then another, until she’d just go to bed. I thought she understood, that she knew I was doing all this for us. I thought I was being a good husband by working hard and securing our future. But in reality, I was just absent. Physically there, mentally checked out.

The fights started small. She’d complain about how we never spent time together, and I’d tell her “I’m doing this for us” and that “things will calm down after this release.” But there was always another release, always another deadline. Slowly, the gap between us grew. She stopped asking for my time, stopped expecting me to show up.

Then one day, I came home, and she wasn’t there. Just a note on the dining table saying she couldn’t do it anymore. That she felt alone even when I was there. That she needed more, and I wasn’t giving it to her. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t even surprised. Maybe I’d seen it coming but chose to ignore it, hoping things would magically fix themselves.

I blamed her at first. Told myself she didn’t understand how stressful my job was, how my manager was a slave driver who didn’t care about work-life balance. “R” always acted like he owned us. If you’re not working, you’re not productive. It was all about efficiency, outputs, and timelines. I couldn’t even tell him about what was happening at home because I knew he wouldn’t care. He once said, “personal problems should stay personal, we’ve got business to run.”

But maybe... maybe it’s my fault too. I let work consume me. I became a machine, doing what I was told, losing track of what was important. My wife, my marriage, everything took a backseat to my job.

Now it’s just me. No wife. No marriage. Just a pile of undone laundry, cold dinners, and an empty bed. Bangalore feels lonelier than ever. I go to work, I come back, I repeat the cycle. Sometimes I wonder if I should’ve fought harder, said no to “R” when he pushed me for those late nights. Maybe I should’ve drawn a line somewhere. But I didn’t, and now it’s too late.

So yeah, that’s it. I’m divorced. And I blame myself... but also my manager. If he’d just understood that we’re not robots. Or maybe if I’d understood that earlier myself.

I don’t know what to do next. Maybe I’ll just keep coding, keep working. It's all I know how to do.

picture: drinking gin with my btech friends after divorce. man i am depressed.

Hi cuties,

Gyaan nhi duga. Bs apna dost maan kr zindagi ka kuch experience share kruga.

We all know what is right, what needs to be done VS WHAT IS COOL, what is more accepted, what is attractive in short term

Honestly, I have been on both sides. I have worked hard on my career. Also, I have been into short term VIRTUAL MEANINGLESS se*ual relations.

Yr, yes in short term it was nice and good. It taught be a lot, it made me an experienced man (which would be an advantage to my future wife) BUT honestly it's impact on mind is sooo bad that one cannot get out of past completely.

Here or there, things will come out of mouth, or will come as part of expectations.

I have seriously started looking for marriage prospects. At the same time, I am trying to erase past from my life mentally. Although there isn't any attachment or something, but all these se*ual thoughts have fruited from those virtual relations only.


Hence, my suggestion for everyone who is from 16-25. Please think long term. Anything which benefits in short term is bad in long term, whether it's pizza, burger or a relationship built on physical attraction.

Here is an incident that happened to me at my old startup. This literally gave me a wake-up call that shattered my "PM is mini-CEO" idea that all my mentors had told me about.

During a heated product roadmap + prio meeting, the actual CEO, berated me a lot and made fun of my "vision" doc. He called my user research "overrated guesswork" and dismissed the Jira workflow as "a waste of time". He then laughed at my definition of product-market fit and all the metrics I had decided. Mind you, I was the first PM hire at this startup at that time and I used to report directly to the CEO.

When I tried to defend myself with data, he accused me of cherry-picking stats and that I manipulated the data. He then demanded that I learn to code and make use of my degree. I studied Computer Science in college btw. When I asked Why? he said that I needed to create a working prototype by next week. This was abviously a joke but he had made a point, he thought that I was not doing real work.

As I left the meeting room, I realised two things: I'm not nearly as important as I thought, and this job isn't about changing the world, it's about surviving the brutal reality of business. It was a harsh reminder that in the end, the CEO and not me, calls the shots.

Upvote please. 🙏🏻
Aerial view of Mumbai. ❤️

So I walk back from work everyday. I work at Razorpay so I live nearby and save on commute costs by walking.

Near Forum Mall, I have noticed that often times there are members of the trans community who force you to pay money to them. Even if you try to ignore them they will grope your private parts and sexually harass you by calling you names. I do not usually carry cash, so they asked me to pay Rs. 500.

I ddenied and after negotiating sent them Rs. 120 via GPay. I do not want to pay, is it like some unofficial toll tax?

One time, I even saw them chasing someone who was trying to run away from them. They literally lifted their saree and exposed themselves to the entire mall while running.

I am generally very respectful to them and have worked for NGO Projects for their community. But I feel that recently this has become a major problem within the city. I have noticed them harassing people everywhere now. From Red Lights to outside Malls.

I have complained to Forum Mall frontdesk but they refuse to do anything.

Stay Safe people.

Just want to get a basic idea

Rent/ house loan EMI
Water + electricity
Commute (to fro b/w office & home)
Maid/cook

It's stupid question but the marriage pressure from society kills me everyday. I wanna focus on my career and get married late. what are you all doing?

At 27 (F), I was thriving as a Software Development Engineer at an elite startup, excelling in my work. Within eight months, my hard work paid off with a raise and multiple bonuses. A significant part of my success was due to my manager—more than just a boss, he was my mentor, guide, and sometimes, harshest critic. He was brilliant, fit, and unmarried, with a temper that could be intimidating, but his support was unwavering.

Over time, our relationship deepened. We spent more time together outside of work, and I eventually convinced myself that love was worth more than professional boundaries and I started dating him. As we grew closer, my performance began to slip, but I was too wrapped up in the romance.

One evening, during a quiet walk, he proposed, asking if I wanted to marry him. I said yes without hesitation. But as we returned, he informed me that due to company policy, I would have to resign. Blinded by love, I agreed and submitted my notice the next day, choosing love over my career.

What followed was a nightmare. After I left, he disappeared—no calls, no messages. I was lost and heartbroken, having given up my job for him. Then, the truth surfaced: I had been a low performer, and layoffs were imminent. My manager had exploited my emotions, possibly securing a bonus by manipulating me into leaving. The man I thought I loved had used me for his gain, leaving me devastated and disillusioned.

Update to this — https://share.gvine.app/uhA3u5ZEizgE6vMD7

TLDR — Dropped job offers and started a D2C personal-care brand for men right out of college. Spent 6 months on R&D, onboarded a dermatologist, scaled Instagram to 14K. A lot of unplanned stuff happened – Incredibly tough, yet worth it! :)

——————

Almost a few months ago, I shared a post about not taking up job offers right out of college and starting a D2C personal-care brand for men. While I was initially hesitant, my post sort of blew up here, and I received both encouraging and not-so-encouraging comments from many of you.

Honestly, the ride has been nothing short of thrilling. Although I was aware of the challenges, nothing prepares you as much as doing it yourself.

Convincing manufacturers on MOQ was the hardest part. We flew to Chandigarh, stayed in the cheapest hotels, and met over ten manufacturers before we finally found one who met our criteria. With no experience in personal care, we reached out to dermatologists, some a decade or more our senior, hoping they would help us with product development. After weeks of trials and many errors, we finally cracked the code.

We also focused a lot on creating organic content because relying on FB Ads would have made it an unprofitable business. This approach worked; we scaled our Instagram to 14,000 followers and over 5 million views in just 1.5 months. Our followers were getting behind our brand messaging & positioning, it was an exciting time tbh.

But one morning, a month before our planned launch, we found that our Instagram was permanently disabled due to being linked with "suspicious accounts." Despite this, we continued working on content, product, packaging. And I’m excited to share that we are launching four products designed to tackle common skin problems that men experience.

I didn’t want to drag this on because I know long posts can be boring, but it felt necessary to give you all a proper update since many of you have asked. To make up for the lengthy read, dropping a discount code (in comments) exclusively for Grapevine members. :)

Thanks a lot for reading and I’d love to answer any questions you all might have!

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A well-marked low pressure area currently centered over the southwest and adjoining southeast Bay of Bengal poses a direct threat to Bangalore in the coming days. As of 1130 hours IST on October 15, 2024, meteorological data indicates a high probability of this system affecting our city. Here's what you need to know:

1. System Intensification:
The low pressure area is expected to intensify into a depression within the next 12 hours. This rapid development warrants close attention as it will likely influence the system's impact on inland areas, including Bangalore.

2. Projected Path:
The forecast track, clearly visible in the right-hand map, shows a west-northwestward movement. Critically, Bangalore falls within the green-shaded "cone of uncertainty," indicating a significant probability of direct impact.

3. Timing:
The system is projected to reach the coasts of north Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, and adjoining south Andhra Pradesh by early morning of October 17th. Given Bangalore's geographic position relative to these areas, we can expect to feel the system's effects potentially starting late on October 16th, with peak impact likely on October 17th.

4. Potential Impacts:

**Precipitation:** Expect substantial rainfall, potentially leading to urban flooding given Bangalore's topography and infrastructure.

**Wind:** Increased wind speeds may affect city operations and outdoor activities.

**Temperature:** A likely drop in daytime temperatures due to increased cloud cover and precipitation.

5. Urban Considerations:
Bangalore's urban heat island effect and extensive paved surfaces may exacerbate flooding risks. The city's stormwater drainage system will be put to the test.

6. Broader Context:
While the Arabian Sea depression mentioned is moving away from the Indian subcontinent, its presence may indirectly influence overall atmospheric conditions, potentially intensifying the Bay of Bengal system's effects.

7. Uncertainty Factors:
The "cone of uncertainty" in the image underscores the inherent variability in weather system predictions. Residents should prepare for a range of scenarios within this cone.

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Delhi Metro is a thing of beauty. The backbone of this city. When I peer into the eyes of those on my daily commute, I see different stories unfold right in front of my eyes. From students, to people going to Gurgaon/Noida for work, to lovers going on a date, to uncles trading stocks on their mobiles, to that nerd watching Anime and that obnoxious dude listeing to music oh so loud.

But damn, this city is intoxicating, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It's got culture and it's got to be miles ahead of any other city in India hands down.

Do share your memories | Favourite pictures from the city | Favourite moments etc. in the comments below. Looking forward to it.

I got an update from this app I use for investing in startups. They have launched a mutual fund comparison feature which lets you compare your mutual fund performance with key insights with your friends in a very easy consumable format.

Shows you XIRR, funds invested, portfolio diversity
Doesn’t show actual amount invested by both!

Very cool feature! I’m very surprised because I haven’t see this in any mainstream fintech apps.

- Meta is laying off employees across various departments, including **WhatsApp**, **Instagram**, and **Reality Labs**.
- The layoffs are part of smaller cuts coinciding with team reorganizations, not a companywide layoff.
- **Jane Manchun Wong**, known for reporting on unannounced app features, is among those laid off.
- The company is realigning resources with long-term strategic goals and location strategy, according to spokesperson **Dave Arnold**.
- This follows a series of layoffs in the Reality Labs division and the layoff of 21,000 employees in 2022 and 2023.

Source: [The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/16/24272195/meta-layoffs-whatsapp-instagram-reality-labs)

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