A New Chapter

Rikin Marfatia — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 23:37:11 +0000

Last Friday I resigned from my position as an Android Engineer at Pinterest after 4.5 years working there. It was a wild ride and I've met a lot of amazing people who have helped shape my growth, my career, and will be lifelong friends of mine. It also made me realize that working at a big company is not for me, at least for a little while. I wanna talk about how I've been feeling, things that led me to this decision, and what my next chapter entails.

This past year was a taxing one for me career-wise. I felt like I hit a wall. I wasn't interested in the work I was doing and my motivation was at an all time low. This was the culmination of a lot of different challenges I was facing, but one of the bigger ones was that my job wasn’t as fulfilling as it once was. It also felt like my ideals and work philosophy as an engineer didn’t align with what was expected of me. I couldn’t build things the way I felt was right.

It was difficult for me to reconcile the tradeoffs made by building things quickly. Personally, I like to take my time and build something great. I enjoy thinking deeply about problems, really putting thought into a solution and making something beautiful both visually and structurally. That seemed at odds with what product engineering favored, building things fast. Sure, this was warranted at times, you build a quick version and run an experiment to validate the feature, then theoretically build it out properly when you plan on shipping it. But that last step was always just a dream, a JIRA ticket collecting dust in the backlog. Ultimately there wasn't a lot of time given for shipping beautifully crafted products, and although it's arguably the right decision it was one that made me unhappy.

When I thought about what did make me happy, my mind went to all the things I worked on outside of my day job. My side project Hydro Homie, speaking at DroidconSF and Android Worldwide, building small experiments with Compose UI. I got to pour myself into those projects, and it was fun! But there's another important aspect to it – in all of these cases I was building for me. I got to build, learn, and do the things I wanted the way I wanted to do them. The things that I built are things that I own. That feeling of ownership has been missing for a while, and I didn't realize how important it was to me. It's hard to put my heart and soul into somebody else's vision.

So it's time for a change. I'm going to build my own ideas full-time and find a way to make it work. I've put a lot of thought into it and I'm confident this is the right decision for me. As for what I'll be working on, I wanna build things for the Android community. If you know me, you know that I'm an Android developer and technologist at heart. I’ve gotten some amazing opportunities to speak at conferences and share the things I’ve learned over the years. I’m inspired by people like Josh W. Comeau, and the folks at Point-Free. These are people who master their craft, build beautiful software, and teach about their methodologies and underserved topics in their respective domains. That’s what I want. I want to master my craft, build beautiful Android experiences, and share it with you all. If you don’t wanna miss out, make sure to follow me on Youtube, Twitter, and Mastodon.

I realize I'm giving up a lot, a stable income and getting to work with some amazing people. I also realize I’m extremely privileged to even entertain this, to go without an income and try and work for myself. Long hours and hard work lie ahead, and there is a good chance it doesn't work out. But for the first time in a while I am excited to wake up and work, so I guess it's time to get to it.

🔥 Make Android Studio Awesome

Rikin Marfatia — Fri, 19 Mar 2021 20:43:31 +0000

Caleb Porzio did an amazing job with his Make VS Code Awesome course. There were a lot of good tips on being more productive with VS Code, and one thing that particularly resonated with me was what he referred to as "silencing the noise". Essentially he covered how to reduce/remove all the visual clutter in VS Code that is there by default.

It's amazing how much cleaning up your editor / IDE can really impact your productivity. As an Android Developer I spend most of my time in Android Studio, and I noticed that there was a lot of clutter. Buttons, windows, tabs, all things I don't use or information I don't need. So I decided to silence the noise, let's see what we can do.

The Starting Point

This is what Android Studio looks like by default. There are so many buttons, widgets, etc that are displayed that we don't need. Let's start by getting rid of the tool window buttons on the perimeter, updating the navigation toolbar actions, and removing a bunch of the bottom status bar widgets:

Remove Tool Window bars

Preferences -> Appearance & Behavior -> Appearance
Toggle off Show tool window bars

Remove actions from Navigation Toolbar

Preferences -> Appearance & Behavior -> Menus and Toolbars
Go to Navigation Bar Toolbar and delete a lot of that, this is what mine looks like now (still deciding if I need even these)

Remove widgets from Status bar

Left click on the bottom status bar and uncheck everything (I like to keep memory indicator, but feel free to remove that too).

Slightly Better

It's already looking much better! We now only have relevant information showing for the navigation toolbar and status bar. Next we can get rid of editor tabs and line numbers:

Remove Editor Tabs

Preferences -> Editor -> General -> Editor Tabs
Set Tab placement to None

Remove Line Numbers

For Line numbers you can just left click on the line number side bar, and uncheck Show Line Numbers

Even Better

Lastly, let's update the aesthetic a little but. The stock font and Darcula theme are okay, but with a custom font and the Material Theme Plugin you can go a long way.

My preferences:
Recursive Duotone Mono
Material Theme - Github Dark

Final Product 🔥

To me the differences are night and day. Not only does it feel better working with this configuration, I am more productive and focus on what I need to (the current file I am editing). Give it a shot and let me know what you think!

DEV Community: Rikin Marfatia