DEV Community: Sk Imtiaz Ahmed

When Practice Meets Pavement: Self-Reflection on Adversity

Sk Imtiaz Ahmed — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 16:45:22 +0000

A Wall of Awakening

Last Tuesday, during an important conversation with a high ranking stakeholder at work, I said, “My experience at this company was like being hit with a wall.” The following expression on his face told me that it might have been kinder to choose different words.

But my intention was not to draw criticism rather try to put into words what a gift it was that I had to face such adversity and that the company provided tools that helped me achieve a better state of consciousness.

For had there not been the option to talk to a psychiatrist through Open Up, I would not have stumbled upon the life-changing resource that is Waking Up (it's nice that they rhyme). I think it was only because of the humility I faced that I was able to take in such contemplative teachings and for that I am grateful.

Meditating on these mountain tops of Freiburg, Germany was an incredible experience.

The Dreadful Cascade

About a year and a half ago I was in a dreadful situation where trouble in my personal life had bled into my professional life. I had, until then, been very happy and proud of my successful career, which led me to take the strong opposition I faced at work very personally. At home, I also faced strong criticism from my wife about moving to the Netherlands.

She was very unhappy and eventually started doubting my character and accusing me of being unfaithful. On top of that, life tending to be relentlessly unkind at the worst of times, I had to face the housing market again with all of its adversity.

A Glimpse of Self and Shadow

The situation was so bad that I was led to believe that I am an undiagnosed autist. I still remember the feeling of helplessness that had come over me when I realized that I was a bit of an asshole. And how I proceeded to apologies to everyone for being myself. One of my biggest fears now is that I am a helplessly bad person. It is only through the incredible graces of my mindfulness practice that I can still reason about life and its adversities.

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." —Haruki Murakami

A Familiar Storm Returns

With that incredibly long prologue, I finally get to my current predicament. What's fascinating is that it has most of the same elements without much of the existential dread.

Everything is the same, everything is different. I am at the last leg of an incredibly expensive divorce, I have to deal with the anxiety of moving to a different rental apartment again and yet again I face strong opposition at work. What is dreadful about my situation is that I am on an HSM visa. It is a blessing and a curse. I was able to come live in the Netherlands only because the visa does not have an educational requirement. But it has an incredibly high salary requirement that limits my mobility within the job market. So when my manager told me last week that I have two months to live up to some vague performance goals and that a failure would result in a 'serious discussion', it naturally sent my psyche towards a fight or flight response. It's important to realize that no amount of practice might save me from such a physiological response to stress. This is one of the earliest lessons that I had learned in my journey so far. Our bodies are fitted with arcane and primitive survival mechanisms. What’s important is that we acknowledge them and let these feelings pass.

For me, I was initially able to fend off the shock but inevitably fell into patterns of rumination during breaks and before sleep. I was also a bit reactive where I thought of and acted on some hurtful things. I think the biggest truth of this situation unfolding is the possibility that I would have to go back to Bangladesh. In one sense, going back home is not so bad. But one of the reasons I have avoided even visiting home so far is how radically different my values are from those of the majority there.

It would be one of the greatest challenges life throws at me if I would have to carry all the growth I have achieved so far and face the environment there. It might be interesting to evaluate the outcome. But if it is possible, I would rather not. And this is largely the reason why despite all the progress I have made I am still suffering from incredible stress and anxiety.

What Keeps Me Standing

I am very grateful that I am able to admit this freely and talk about this openly. I suppose one of the debilitating effects of stress is that it forces us inwards—we recede into our depths and ruminate helplessly.

Fortunately, I was able to develop some habits that have saved me from myself. First of all, I am still working on my physical health. I still go to the gym first thing in the morning and I am still trying to eat healthy. Secondly, I am keeping up with my daily meditations and meditative practices like journaling, listening to contemplatives, going to museums etc.

Next, I am proactively talking to people about my situation—friends, colleagues, acquaintances and even complete strangers. I have set up sessions with a psychologist using Open Up to actively monitor and contemplate my emotional response to the situation. Finally, I am doing all I can to give myself as much control as I can. I have spoken to management openly about my situation, I have posted online that I am open to work, I have scaled back on socializing and volunteer work to give myself more time to deal with the challenge. And I am actively working on every possible way I can salvage this situation, including but not limited to looking into other locations for work, looking into contract positions for better mobility, looking into other forms of visa like the startup or the student visa. At the end of the day, even if I find myself with the worst possible outcome I can say without a doubt that I have tried my very best despite how difficult things have become.

And when I look back, all of this is phenomenally different from how I used to be. I must thank my lucky stars that I found myself on this path. And here I shall remain, whatever may come.

On Surviving Difficult Managers

Sk Imtiaz Ahmed — Sun, 23 Mar 2025 21:45:31 +0000

Took this picture at the Centraal Museum. I really like Weenix’s work. Thought it fit the article.

What surprises me constantly these days is how the socially awkward loner from his college days is now a very socially active individual. I think the best part of the work I do and the career I pursue is having the opportunity to meet incredibly talented and ambitious people. I really like getting to know them, and there is a lot of wonderful and interesting things I get to learn from them. People think that I am 'networking.' I think going out of my way to meet people for the express purpose of finding use for them is a terrible way to approach this concept. For one thing, these being very smart people, would smell that from a mile away. Being disingenuous like that would be a terrible waste of my time.

I am not saying that ‘networking' has not helped me in my work. There has already been two instances where I was able to directly add value to the projects I was working on through my 'network' or ‘networking skills.’ But I see these as happy coincidences. What I am genuinely trying to do is getting to know people, their journeys and the challenges they face. And one of the most unfortunate challenge I often hear people going through is dealing with difficult managers at work.

Understanding Difficult Managers

First of all, I feel it is important to separate the 'art from the artist’ as my friend Kevin put it. I have incredible respect for people who go into management. It is not an easy job. Managing people and processes on top of their personal lives must be incredibly hard work. I cannot imagine the kind of challenges they have to go through. Especially, if the company requires them to make some hard decisions. At the end of the day they are just human beings trying to make sense of this phenomenon we call life.

One of my friends strongly believes that people are inherently good. I don't quite agree with her. I think people just are. The characteristics of someone, from your point of view, is a derivative of your interpretation of the subset of information you have on them. To put it simply, your opinion of someone is simply one prospective and is probably not objective in the complete sense. Without getting into moral philosophy I would like to simply state that there is, in fact, such a thing as an objective truth in this universe but its interpretation is often times subjective. So however bad the actions might seem to us, people are generally just going through their own set of circumstances the best they can. The fact that it is making your life miserable is sad but it does not necessarily make them a bad person.

To follow up on that thought, it might just be you who has issues with them. Not in the sense that it is all in your head. Sometimes, making it look like a you problem is one of the ways difficult managers try to control the situation. Rather than that, maybe it is something about your interactions, your situation or something you did in the past that is bringing out all this sad business. Like mentos and soda putting you and your manager together causes an uncontrollable reaction. From how I see it, drawing fault in either of the parties is probably the most unproductive ways to go about this. Having said that, I would like to make it perfectly clear that I am not a difficult manager apologist. With due respect to them we must draw a line where it feels unacceptable. Regardless of their personal philosophies or organizational pressures, it must be made clear that the line exists.

Protecting Your Mental Space

Now, before boring you more with my personal philosophies, I would like to start off with a general piece of advice: cease and desist. Please, for the love of God, no job or personal achievement is worth putting your mental well-being in jeopardy. If you can, please quit. Often times we logic ourselves into why we cannot. We become too comfortable with our circumstances. So I would like you to consider trying a mechanism employed by the Stoics called Negative Visualization. Imagine the worst-case scenario you could realistically be in and try to conjure the feelings that would come over you if you were in that situation. This technique helps you appreciate the good things in your life. But now I would like you to take this a step further. Imagine the worst off person in the world that you think could realistically exist. Maybe a pregnant mother at a war-savaged country. Is your worst case scenario worse than that? I would have a hard time believing you if you are well off enough to be reading this article and still say yes. Exceptions do exist, in which case I am very sorry about your misfortune. I wish this world was a nicer place for everyone. But as Hank Green had put it 'The world is not a wish granting factory.’

By ‘quitting,’ I don’t necessarily mean resigning from your job. Rather, I mean choosing to disengage from unproductive conflict and investing your energy in things you can control. Quitting may come in all shapes and sizes. For example, you could quit struggling against this person and appeal to their ego. Difficult managers often exhibit narcissistic tendencies. This is a natural phenomena--power often attracts individuals with these tendencies. I am not asking you to be fake or to give up on your values. Every person is a bundle of good and bad. Simply noticing and appreciating the good things would be enough. The goal is to try and achieve a situation where you get out of their way and they cannot get in your way. Take away all the leverages that could be used against you. Personally, I have had the privilege to take some disarming actions. When my salary expectations were not met I cut down on my expenses significantly. When my career progression seemed to have stagnated I chose to pivot to a different career. And at the worst case scenario I am prepared to go back to my God forsaken country to start over from scratch. I am sure your situation is very different. I would encourage you to brainstorm possible solutions to cater to your own situations.

What matters more than winning is that you are happy. And happiness can be had even in the worst of situation simply by lowering your expectations. This is important because I think it is quite hard to achieve things at work when we are not happy with ourselves. So I sincerely hope that you can create a status quo where you can first work on yourselves. Take care of your mental health. Take care of your physical health. Take care of your personal relationships. What good is any of it if you cannot enjoy this life you are working so hard for? Take up hobbies. Help people around you. Giving without any expectations is its own kind of reward. Make your corner of the world a better place. When you feel comfortable in your own skin, then you can think of addressing the status quo.

Recognizing Toxic Patterns

Finally, on the offensive side of the situation, it is important to validate our assumptions. We should be comfortable with being wrong. Fortunately, it is a sufficiently documented case. If appealing to their egos already worked, then you know you are on the right track. Let me try and describe some ways to identify difficult managers. Please note I am addressing the behaviour and not trying to vilify the person.

The difficult manager does not care about you or your situations. They will always try to push their own personal agenda. They will aggressively guard information and create an environment of fear and secrecy. There will be a disparaging lack of psychological safety. During incidents they will not openly work with you or admit fault. Instead, they will try to illustrate why everything is your fault. Things you say to your colleagues will somehow reach their ears. You will find that your most brilliant and outspoken colleagues do not get promoted. Favoritism without any objective evaluation or unfair evaluation would be their weapons of choice. You will see documented instances of dysfunction within the team yet the manager will do nothing to publicly address these situations. They will not try to foster unity and trust within the team. They will only promote initiative they can take credit for.

When HR Gets Involved

I hope you all agree that all of this is terrible for you and the company. But things often escalates when it eventually gets to you and either side feel it necessary to involve HR. I have not yet personally experienced the full process yet but I have had people close to me go through this. The playbook is roughly the same. There is some form of mediation followed by one of the following three outcomes: either you or your manager admits fault and a course of action is agreed, you switch managers or you get fired. There is another outcome but I think it's unlikely and not a productive pursuit.

It is a tough situation to be in. And the worst part is that people around you get caught in the crossfire. If you are in a situation where things might escalate a good strategy might be to start collecting evidence for when shit hits the fan. At the end of the day, despite how much you overthink, it is an insignificant event when scaled against all of life. So I suggest to not waste time meandering the outcomes and just let the experience unfold.

Call to Community

To conclude, If you are going through this then I am incredibly sorry. If you do not agree with me then I am incredibly curious to know why. Please share your own stories and how you’ve dealt with a difficult boss. I would love to learn from it. One of my biggest fears is being insensitive towards the world around me because of the kind of person I am. Which is why I am actively trying to practice empathy and kindness. I sincerely care about your opinions and hope to hear from you. Please feel free to reach out however you feel comfortable. I hope to be a good listener.

You deserve a workplace where you can thrive, not just survive. If you’re in the thick of it, I hope you’ll take the next small step — whether it’s finding support, making a plan, or simply giving yourself grace.

Please let me know what you think!

Sk Imtiaz Ahmed — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 11:40:31 +0000

Quitting After a Decade In: Lessons I am Carrying Over

Sk Imtiaz Ahmed ・ Jan 31 '25

#career #devjournal #cybersecurity #growth

Quitting After a Decade In: Lessons I am Carrying Over

Sk Imtiaz Ahmed — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 11:40:07 +0000

A decade in software engineering feels both long and short—long enough to burn out, short enough to still wonder what’s next. As the new year begins, I find myself at a crossroads, not just reflecting on my career but actively stepping away from it. The outline for this write-up took shape in my mind a month ago. As the new year begins, it marks exactly a decade since I started my career as a software engineer. I wanted to take some time to reflect on the journey. However, the real necessity of writing this piece became evident when I asked for feedback on my previous blog post in The Neighbourhood. An old friend responded with the following remark:

"Life of a tired engineer about to open a ranch or just retire."

How does one feel after reading such a comment? A mix of emotions. The fact that this person is a department/unit head says something about the work culture in Bangladeshi software companies. But he is an old friend, and I received his feedback with humility. It also made me realize that there is some truth in what he said. Not that I plan to retire anytime soon, but I am indeed quitting software engineering.

In fact, I feel like I had already quit shortly after joining XITE. I find no joy in building software for investors—the grind has taken too much from me. I still love building software, but only the way I started: for fun. So, I am transitioning away from my career as a software engineer to fully focus on cybersecurity.

Do I expect this field to be free of grind? Not at all. But I no longer approach work as my starry-eyed younger self, willing to dedicate all my time and energy to building things. Instead, I seek balance and professional growth. I want to cultivate a career with stability, avoiding the erratic trajectory that has defined my past. I believe this mindset is more appreciated in the West—especially in Europe, where clear boundaries exist between work and personal life. With that in mind, I intend to carry forward the lessons I have learned over the past decade and carve out a meaningful career.

My learning process has always been painful and inefficient, but it has also been practical and lasting. For the remainder of this post, I will highlight some of the key lessons I have gathered—both for documentation and in the hope that they may help others.

1. Always Putting Yourself Out There

My career began at iQuantile when I was still a university freshman. By then, I had built a solid foundation in Python and Linux, was learning Django, and had deployed a website on Heroku for an unofficial club I had formed at university. When I showed this project to Asad Bhai, a high school alum, he asked me to work for him. I did not think it would go like that. I was under the impression that it takes 4 years of education for this to happen. Thus the experience taught me something that has stuck around so far: to always put myself out there—publish my work and seek feedback. I had a lot of fun in iQuantile and even now try keep in touch. I met Miraz bhai there. He taught me Angular.js and I learned that I would rather not. This played some role in my decision to use React moving forward.

2. Never Involve Others Prematurely

At iQuantile, I encouraged a friend to join me(yes, same friend). He had high expectations of the professional world, coming out of academic excellence, whereas I was still experimenting and appeared more clueless than I actually was. As a result, he became discouraged and abandoned web development. Well, to be more accurate I don’t think he ever meant to pick it up. But this experience taught me to never involve people with my work prematurely—at least, not before I have gained enough clarity to guide them effectively.

3. Spend Early Years Learning, Not Just Doing

Since there were not a lot of opportunities to use React at iQuantile, I was looking for other opportunities. That is when I met the brilliant entrepreneur, Fatemi bhai, who now runs DeliveryHobe. He wanted me to build its precursor called ShopHobe. Those were some of the most foundational times for my career. I got paid a lot of money, considering I was only a student. He had a brilliant idea that he entrusted me the front-end with. And I got to implement the most over-engineered piece of garbage imaginable. But I learned a ton in the process. This reinforced my belief that early-career engineers should prioritize learning over immediate productivity. And if possible, they should join a startup—because startups provide the most explosive growth opportunities.

4. Always Have a Rough Approximate of Our Self Worth

Throughout my career, I have maintained a clear sense of my professional value. When I feel I deserve more, I seek it out. This mindset led me to Julia, the founder of Language In Motion (LIM). LIM was my first experience in outsourcing my services to a Western company. Working at LIM was a dream come true. I wanted to run away from the monstrosity I created but not loose the progress somehow. The person leading the Frontend team at the time, Miras, was a brilliant engineer. He had taught me some of the best ways to use functional programming in React. I loved working there. My colleagues were all brilliant and the product itself made a ton of sense. The only downside was that I did not like being micromanaged. I did mention this to Julia but things did not really change. Instead of handling the situation professionally, I made the mistake of burning bridges. That experience taught me to never burn bridges—because the tech industry is a small world, and relationships matter.

5. Find Mentors

While working for LIM, I was casually looking for more stable opportunities. To my utter surprise, my half-assed attempt at applying had actually hooked in a big fish. Getting hired by Cefalo was a surreal experience. I never imagined any Bangladeshi company would hire a college dropout. My time at Cefalo marked the start of my "official" career. This is because everything was official now. I was a full fledged employee at a Bangladeshi company, I paid taxes and silenced my parents’ doubts with a solid income. I know people who have been there for 15, 20 years. It's the kind of place you can settle into. But what I learned then was that I have this innate aversion towards getting too comfortable. I despise complacency. And on top of that working for Scandinavian companies was a huge change in pace for me. Every thing went so slow that I was afraid of loosing my edge. I was also very unlucky compared to my colleges. Most of them had an onboarding trip to Norway and a stable team.

At one point I was just tiered of "being a consultant". It became clear to me then that I prefer to work for product companies. But the most important lesson I learned at Cefalo was the value of a respectable senior. I was very fortunate to meet Shoeb bhai at Cefalo. He is an incredible human being and I have learned a lot of humility from him. So my advice to anyone with ambition is to find mentors. Having a good mentor guiding your career dramatically increases your chances of success. I owe a great debt to Shoeb bhai for being such a person for me.

6. Always Take Care of Yourselves

After or around about two years at Cefalo, I felt I was still stagnating career wise. Thankfully someone reached out to me with quite a lucrative opportunity. I found that the decision to join Bongo was a no brainer for me. The money was great and the team seemed pretty fun. Once I did join, I immediately fell in love with everything. Bongo had a lot going well for them. Very smart employees, cutting edge tech stack, remote work culture, an amazing product, competent leaders, positive revenue, and more. I did complain a lot, while I was there, about all sorts of things. But thats only because how much potential I saw there. But then there is such a thing as too much fun. I proceeded to overwork and messed up my mental and physical health. So my advice now-a-days is always to take care of ourselves. Nothing is worth doing if it comes at the cost of our well-being.

7. Always Be Grateful

As I look back on my career, what stands out to me most is how lucky I was. I was very fortunate to have been able to defy conventional logic and get this far. I rode the hiring boom, known to many as the Great Resignation, into getting hired abroad. But I feel that my luck ended there. While being a lot of nice things, my career abroad has been a disappointment so far. So the last piece of advice that I would like to leave you with is to always be grateful for what you have and find ways to truly appreciate your situation—however bad it may seem.

Moving Forward

As I transition into cybersecurity, I carry these lessons with me. My goal is to not repeat the mistakes of the past and to build a career with intention and balance. While I will always remain a builder at heart, I no longer see work as my entire identity. Instead, I seek fulfillment in professional growth, meaningful contributions, and a life beyond work.

To those navigating their own career paths, I hope my experiences offer some insights. The journey is never linear, but with self-awareness, resilience, and a willingness to learn, it is always possible to carve out a fulfilling future.

(P.S. I mentor professionals in their journeys, find out more: imtiaz.eu)

Embracing Change: My Journey Towards Growth

Sk Imtiaz Ahmed — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 14:06:59 +0000

Today I noticed something very interesting. A decade ago, when I was a budding programmer, and even for many years after, I would reach for anything and everything within my radar that I thought had the potential to benefit me as a programmer. Let me break this thought apart. I remember, fondly, how I would try every tool, read (or attempt to read) every blog that came my way (I am a newsletter hoarder), try to understand every piece of program I found interesting, and, of course, RICE my Linux. "But of course!" one might think. "It's only natural—you were young and had a lot of time." However, that isn't what strikes me today. What I began to wonder—and tried to analyze—was the evolution of my thought processes regarding how I approach learning now compared to back then.

When I had the epiphany that my life’s task is to become a cybersecurity professional, I promised myself one thing: "I would take every piece of advice I got, resonated with, and even preached over the years, and mold the most efficient career transition I could imagine." Ambitious? Absolutely. But I’ve never known myself to be anything but ambitious. While this trait hasn’t always helped me, I’m doing quite alright, thank you. A handful of foundational principles now form the foothold for my growth:

Good mental and physical health.
Not fighting the finitude of life.
Embracing the way I learn.
Always approaching relationships with a mindset to give rather than take.

Good Mental and Physical Health

I am no expert in this matter, but I am trying—which is more than I could say about myself a year ago. About a year and a half ago, it was brought to my attention that I may be "niet normaal" (read: neurodiverse). This realization was a monumental breakthrough for me. In Bangladesh, the quality of one’s mind is rarely contemplated. Imagine not knowing if there will be enough food on the table and then wondering whether what you just said was offensive. It didn’t matter there. But here in Europe, with its robust healthcare system and social stability, I’ve had the chance to put things into perspective.

Perhaps I’ll write about this journey in more detail in the future. For now, what’s important to share is that I am making sure I put myself first holistically. I have found many answers and much peace in spirituality, for which I am thankful to Sam Harris. The Waking Up app and his book of the same name have helped me immensely. I meditate daily, practicing non-duality and loving-kindness. I also go to the gym regularly and have started calorie counting with the Noom app. Additionally, I travel often and spend time with friends while distancing myself from people who are not good for me.

All of this might sound obvious, but I’ve always been a workaholic who never had “time” for these things.

On top of some high place in Freiburg. I absolutely love heights!

Not Fighting the Finitude of Life

Life must end. Fully embracing this fact allows us to celebrate every breath. What I’ve found curious is that this is the productivity hack to beat all productivity hacks. I learned this from Oliver Burkeman's teachings. We all have large reading lists and millions of open tabs we feel compelled to get through but never do. It’s important to realize this is an impossible ordeal.

I now fully embrace the notion of treating information as a flowing river. We sometimes dip our toes into it but can never grasp it all. This simple truth has profoundly shifted my perspective. I’ve abandoned my long Notion reading list, I close stale tabs often, and I no longer stress over gaps in my knowledge. Most importantly, I balance learning, doing, and enjoying life.

Embracing the Way I Learn

It’s fortunate that I am a decade into my career. How I’ve made it this far without getting fired even once remains a mystery to me. I’m not one to believe I have special abilities. Ask any of my school teachers, and they’ll tell you what a terrible student I was. At some point in my adolescence, I figured things out. Passion drives me, and my passion lies in puzzles. I love solving things and will go to any lengths to acquire the tools necessary.

Solving Sudoku and the Rubik's Cube eventually led me to coding. Over time, I painfully learned through trial and error what works for me. I like building things, and that’s how I learn best. This realization is the centerpiece of this whole write-up. I’ve developed an aptitude for finding information, so I can easily identify hundreds of things I need to learn to succeed in cybersecurity. However, that approach would lead to burnout. Instead, I embrace a T-shaped learning philosophy: I learn surface-level information about anything that piques my interest but dive deep only when there’s a clear need for me to use it.

This happens in many ways and doesn’t necessarily tie to work. I deepen my knowledge by writing about topics, mentoring students, contributing to open-source projects, and volunteering at non-profits. I broaden my scope by attending conferences and meetups. I’ve found a system to make learning engaging and fun for me. However, the drawback is that I drop anything that doesn’t interest me. This sometimes hinders me, especially at work. I’m working on addressing this but it is not something that I can always control. My strategy is to develop sound work ethics and dissociate from unproductive situations, even at some monetary or temporal cost. That’s how it works, and I cope as best as I can.

Giving Mentality

I’ve already delved into this topic in a previous blog post. Giving back is something I feel compelled to do. Additionally, I find that it’s a sound approach to growing one’s network. When I approach people, I think only about how I can be helpful rather than what I can gain. Sometimes, this bears fruit, but most of the time, it’s simply about leaving me with a warm and fuzzy feeling that I deeply cherish.

Conclusion

To sum up, I am trying to take an efficient approach to career change. I focus on taking care of myself and others, not overdoing it, and reaching slightly beyond my comfort zone. Hopefully, it will all work out. Please let me know if you think I’m on the right path.

Why I Strongly Believe Knowledge Should Be Free

Sk Imtiaz Ahmed — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 10:57:12 +0000

The other day when I was preparing for my offline session with Hack Your Future students, I noticed that I am not getting a lot of mentorship requests in ADPList. I thought it might be because of the timing. I had only set aside some time on Sunday nights to do this. To remedy this situation I have created some slots every weekday around 17:00-18:00 CET. I am at the office around that time waiting for off-peak hours to start so why not? You can find those slots in the website but I also made a booking page on my Google calendar for this. Please check it out if you need to be mentored in Front-end engineering.

However, another thought had hit me when I was checking out ADPList. It feels like I stopped getting mentorship requests around the time when ADP started their paid mentorship feature. While I certainly hope this is not the case, I can't help but wonder if ADP is optimizing on payment potential. This is not, of course, a criticism of ADP. It is a great platform and I am sure a lot of people benefit from it paid or otherwise. But I would very much like to keep my services free on the platform. This is because one of my cornerstones is giving back and I strongly believe knowledge should be free.

How did I develop such strong feelings? Well I owe everything I am to being able to freely learn anything I want from the internet. I am shooting myself in the foot here by writing about this but my journey in programming started with a pirated book. I, in no way, support piracy-- please don't get me wrong. This post is not an endorsement of infringing intellectual property. But Bangladesh is not known for its strong intellectual rights protection. And any one who wants a book just goes to Nilkhet. When I told my dad I wanted to learn Python during my post-SSC break, he got me a pirated book from Wiley. I spent a lot of time with that book. It taught me programming fundamentals. How would my programming journey go, had it not been so accessible to get this book?

I was strongly against my parents sending me to private university. I wanted to enroll in a vocational school, to save money mostly. I had zero faith in our country's education system. And I was not wrong. The university curriculum was vastly lacking in what I knew was standard in the industry. Had I not been working in the industry at the time, my career prospects would have been much worse. By the time I got a job in Cefalo, one of Bangladesh’s best software companies, my parents could no longer force me to stay in school. I dropped out two years into uni. It had nothing to do with me getting this job. I owe most of my success to Kyle Simpson and Eric Elliott. Kyle's YDKJS taught me the fundamentals of JavaScript. I had not bought his books, rather borrowed them. I am already trying to fix that mistake by gifting some of my students the books. On the other hand, all the blog posts that I read from Eric Elliott were the fundamentals of my coding standard. One of my colleagues in Cefalo pointed out that I got the job because I wrote unit tests-- something engrained in me by Eric. Unfortunately, I could never afford his paid mentorship. Where would my career have been if I had had that opportunity? I wonder.

All of this and more has made me always want to give back to the community. This is why I volunteer at conferences. This is why I volunteer at Hack Your Future. And this is why I have just signed up for DIVD(Partially, of course, there is firstly a duty as a Security apprentice and then the potential to kickstart my career in Security). I am incredibly indebted to the community. This is why I would always like to freely give back. I understand the effort it takes to create and publish content. I know it can incentivise quality content and many other things. But I personally believe that we need not gatekeep our knowledge and experience with a paywall. To that end— I would like to announce a video course I am planning to work on. Free-- based off of Hack Your Future syllabus. I would like to understand the pains of producing content and put my time where my mount is. Stay tuned!

Why I am Looking into Cybersecurity

Sk Imtiaz Ahmed — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 10:54:58 +0000

Note: At the beginning of this post I am going to go over a bit of prelude. Please skip to the following section if you are only interested in the Cybersecurity part.

In my last post, I briefly went over an epiphany I experienced recently. It had led me to contemplate my ambitions. But I must confess that there are more factors to this than just the quote from Netflix's CEO. Recently, my home country is going through some political upheaval. While it is far from over, at the peak of its intensity I grew concerned for the wellbeing of my family. Sentimentally, I am quite detached from Bangladesh. Its people suffer from some of the worst mentalities along with economic depravity. There is a complete lack of respect for people, their autonomy and everything in between. But living away from some of its worst representatives had instilled a bit of love in me for the people who have grown up in the same cultural landscape as me. Thus, it had filled me with a sense of powerlessness when I could do nothing more than to draw people’s attention to the complete disregard of basic human rights that had then plagued our part of the world.

Furthermore, I grew appalled by the effect social media was having on my friends. They were caught up in this perpetual hate cycle and negativity. One of my friends even pointed a finger at me for something that I had inadvertently done and found myself being called names. I have since deactivated said platform and started questioning the pursuit of working for giants that care for nothing more than their bottom lines.

Why Cybersecurity

Since the time I first remember laying eyes on a computer, at a tender age while visiting my cousins, I have entertained many interests related to them. I had taught myself Python in high school in the hopes of building sentient machines. And then I found myself building websites for money while dabbling into Backend, Blockchain and Data Science. For this entire time, I had thought of Security as some arcane concept meant only for the most elite of the computer geniuses. I believe the notion was ingrained in me by my engineering school coaching teacher. He used to describe the complex matrix operations and other mathematics a hacker must perform. Yet, I could hardly call myself a competent software engineer without protecting the code I produce from various attack vectors. SQL Ingestion, Cross Site Request Forgery, Cross Site Scripting, Distributed Denial-of-Service etc are all concepts that we need to be familiar with. Granted that these maybe the most premitive of exploits that a competent hacker could think of, is the notion of a practice being hard an excuse for not perusing it? In the advent of the Crowdstrike incident, the world finds itself more exposed than ever. Fortunately, the piece of code that broke the world was meant to protect its users. What if it had more malicious intent? How prepared is the rapidly shifting world of technology for the growing threat of cyber attacks? The industry is seeing rapid growth yet employers still struggle to find candidates. While people worldwide are becoming increasingly dependent on software and systems, I find it a worthy pursuit to protect ourselves against bad actors threatening to steal our data, privacy and peace. I would like to think that even at the worst of these companies, that only care for their bottom line, the pursuit of Cybersecurity could be righteous and fulfilling.

Me doing something with a router some years ago

Evaluating Cybersecurity as a Career

At the time of my last post, I only knew that there needs to be a change but had no clue what that change might look like. The podcasts I listened to were going into the Cybersecurity job market in light of the Crowdstrike incident so I had it at the back of my mind. At a seemingly unrelated meetup however, I so happen to stumble onto a Cybersecurity professional. This is why I love interacting with the community so much. People seem to care a lot. Not only for themselves and their careers but for the betterment of the community in general. I do not know which other professions meet up after work to talk about more work. But having talked with an industry professional, I found many of my questions answered. He encouraged me in many ways and offered useful guidelines. He went over certifications like CISSP and CEH and how he saw the job market to be lacking in talent yet highly rewarding. I was also able to talk to the CISO at my own company about his role and interests. Furthermore, I speed ran the Google Foundations of Cybersecurity course and some carefully chosen YouTube videos on this topic. At this point in time I feel highly optimistic about Cybersecurity as a career. I would like to complete some projects from Freecodecamp and learn more topics form HTB Academy as well as interact with more people from the community to better understand the different roles and people’s career trajectory. At the end of the day, even if I find myself not pivoting to Cybersecurity as a career I would have gained many friends and insights which would be, never-the-less, worth it.

In my last post I had asked myself a question. Here is the tentative answer. In his series You Are Here, Oliver Burkeman asks us to find our "Life Task", which lies at the edge of our comfort zones. I find that pursuing a career in Cybersecurity is what life is asking of me at this point in time.

On Stealing People's Attention

Sk Imtiaz Ahmed — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 15:41:47 +0000

For the past few weeks I have been obsessed with the contents of the Waking Up app, I have had the app for a year now(courtesy of my therapist) but only recently started using it. The meditation sessions are nice but what really got me hooked was Sam's argument against free will. Firstly, for the fact that it actually made sense. Moreover, for all the positive conclusions the argument brings about. However, I am having a harder time grasping non-duality and have been going over the theories ever since. But this is not a post on that.

While listening to one of his interviews I heard Sam quote Netflix's CEO. In case you don't know me, Netflix is my dream job. But the quote had me thinking. It goes like this:

We’re competing with sleep, on the margin

It started to bother me very soon. If I keep following the same path as I am on right now, would my Key Performance Indicator soon turn out to be keeping people from sleeping? Do I really want to specialize in stealing people's attention?

This weekend I was enjoying the sea and the clouds somewhere in Texel— not binging Netflix.

Why is attention so important? Well, if you haven't heard, "Attention Is All You Need" (Sorry, had to do that). For technology giants the most tried and tested way of making money is selling ads. People don't really log into Facebook to see ads. So they have to give them nice things to look at and then sneak in some ads. There is a great documentary called The Social Dilemma that has a bit about how these algorithms work. Recently, Netflix also pivoted hard on Ads. Apparently it is the only model that works when money is short and people cancel their subscriptions. At this point Netflix is even investing in their own advertising technology. So now they have more reasons to keep you glued to the screen.

There is an all out war going on for grabbing people’s attention. This is not new and was not really unknown to me. In fact, there have been many books written on the topic. There are Wikipedia entries on the phenomena such as attention theft and attention economy. These, along with other morally grey practices, are how the tech product companies of the world make their billions and how nerds like me enjoy being comfortably employed. So it’s a bit evil, but a job is a job is a job— right? Unfortunately, I wield the dual edged sword of passion/profession (Profassion? Prassion?). Sometimes I joke with my friends about how I've gamed the system. All I really do is have fun and people seem to pay me for it. One of the only reason I am a functioning adult is because my hobby turned out to be profitable. So I tend to be very invested in what I do. It's a part of who I am and I would like very much for It to amount to something. This is why I am now bothered by the path I have carved out for myself. And the question now is… what do I do about it?

Announcing Interative: Finally a side project I can commit to!

Sk Imtiaz Ahmed — Sun, 24 Mar 2024 09:27:36 +0000

It was last year when I got the idea of an interactive storytelling platform powered by AI. It was in preparation for the lablab.ai Google Vertex AI Hackathon. I don't remember being intoxicated when I thought how absolutely knarly it would be to live inside the world of Dune. There is so many aspects to the world of Harry Potter, Starwars, Game of Thrones etc. that I would love to explore! So I thought to myself if Generative AI could actually be a good use case for this.

Since then, I have been entertaining this idea and floating it to whomever I can get to listen. I had to brainstorm for the hackathon but I couldn't really do anything back then. I have annoying little knowledge of how these software systems work in a deeper level. So I have been investing time learning these thing. I have a top down approach to learning things. Before just hitting a book and studying I like getting a feel for the community and the ecosystem around what what I am learning. So I went to Amsterdam UX contestable AI lecture, Rotterdam AI workshops, Bunq AI Hackathon, GraphSummit BeNeLux and recently Python Open Source Sprints. I am also, again, starting a new Google Cloud Get Certified program(Professional Data Engineer). I have gained a lot of knowledge and insights. So now I start building.

Yes, that is correct, I learn as I build. That's about the only way I can concentrate enough to learn. And this blog post is sort of my commitment to learn. I would like to do a few more practical - hands on events while gearing up. But the rough ideas I have right now is centered around knowledge graphs and RAG. I would build out a system where a "writer" can come build a story, world, and its characters. The system turns these into some form of structured knowledge. Next, I could ground my LLM to only generate within the confines of these universes. The generated media would- then need to be presented to the end user in an app that creates the perfect UX for emersion within this dynamically generating universe.

As I am trying to make obvious through this blog post, I would be building this in public. So expect regular updates from me. Could be blogs, or even X/Instagram/LinkedIn posts. I would love to create an open source business model around this. I would love this to be a tool for writers to use and then pay for when they are big enough. There are of course a plethora of challenges to what I'm trying to build but the only way I would ever go about building this is by bootstrapping it. The building in open movement is something that I resonate with a lot and I am glad that I am at this point in my life when I am starting this.

So, can you get involved? NO! I am done announcing projects, getting people involved and then having to abandon it. The latest victim to this pattern of mine is The Neighbourhood. But I am now an acolyte at the church of getting shit done(read the manifesto!). So I am going to build out a structure first. Build ways to on-board people and get them contributing. When I get a feel for this I will let you know.

DevWorld Conference 2024

Sk Imtiaz Ahmed — Sun, 10 Mar 2024 09:34:24 +0000

One of best opportunities I have gotten so far from moving to Europe is perhaps the ability to participate in tech conferences. Back in Bangladesh, I would have never imagined running into Ryan Dahl or meeting people working in OpenAI and Spotify. As someone pretty invested in tech, these opportunities are deeply fulfilling.

A week ago I had the pleasure of attending and helping out at DevWorld Conference. The 2 day event was held at RAI Amsterdam. It boasted an incredible 7k number of participants. I love helping out at conferences like these. Partly for the perks that come with it and partly because I feel it is my small way of giving back to the community. In between my responsibilities I was able to attend talks, network with people and win awesome swag!

Talks

First up we had, the co-founder of GitHub, Scott Chacon give us a part 2 of his FOSSDEM talk about new Git features. I missed his talk back in Brussels but I’m glad I was able to catch this one. I learned a bunch of cool stuff about Git that I did not know yet I have been using git for around a decade now.

The DevWorld slides can be found on the GitButler blog and the talk itself should be on Youtube soon. Takeaways for me: git commit --fixup and git rebase --autosquash definitely looks like something I’ll be using. And worktree is something I wish I had know about sooner.

The next one I loved was from Will Scougal about Augmented Reality and it’s potential in advertising. At one point, his slides mentioned that “positivity is contagious” and that was exactly the vibe I was getting from the very colourful slides 😅.

I thought the numbers were eye opening. Indeed, AR could already be a great place to advertise your services as the audience is growing and are more engaged. I was also made aware of the potential of WebAR. During the video demos, I was also quite surprised to see some of the existing AR campaigns.

Next day we had Shai Reznik dishing out truths about JavaScript apps and Qwik in his magicians costume. The promise of zero cost performance sounds too good to be true.

I got to learn a bit about JavaScript streaming which is different from HTML streaming. I also learned that Miško Hevery loves data jokes!

Finally, we got to see Ryan Dahl launch jsr.io. I know what it sounds like— “another NPM?”. But personally I felt this could be game changer. It is supposed to co-exist with NPM and give developers a better experience publishing modern TypeScript.

There are some interesting choices that JSR makes and I would encourage you to go read their reasoning. It ended with an awesome live demo and I for one am sold!

Some of the other talks I enjoyed were about concurrency, microservices, Backstage, video optimisation and Solid.js.

Disneyland for developers

That is what the conference was advertising itself as(Disneyland for developers). Maybe one could disagree but it was, in fact, quite fun! There was an arcade section and part of my responsibility as volunteer was actually to take care of this place! I really enjoyed myself and had a blast!

There was awesome swag to be won. Every sponsor seemed to have a lego giveaway! I nabbed this awesome bottle from a Postman giveaway!

And this is what I looked like 😅 📸 👇🏾. As you can see I was have an awesome time!

FOSDEM 2024

Sk Imtiaz Ahmed — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 14:30:36 +0000

This weekend I decided to pay FOSDEM a visit (Thanks to Maarten from Appsterdam Coffee Coding group who brought this to my attention). FOSDEM, which stands for Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting, is a non-commercial and volunteer-organized event centered on free and open-source software. The 2024 edition of FOSDEM took place on February 3rd-4th at the ULB Solbosch Campus in Brussels, Belgium. It is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas, and collaborate, featuring a wide variety of activities. The event is known for gathering thousands of developers of free and open-source software from around the world. FOSDEM is a highly anticipated event in the open-source community, and it does not require registration; participants can simply turn up and join in. It was my first time at this legendary open-source developer gathering, and it was everything I imagined and more.

It was my first time here and I wan quite overwhelmed. They took over this huge campus and it was quite an adventure trekking through to find the right room for the talks. Speaking of which there were quite an overwhelming amount of talks and you had to queue up for some because space would quickly run out. A tip to myself for next time would be to prepare in advance for the talks I want to attend as I quickly realized my "winging it" approach wouldn't cut it. But that's the beauty of FOSDEM's open and spontaneous nature – I could dive into whatever piqued my curiosity

On the first day I chose to accept a free cookie form Mozilla(Delicous otameal raisin!). There were also a good selection of food carts.

There were a number of awesome stalls. Me being a sucker for hardware had quite a fun time with those ones. There was also this person in a PostgreSQL elephant costume. I also got a cool collapsable mug from Mozilla by finishing some quick tasks!

A phenomena I noticed was that everybody had these LED badges so I got some myself.(Probably going to do a cool project with this later)

I couldn’t catch all the talks I wanted to either because I didn’t get there in time or the rooms were full but fortunately I was able to navigate to a few interesting ones where I got to hunker down and take notes.

First up I noticed a talk about Biome. I had heard about them on the Syntax podcast so I had to go listen. Really interesting stuff! It can format invalid code which blew my mind. The talk was a deep dive on how it works

The Biome toolchain | Sojourner

Next there was a nice talk about JS Security. Covered some of the basics like how to avoid XSS and add CSP. My key take away from this was that it might be interesting to participate on of CTF events.

Staying Ahead of the Game: JavaScript Security | Sojourner

Of course there had to be a talk about JavaScript tooling in Rust but to be honest it was a little heavy for me. Quite interesting nonetheless.

Building your own JavaScript runtime with Rust | Sojourner

Next day stared off with this interesting talk in the web performance Devroom. It went into details of how third party banner ads are slow and have privacy issues and some strategies to improve Web Vitals like LCP and CLS.

From Google AdSense to FOSS: Lightning-fast privacy-friendly banners | Sojourner

Next learned a little bit about how the what, why and how of the new Firefox power profiling tool. This was quite interesting and I wonder if I can use some of the take aways to profile the low level devices I work with. Like to slide.

Firefox power profiling: a powerful visualization of web sustainability | Sojourner

Finally, I absolutely loved the talk about deploying Python on WASM. These are the sort of talks the nudges the inner hacker in me to try new things. Key take aways for me was: we can think of WASM as a virtualized CPU and that we can overcome the single threaded nature of it with some clever stack switching.

Deploy Your Next Python App with WebAssembly (Wasm): Smaller, Safer, Faster | Sojourner

After all these technical talks I always appreciate an afterparty to get a whiff of the vibrant community spirit. There was an unofficial afterparty hosted by Hackerspace Brussels which was a melting pot of music, laughter, and retro gaming. The Kimchi Waffle tho… was interesting.

Overall, had an awesome experience at FOSDEM 24. I hope to visit again next year— only this time more prepared. Leaving FOSDEM, I wasn't just armed with a cool collapsible mug and a head full of code; I felt connected to a global network of passionate developers pushing the boundaries of technology. Whether you're a seasoned coding veteran or a curious newcomer, FOSDEM is an experience that will leave you inspired and energized. So, mark your calendars for next year to be amazed!

Starting My Journey to Unlock the Power of Google Cloud: Pursuing the Associate Cloud Engineer Certification

Sk Imtiaz Ahmed — Fri, 26 May 2023 12:44:50 +0000

Originally posted here: https://imtiaz101325.notion.site/Starting-My-Journey-to-Unlock-the-Power-of-Google-Cloud-Pursuing-the-Associate-Cloud-Engineer-Certi-a63f64b0388744879f03b52df2fce0d0

Hello, fellow tech enthusiasts! My name is Imtiaz, a seasoned frontend developer with a career spanning nearly a decade. I embarked on this journey when React was just making its debut, and since then, I've honed my skills in crafting single-page web applications across various industries. However, it's the challenging and ever-evolving OTT and CTV space that truly captivated me, leading me to specialize in this fascinating niche. Aspiring to become a T-shaped Frontend Architect in the entertainment industry, I am relentlessly passionate about the software development field.

Recently, I was privileged to be a part of Google's Get GCP Certified Learning Program for 2023. This unique initiative by Google offers comprehensive support for practitioners pursuing Google Cloud certifications. The program's aim is to enhance our understanding of Google Cloud, strengthen our skills, and prepare us for the evolving demands of our roles. My goal within this program is to deepen my knowledge of GCP and potentially earn the Associate Cloud Engineer (ACE) certification. This certification, recognized globally, attests to one's ability to deploy applications, monitor operations, and manage enterprise solutions on Google Cloud. It is a rigorous assessment of one's proficiency in effectively utilizing Google Cloud technology in a professional setting.

What makes the ACE certification exciting for me are the following key aspects:

Deployment and CI/CD Management: The ACE Certification equips frontend developers with the skills to deploy applications on Google Cloud and manage continuous integration and deployment pipelines, making the delivery of changes and enhancements more streamlined.
Scalability, Performance, and Cost Efficiency: Knowledge of cloud technology enables developers to leverage cloud resources optimally for scalability and performance, while also keeping cost implications in mind. This ensures applications can handle traffic surges without incurring unnecessary costs.
Security and Compliance: The ACE curriculum covers Google Cloud's robust security features, empowering developers to build applications that prioritize user data protection and comply with best practices.
Data Analysis: Google Cloud offers powerful tools for data ingestion and analysis. These tools can inform decisions about user interface and user experience design.

As a frontend developer, I've always been passionate about creating immersive user experiences. However, in the rapidly evolving landscape of web development, it is essential for developers like myself to gain a broader understanding beyond just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. That's precisely why I'm thrilled about pursuing the ACE certification. By understanding how to deploy and manage applications on the cloud, I can create more comprehensive solutions and have a deeper understanding of how my frontend code integrates with larger systems. The insights gained from the ACE certification can enhance my understanding of deploying and monitoring modern frontend applications while improving scalability and performance.

Beyond the professional benefits, I'm personally thrilled to dive deeper into the realm of cloud engineering. As a data and analytics enthusiast, I'm eager to experiment with Google Cloud's robust data tools. This certification will provide me a holistic understanding of the technology stack and broaden my potential as a developer.

In the context of the OTT and CTV space, where I'm currently striving to specialize, the ACE certification would elevate my competency in several ways:

Enhanced Quality of Experience (QoE) through Data Analysis: Using Google Cloud's advanced data analytics tools, I can monitor and analyze user behavior and video streaming performance, gaining real-time insights to enhance user experience and improve QoE.
Valuable Insights with Video Analytics: Google Cloud's robust video analytics tools can help me understand user engagement levels, viewing patterns, and preferences, thereby informing my content strategy and personalization efforts.
Efficient and Secure Content Delivery: As an ACE-certified professional, I'll have the expertise to leverage Google Cloud services like Cloud CDN for efficient and swift delivery of video content. This promises an enhanced viewing experience for the user. In an industry where trust is paramount, Google Cloud's stringent security measures ensure robust protection of user data, fostering a more gratifying and secure user experience.
Economical and Scalable Solutions: The ability to manage resources effectively is a crucial part of the ACE certification, and it equips me to deliver cost-effective video streaming solutions — a vital consideration in the OTT and CTV industry. Furthermore, the acquired knowledge about Google Cloud's scalability ensures that our application can withstand high traffic volumes without any compromise on performance.
Swift Rollout with CI/CD: Google Cloud's CI/CD pipelines, which I'll master through the ACE certification, will enable swift and efficient updates and rollouts. This agility is essential to stay ahead in the dynamic OTT and CTV space, ensuring the application remains competitive and up-to-date.
Career Progression Opportunities: The expanded skill set I acquire through the ACE certification will enhance my value in the vibrant OTT and CTV industry. With my improved proficiency, I look forward to potentially exploring advanced roles such as a cloud architect or a full-stack developer.

As I embark on my journey towards the ACE certification, I'm filled with eagerness for the insights and skills I'll acquire. I'm thrilled to delve into the expansive universe of Google Cloud and to utilize its capabilities to design better, more robust solutions as a frontend developer. I urge my fellow frontend developers to consider broadening their horizons with certifications like ACE. It offers a platform for both professional growth and personal advancement, enabling us to stay updated in this fast-paced tech world. Whether you're a seasoned expert or a beginner, remember that every step taken towards learning something new is a step towards personal growth and success. I hope my journey inspires you to set off on your path of learning and exploration.

We are in the midst of an exciting time in the tech industry. Let's keep learning, evolving, and pioneering together.