The Ultimate Test is Not Having to Be Told You're Taking a Test
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Autism
14 min read
The author discusses his son's autism diagnosis process and support levels (Type I-III), making the clinical understanding of autism spectrum disorder directly relevant for readers wanting deeper context on the developmental and diagnostic aspects mentioned
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Large language model
19 min read
The author describes being on the frontier of Enterprise AI automation and discusses deploying LLMs, prompts, and techniques like 'Fragments' - understanding LLM architecture would give readers technical context for his innovations
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Ensemble learning
11 min read
The author specifically mentions 'juries or ensembles' as essential techniques developers must accept when deploying AI systems - this machine learning concept is central to his work but likely unfamiliar to general readers
The Short List of Things I am Succeeding At
I’m a good dad, or at least I hope so.
It feels like every facet of my life revolves around my children, so my fingers are crossed that’s the same thing as being a good dad. One thing I never got from my own parents was a sense that I was important to them personally, so I try to give as much of that to my children as possible. If they need something, nothing else is more important. For the eyebrow-raisers, I include in that things like, “needing to be told no and experience appropriate boundaries.”
I’ll move or cancel meetings with people who have super fancy titles without a second thought if the boys need me. This sounds like a bigger sacrifice than it is. What I’ve learned with business stuff is that there’s always a workaround, and very rarely does one missed meeting ever result in anything catastrophic. The pressure can be immense, but I suppose everyone in charge of a large group of people has to learn to do this and balance obligations. As this has increasingly become the case for me, it’s a lesson I’ve had to take on continuously.
I take on big work assignments and projects in order to build reputation so I can translate that into making more money for our family. I wake up early in the morning to dole out assignments for a work group in Chennai a few hours into their shift, and then I log off when the East Coasters are wrapping up. I’m doing my best to be available across two continents and it’s mostly working even if my brain feels like it’s melting after each daily machine-gun spray of back-to-back meetings. For my children it’s only 3:00pm when dad is suddenly available and that makes starting my day at 3:00am worth it.
My oldest boy is autistic, although we’re in the middle of the formal diagnostic process. His pediatrician believes he’s going to be type III, meaning that he will require very substantial support, although I’m thinking he might develop his way into type I, or high-functioning. Most of my time not working is spent on this. I take him to a few specialists each week to work on language development, although most of this comes in the form of playing with him and trying to interrupt whatever
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