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#43: Where To Start Learning Tamil 💛

Why I Keep Publishing 👨🏾‍💻

Janahan Sivaraman

Jun 4, 2023

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I made this beef bacon stuffed crust pizza. I cold fermented the dough for 7 days. Brown, yet soft. It was better than Pizza Hut. And Halal. 9/10. Will share the recipe in next week's edition :)

மாலை வணக்கம் (maalai vaNakkam), Buenas Noches, and Good Evening from New York City!

I’ll be sharing a thing I did, a tweet I liked, and a thought I had.

A Thing ✍🏾

I published an essay titled Where To Start Learning Tamil.

3 years ago, I couldn’t speak a full sentence in Tamil. Now, I have 45 minute conversations with native speakers. I’ve never even been to Sri Lanka.

This is the guide I wish I’d had when I started.

I know that overwhelming feeling of not knowing where to start.

Finding Northern Province Tamil resources is a journey on its own.

Don’t worry, here’s where you start.

A Tweet 🐦

*Mine is also not a “came from nothing story”.*

In college, I was a C+ student. I was struggling to get by in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science classes. Without Sam Lang, Sahil Shah, and countless others, I wouldn’t have graduated.

At my first job, I couldn’t take a ticket and turn it into a working solution. My manager, Xinjie Li, was patient enough to give me space to learn. My coworkers (Nikitia Imenov, Ankit Trivedi, Mark Anderson) taught me how to branch, vim bindings, C++ specifics, and how to get by in corporate software.

After I quit to found Quotail, I became paralyzed with fear. I would be full of regrets if it hadn’t been for Sahil Shah’s help.

After I got fired the first time, I thought it hadn’t affected me. But once I got to Bloomberg, I was afraid of getting fired every day. My team was using the Fortran 79 compiler. HR wouldn’t let me switch teams.

I started interviewing externally. My friend and manager, Donato Borrello at JW Player, took a chance on me. He listened to me. He understood me. He helped me.

The safety of that environment allowed me to grow into a prolific developer.

After management gave me a 1.9% raise, I started interviewing again. I had just broken up with my live-in girlfriend. My costs doubled overnight. It was do or die.

Double my money or leave New York.

I kept a straight face as I asked for $300K in total compensation. I knew it would be a tall ask from a mid-level engineer. But

Louie Bacaj

, manager of the Growth Engineering team at Jet.com, believed in me.

He got it done.

Even after Walmart shut down Jet.com, Louie helped me by putting me in the room with the technical leaders. He made sure I was heard. He boxed out on busy work. He battled the other managers in calibrations.

I was promoted twice in three years. To Distinguished Engineer. A level most engineers never get to.

I write often about how I did this or I did that. But the reality is, without the help from my friends and family, there’s no way any of this would’ve happened.

And if you’re reading this and it’s triggered unhelpful comparisons - please remember that I got ridiculous amounts of help from my friends and family.

They believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself.

The least I could do is pay it forward.

A Thought 💭

I recently sat on a panel for the 3rd cohort of Newsletter Launchpad.

A question came up about the unexpected benefits of starting a newsletter. I’ve met people to practice Tamil with. I’ve shared my dreams of internet money before I launched my first small bet, “How To Get Promoted Beyond Senior Engineer”. I even started writing about my first love, cooking.

But through that conversation, I realized an even deeper benefit.

Showing up consistently and vulnerably, even if it’s someone’s inbox, is more than most people get.

Humans love predictability. Consistency.

Writing a newsletter from the heart, regularly, is the kind of connection humans crave.

You could see it as a bummer that most people don’t have that kind of consistency in their lives.

But I see it as a beautiful opportunity to show up for you.

And to show up for myself.

With Love,
Janahan

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