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Comment by seanhunter

5 years ago

I know Kirat really well. Fun fact, one two-week dev cycle we had 667 distinct developers commit to the secdb code base which Kirat's boss described to me as "The number of the beast.... plus Kirat"

Second fun thing. Kirat was advocating for lisp for secdb for a long time and used to rag on me for liking python when it's so slow.

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seanhunter

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noneeeed  5 years ago

Interesting to be reading all this about SecDB. About 15 years ago I was offered a job working on SecDB (I forget exactly what the position was now). It and Slang sounded really interesting.

I do sometimes regret not taking the job because the people there were wickedly sharp and the tech sounded great, but in hindsight I'm not sure I would have thrived in a bank long term. I did a 3 month internship at Lehman's which I enjoyed, but I don't think I'd have suited a career in it. One thing I did get out of it was a total lack of fear around job interviews, if I could survive the 14 hours of interviews at GS and come out with an offer, then I can handle pretty much any recuitment process :)

Maven911  5 years ago

It's amazing how a few people have left such a big mark on a part of the investment banking industry. I missed Kirat right before exiting BAML but met all his "disciples" and Dubno..including his miniature dinosaur and telescope in his office :). Very much felt like tech religion where no open debate on merits and drawbacks could be discussed. And a lot has changed in terms of engineering innovation with turnover since that era...

  • mleonhard  5 years ago

    Why is the number of people who "left a big mark" so small?

    1. An organization/industry can adopt each new technology only once. New technologies arise infrequently. Each time they arise, only a few people get to work on the projects introducing them. In other words, opportunities to leave a big mark are limited.

    2. Credit for innovation is political capital. People hoard political capital and become powerful. They act as gatekeepers of innovation and take the credit for successful projects.