# Abhinav Saxena

> Personal website of Abhinav Saxena - a generalist with interests in entrepreneurship, software engineering, product management, and engineering leadership. Twenty one years of experience building large scale data products, payments platforms, messaging systems, and developer tools.

## Agent Resources

- [agents.md](https://www.abhinav.co/.well-known/agents.md): Context and instructions for coding agents
- [skills.md](https://www.abhinav.co/.well-known/skills.md): Decision table mapping needs to specific posts and projects

## About

- [About Me](https://www.abhinav.co/about): Background, experience, interests, and favorite quotes
- [Start Here](https://www.abhinav.co/start-here): Orientation page for new visitors
- [Now](https://www.abhinav.co/now): What I'm currently focused on

## Featured Writing

- [Ten years](https://www.abhinav.co/10-years): A personal reflection on ten years of working - from Yahoo to startups to engineering leadership
- [Digital Colonies](https://www.abhinav.co/digital-colonies): Our time and attention are the new resources that tech giants fight to control
- [Peacetime](https://www.abhinav.co/peacetime): Why managing a company during peacetime is harder than it looks
- [Hierarchy of Employees' Needs](https://www.abhinav.co/hierarchy-of-employees-need): A framework mapping Maslow's hierarchy to the workplace
- [Growth Debt - Part 1](https://www.abhinav.co/growth-debt-part-1): Why shipping slows down as companies grow - and it's not about effort
- [Web3 - new yet old](https://www.abhinav.co/web3-and-the-chasm): The promises of web3 tokens aren't that different from stock shares centuries ago
- [Microservices are a people decision](https://www.abhinav.co/microservices-a-way-to-organize-teams): Microservices are mostly a way to organize teams, not to scale systems

## Technology

- [Designing Microservices](https://www.abhinav.co/designing-microservices): Eight considerations for microservices architecture
- [Speed and Quality](https://www.abhinav.co/speed-vs-quality): Practical tips for balancing speed and quality in engineering teams
- [How to engineer an MVP](https://www.abhinav.co/how-to-engineer-an-mvp): Practical advice on building MVPs that yield real learnings
- [Elixir Plugs](https://www.abhinav.co/elixir-plugs): A hands-on walkthrough of Elixir Plugs in Phoenix
- [GCP vs AWS](https://www.abhinav.co/GCP-vs-AWS): AWS is Amazon's Android and GCP is Google's iPhone
- [Data science: Python vs Elixir](https://www.abhinav.co/data-science-python-vs-elixir): Side-by-side comparison of data science libraries
- [Why build Static Websites?](https://www.abhinav.co/static-websites): The case for static websites for landing pages and blogs
- [On learning new things without old baggage](https://www.abhinav.co/learning-new-things-without-baggage): Why mapping new paradigms onto old ones limits how far we go

## Startups and Leadership

- [Speed](https://www.abhinav.co/speed): Speed in startups is about making timely decisions and sticking to them
- [Growing startups and technical debt](https://www.abhinav.co/growing-startups-and-tech-debt): When to ship fast and when to rewrite
- [Start up vs Big Company](https://www.abhinav.co/startup-and-its-people): When does a startup stop being a startup?
- [From a great consumer product to a lasting tech giant](https://www.abhinav.co/lasting-tech-giant): The key is bringing a second type of user onto the platform
- [Narrative Chasm](https://www.abhinav.co/narrative-chasm): When everyone inside starts believing the company story as reality
- [Slack Etiquette](https://www.abhinav.co/slack-etiquettes): A practical guide to using Slack without burning out your team
- [Growth Debt - Part 2: Tech Debt](https://www.abhinav.co/technical-debt-growth-debt-part-2): A pragmatic framework for distinguishing and managing tech debt

## Ideas

- [Motive Matters](https://www.abhinav.co/motive-matters): Kant's idea that doing the right thing isn't enough - your reasons matter
- [The Country of the Blind](https://www.abhinav.co/the-country-of-the-blind): What a childhood story teaches about empathy and open-mindedness
- [Game Theory and Public Systems](https://www.abhinav.co/game-theory-and-public-systems): Designing systems where honesty maximizes payoffs
- [Inflation](https://www.abhinav.co/inflation): Money, currency, and why Bitcoin has a hard cap
- [Notes on CBDC](https://www.abhinav.co/notes-on-cbdc): Notes on India's digital currency concept

## Active Projects

- [vrksh](https://vrk.sh/): Unix tools for the agent era
- [plugdash.dev](https://plugdash.dev): Plugins for EmDash sites
- [Moonwalk](https://www.abhinav.co/moonwalk): A fast and minimalist Jekyll blog theme with clean dark mode
- [httplex](https://www.httplex.com): A simple HTTP request and response service
- [addy](https://www.abhinav.co/addy): Git-driven SSH access control for small teams

## Optional

- [Blog](https://www.abhinav.co/blog): Full blog archive
- [Notes](https://www.abhinav.co/notes): Unpolished notes and TIL
- [Projects](https://www.abhinav.co/projects): Complete project listing
- [Tags](https://www.abhinav.co/writing/tags): Browse posts by tag
- [Chhoti Si Kahani](https://www.chhotisikahani.com/): Bite-sized stories in Hindi