2026-07-04
Inked 0x2
blog
inked
Today is the 1 month mark of my summer internship at Akamai. It’s been extremely fun to be able to just mess around with machines and to be able to work close GHost. I really hope that they keep working with tool by the end of all of this.
I’ve been spending hours at work day. An office space really helps you zero down on your work and focus. While the office can be quite deserted at times because of the “hybrid model” of work since covid, I’d say that its more entertaining than spending hours at PES with almost nothing to keep you occupied.
As of 3rd, I’ve come to realise that I received my first salary. Honestly a weird feeling, can’t say that I was elated learning about it, but it was finally nice to get paid for work. Had a little celebration after a pretty long week by getting a taco and ice cream. Logged off 30 minutes early (was already quite late around 9:30pm) and tried exploring the tech park near my building.
Milano seem to have gotten their alcoholic based ice creams back, the one at my office has a generous amount available
Works going well now that 4 weeks are wrapped up. Currently blocked mostly by access related issues or a new fun issue that ruined my 1hour 30 minute build with a full root partition :D Besides that, glad I got quite a bit of work cleared up by the end of the week and get closer to the finalising the work.
About a week ago I paid a visit back to PIL, just to meet up with with a couple of friends and had a great time. Just to be vague, all of us were quite disappointed looking at the state of things and witnessing how people change with authority. I think thats one of the biggest lesson that I learnt while I worked in the core team in a club. We are all in the end of the day insignificant when compared to the world around us. A club/lab that is student driven is almost nothing compared to actual corporate structures. People assume that when in a position in power in these small institutions, they suddenly have the all the right to perform actions without a second thought and think quite highly of themselves.
In reality, all of us are still the same undergrads/students who are just here to learn and benefit off from each other. But sometimes people incapable of knowing how to exercise their duties in a slightly privileged position will just try horribly at doing so or just be a failed attempt at recreating someone else’s methods.
Now looking back at how Nathan, Yashmitha, Anshul, Andey and I managed to work on the HSP core team by following these principles and constantly reminding ourselves that this isn’t serious stuff, we are in the end of the day just a small club in PES, we got through a really productive year. Sometimes things don’t really go your way and but thats totally okay. How you decide to act on them or respond to situations can either keep the community closer or just find a way to run the fun. And I’d be lying if I said I was true to this. Messed up once and paid the price.
You learn with mistakes especially when it’s the first time you are managing something. But choosing to be ignorant about events and working with a fragile ego is just a recipe for disaster. Don’t really have any words to truly explain these situations but. It’s unfortunate that people, at such a young age, in positions where they can truly make a difference make things about themselves bring things to ruins. Quite insane how many times I’ve witnessed this, however its never not entertaining 🍿
Fundamentally it’s also the people you choose to be in these positions as well. If the pairing of a team does not work out, if people cannot agree on basic fundamental policies at the start, you are just in for a slow burn experience. Managing is was not my forte initially. I’ve fortunate to run HSP for a year with people who share the same sentiment as I did for the the community and running it together has taught me several things and I’ll miss definitely miss that experience. And these people who hold a sentiment towards the community would be the ones who not only benefited off from it, but also have worked tirelessly to help in nurturing and taking care of it when they first got in. Giving such people who share these values, and who have a decent sense of direction, who are realistic and open to discussing policies, not hesitant in reverting or re working on problems in the existing community structure would always do a better job.