A candid interview with Raja on his 4th work anniversary

This month, at Botminds, one of our lead AI Engineers, Raja, is celebrating his 4th work anniversary. Raja is one of the many early team members who has been with Botminds since our inception. Raja has been instrumental in the stellar growth of Botminds. He is famous for his optimistic work style.

Congratulations Raja! It feels like yesterday when you walked into our office, and the first thing I said is, “I have a demo today evening, and I need ‘this’ to be fixed.” He answered it by fixing that nagging issue we had for weeks in a few minutes. The story repeats every day for the last four years in many variations. Still, the common theme is your speed, ownership, and responsibility. -- Gokul(CEO and Co-Founder)

Congratulations Raja! “Don’t fear when Raja is here,” “Lead Raja.” We have these phrases for good reasons—cheers to the last 4 years and many more years ahead. -- Faizan(Lead ML Engineer)

In this post, we ask Raja a few questions to share his perspectives working with Botminds.

Tell us about yourself. What made you pursue programming?

Hi! I’m Raja. Full-Stack Engineer and Founding Team Member of Botminds.

I’m fascinated with Computer Science. In my school days, I used to bug my computer teachers to get more practical classes to spend more time writing codes for simple mathematical problems. I always dreamt that one day I would become an engineer and build many software applications.

Currently, at Botminds, I’m one of the Lead AI Engineers. I take responsibility for having a robust ecosystem for document and webpage ingestion in our platform. I have hands-on experience in .NET, NodeJS, Angular, and Nest JS programming frameworks. Recently, I started loving Kubernetes for its easy deployment and heavy-load bearing capacity.

What do you think about the problem Botminds solve?

I believe everybody should have access to automation. Every organization should grow and produce more opportunities for society. Many heavy manual-intensive processes limit growth and make people lose their peace of mind. The document-centric process is one among them. Very few organization gets the chance to automate its tedious, expensive, and troublesome document-centric process.

The current AI technologies are either highly expensive or too complex to adopt. Organizations spend countless days chasing after the superior technologies so that they can put a full stop to their hassles.

Botminds assists those organizations in setting up an end-to-end automation pipeline in a few hours, without the need for any tech skills. In this perspective, Botminds is democratizing enterprise automation trapped inside the box of complexity. So my thoughts are neatly aligned with Botminds, and this is why I love this journey.

What do you like the most about Botminds?

At Botminds, we see what’s unique in people and nourish them with what they need to thrive. That’s the secret of how people work with real strength in their respective domains. People become experts and distribute their knowledge with other teams.

Also, Botminds continuously take several initiatives to promote a healthy culture that cares about the employees and their well-being. Recently, one of our programs that focussed on our mental wellness is an excellent example of how dedicated is Botminds towards our people.

Last but not least, Wednesday Office Briyani is my favorite. No matter what happens, I never take leave on those days.

Tell us about your 4-year journey in Botminds.

It was a dream-come-true for working in a cutting-edge AI technology startup. I joined Botminds as a front-end developer concentrating only on the design aspects of our platform. Because of my never-ending love for exploring new technologies, I took many more challenging new responsibilities. Within a short time, I was able to come through in many latest tech stacks. I started to realize the sheer growth in my career, grew into a Lead AI Engineer, and contributed to significant breakthroughs at Botminds.

Along with my career growth, I was able to groom my personality as well. I got the opportunity to interact with teammates, diverse in skills, domain, and culture. We play Cricket and Shuttlecock Badminton very frequently. Those events were highly beneficial to me in learning more about people’s true nature, enhancing my leadership qualities.

"I never imagined that one company could have this much impact on my life."

What is your message to junior programmers?

I cannot stress more the importance of logical thinking with my team. I believe we should be a problem solver first then a programmer. Programming is just a tool to solve problems.

Understanding the problem and its consequences, and visualizing the logics for solution first-hand even before touching the IDE can only assure an impactful work.

Having an excellent team in your organization to support & nurture can boost your career growth faster than ever. In that sense, I’m so lucky to have a team comprised of many expert programmers and industry veterans.

What is one achievement that is so close to your heart?

The one achievement that I enjoyed much was when we pushed Botminds platform’s scalability to the extra-ordinary level.

We were working with a few enterprise clients who had a massive volume of documents to process. Our objective is to increase our platform’s scalability multi-fold to support those enterprise clients. We were working relentlessly without realizing the time. I still remember that mid-night before the release date. We uplifted our processing speed to process more than 12,000 documents in a few hours. 4 of us from my team celebrated as if we had won a million-dollar lottery ticket. It was so rewarding because our several month efforts were seen incredibly valuable by our clients.

How can someone join a cutting-edge AI company like Botminds?

I’d highly suggest someone wishing to pursue their career in AI to unleash their creative mindset. More and more new technologies are showing up every day in the field of AI. Building futuristic AI products may require the assistance of multiple tech stacks. Logical thinking would help to understand several new concepts rapidly.

Expertise in Data Science, Python & Neural Networks can guarantee a bright future for AI enthusiasts.

How can people reach out to you for more details?

I’d love to discuss ideas and open to share what I’ve learned from my experience.

You can reach out to me at raja.s@botminds.ai or LinkedIn

Thanks.