TGB Podcast Episode 1 : Understanding AIs impact on jobs

This week I recorded a podcast. The topic is top of mind - AIs and its impact on jobs. My friend Vishal joined me on the podcast. We talk about AI and its impact on jobs. It's mostly us having a drink and thinking out loud about how AI is disrupting industries, the impact on tech and what the future may look like.

The $460 Million Mistake That Crashed a Wall Street Giant—and What we can learn from it

On the morning of August 1, 2012, Knight Capital - then one of the biggest market maker on Wall Street - deployed new code to its high-speed trading system—but one of eight production servers never got the update. That lone machine started running an old, dormant module called “Power Peg,” flooding the market with errant trades. In just 45 minutes, Knight amassed nearly $7 billion in accidental positions and lost $460 million. It was one of the most expensive software failures in Wall Street history—driven by a rushed deployment, missing checks, legacy code left behind, and no clear plan to roll back. This is the story of how a routine release turned into a company-ending event—and what leaders today can learn from it. Founded in 1995, the Knight Capital Group was the largest market maker in US equities. Knight’s electronic trading group covered more than 19000 securities and it’s high frequency trading algorithms processed a daily trading volume of $20 billions which was 15% of ...

Why Product Quality will be the Ultimate Competitive edge in the AI Era

We live in the zeitgeist of artificial intelligence — where software can be built faster and cheaper than ever before. AI has leveled the playing field, turning anyone with an idea into a potential creator. But in a world where speed and cost are no longer the constraints, what will truly separate the winners from the rest? The classic development trade off — good, fast, or cheap — has long forced teams to pick two at the expense of the third. AI is changing this by enabling development that is both fast and cheap. The pressing question becomes: can AI help us achieve software that is also good ? From idea to prototype, AI empowers teams to deliver solutions quickly, affordably, and with surprisingly high quality. Moving from prototype to Minimum Viable Product (MVP), it’s still possible to maintain the trifecta of Good, Fast and Cheap. However, when aiming for production-ready applications, the stakes rise. Reliability, security, maintainability, and scalability beco...

From Code to Customer: Measuring Software Quality Before Release

“When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric.” - economist Charles Goodhart I feel that every discussion about metrics should mandatorily start with the above word of caution from Goodhart’s law. Metrics should inform decisions, not drive behavior in isolation. Without context, they can easily be gamed or give a false sense of confidence. Alright! With that disclaimer out of the way, lets talk about Quality Metrics for production readiness. What you’ll find here comes from the trenches — lessons from things that worked, things that didn’t, ideas that sounded smart but fell apart at scale, and blind spots I didn’t see until they hit production. I’ve owned software quality across industries like e-commerce, fintech, streaming, and SaaS — in startups, scaleups, and big tech. Your context may vary, but these insights should hit home for most teams shipping software. Why Should We Even Measure Quality? I believe there are three reasons to measure software quali...

Chick-Fil-A One : A crispy mobile app ordering experience

Chick-Fil-A or Popeyes or Shake Shack. The jury is still out on who serves the best chicken sandwich but I am declaring a winner on who has the best mobile app experience. And the champion is Chick-Fil-A. Our phones are inundated with numerous apps. But you hardly come across one that enhances your experience with the product and impresses you so much that you stop for a minute and appreciate the excellent work done the team who built it. Chick-Fil-A One, the fast food restaurant chain's mobile ordering app did it for me. Chick-Fil-A is an intriguing company. Started 75 years ago it is still a family owned business, one of the largest restaurant chains in the US, operates more than 2600 locations, generating revenue of more than $10 billion. They have the highest sale per restaurant unit easily beating giants such as McDonalds, Taco Bell and Subway. Oh and they do this while being mandatorily closed on Sundays. Quite a remarkable feat! How do they do it? The answer...

Time Machine : Pens

Time machines exist. In fact, we all have a few in our lives. Some tucked away in old boxes, some lying in plain sight but ignored and some in forgotten memories. Most of the times, we bump across them while looking for something else. But when we find them, they take us back years in the past and invoke a deep sense of nostalgia. You either smile, laugh or feel sad. And sometimes, all of them at the same time. Pens. I had seen my father always carry one in his pocket without fail. After all, you never knew when you had to fill in one of those numerous paper forms that you get handed at in most Indian establishments — the railways reservation form, the cash withdrawal bank slip or gas cylinder delivery form. With the digitization of most things around us, this ancient writing instrument lost its meaning in our lives pretty fast. Today, we don’t care much about the pen we use. As long as it writes, we are good. We don’t really have a persona...

Food Love : The most controversial Indian dish

Indians love controversy. Be it Modi vs the opposition, Amazon vs Flipkart or Arnab Goswami vs Ravish Kumar. But the biggest and longest running controversy has been a gastronomic one. The Biriyani. Or is it Briyani or Biryani? There you go. People can’t even agree on how to spell it. India is a land of enormity. From the population to the ethnicities. From the languages to the dialects. From the festivals to the faiths. And all this influences the culture and tradition which changes with every 100 kilometers that you travel. And so does the food. This diversity has lent itself to the Biriyani as well, with every region having its own variant that they reckon as the true champion. I will not attempt to make a case for a particular one here, though I have a favorite which I am going to write about here shortly. Diversity in food like most things is a great thing because you get to taste and enjoy all. The Biriyani’s flavors have transcended boundaries and its aroma has permeated the wor...

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