Kalvium | SDE2/Sr. Software Engineer | Bangalore, India (HYBRID)
If you have a CS degree from India, you know the problem: our education system is outdated. We've fixed it. Kalvium is the B.Tech CS degree you always wanted, leveraging GenAI to power a self-directed curriculum. We run in 22+ universities. We've built our company in a bootstrapped, "default alive" way.
Our engineering team is a core group of about 15. We're looking for someone to distill and implement insights from the finest pedagogy experts.
You'll thrive here if you are a high-ownership individual ready to grow at full speed, value learning above other factors, and want the fastest path to growth (We have a two-quarter promotion policy), you are fully committed to transforming higher education (missionary, not mercenary).
Work Mode: Hybrid - Bangalore. 9 AM to 6 PM, 6 days a week. Product/engineering is in the office Wednesdays and Saturdays.
Pay: SDE2: ₹14L (Base + bonus), Sr-Lead: ₹19L-30L (Base + bonus), ESOPs based on interview and experience.
Experience: SDE2/3/4: 1.5–5 years (launched and maintained 1 product end to end), SDE3: 3+ years (launched/maintained multiple products). Beyond these - reach out anyway, and we can see if any other role fits. Lead: 4+, currently a successful IC, and you aspire to take on engineering management duties.
We run one in India (kalvium.com). The key differentiation is to being real world work for students for upto 6 semesters, leading to extended hands on learning.
The object notation format that's going to win is the one that's going to maximally support LLM output. I've come across BAML before, but it's not widely used for some reason.
Today JSON is winning, but for more complex structures, there's still syntax issues in output. XML does reasonably well (given the deep react jsx/HTML in the training corpos), so perhaps that will make a comeback.
Are there benchmarks on this? I think the SOTA models are fine -- they can work with most models, but the fun is that models that are 90% of SOTA performance and cost 90% less - which output format do they work best with. This is where the winner will be found.
TLDR: probably JSON or XML will remain the config format for a while.
Maybe some of them were preventable, but if it was in place attackers would easily adapt to fool the automated systems and we would be back at status quo.
>without reproducible build you can't independently verify anything.
This is myth propagated by reproducible builds people. Byte for byte similarity is not required to detect a Trojan was injected into one.
The project that would take months got done in a weekend, per the author's own direct estimate.
I've experienced the same - contributing a very large PR to a golang project (without knowing or having worked with the language prior). I did it because I could talk through abstractions, be willing to down dead ends (1:3 ratio for every meaningful feature), and be OK with the fun of redoing. Once you are able to do this, you literally become a 10X engineer when measured by working output.
If this process of trying and discarding 2 out of every 3 approaches sounds distasteful, you will not truly discover the deeper joys of working with the SOTA LLMs.
I'm part of the Jain community in Bangalore, and the version of this in society exists, called Sallekhna [1], a tradition that's developed over millennia, and this is venerated and celebrated.
The philosophical underpinning is giving up of materialness. The practicality of the 5 instances that I witnessed over the past year - typical terminal individuals choose this. They pass away surrounded by loved ones (they typically medicate for any pain, and the body starts shutting down when food and water stops). This is observed with somberness, but celebrated as very positive act.
When someone starts this process, it's a unique experience speaking with them, as there's usually nothing that comes up, and the moment does not really lend itself to small talk :)
Thank you for sharing this. My grandpa passed away earlier this year at the young age of 97. We discovered a kidney cancer and decided not to treat him and bring him back home.
During his final days, he became unresponsive, only sleeping. The doctors gave us the option of feeding him through a tube. We made the hard decision of not doing it. Gave him all the medicine to help his body heal, but no invasive procedures.
We stayed by his side for the next 5 days. Playing songs that he enjoyed. Audiobooks that he loved. And just taking care of him.
Finally, his breath became slower and slower until it stopped and he passed away. I had the opportunity of being beside him during his last breath.
The passing of loved ones is always difficult, but I am grateful for how he went. He lived a full life and was incredibly healthy until the end.
Without knowing, we decided on a sallekhana-like process for him. It was the right thing to do.
This is essentially what hospice is in the US. They stop curative treatment and focus on comfort. Then at the end when the person can no longer function to eat or drink they increase the morphine dose to a high level until they pass.
Right. It's a not-so-well-kept secret that hospice care is actually assisted suicide in disguise. It's done with a wink and a nudge, hiding behind the principle of double effect, but it's a mercy everyone knows is happening. It's sad that it has to be done covertly.
There are many who will raise their hands with anecdotal counters to this, but I think much of that is borne from misunderstandings about end of life generally, which is a charged and difficult topic lots of people would rather not learn more about.
I highly recommend the book Being Mortal by Atul Gawande for anyone who wants to explore the topic further—or really for anyone who has loved ones at all!
Which is highly illegal, especially as a form of monetizing pain and lack of agency from elders incapable of decision making but flush with money and inheritors
Apparently you can (almost) do it unintentionally if you play tennis in the heat—though 88oz (2.6L) seems like a lot!
Here’s a case report:
Hakimian, J., Goldbarg, S. H., Park, C. H., & Kerwin, T. C. (2014). Death by Coconut. Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology, 7(1), 180–181. https://doi.org/10.1161/circep.113.000941
Jainism developed in India which did have access to these. Regardless, until the early modern period painkillers and other medical treatment was blanket disapproved of as it was considered likely to be damaging some part of the body. (My non-expert understanding).
Hard fast (e.g. hunger strikes) usually take about 2 months to kill a healthy adult.
On the one hand according to the wiki this is more progressive removing food by degrees which would make the process a lot longer.
On the other hand being a mostly ascetic practice I'd assume it's done by people who have a lot less reserves (body fat and muscle) which would shorten the process significantly (the 207kg Angus Barbieri famously fasted continuously for 382 days[0] breaking his fast at 82kg, although he supplemented his liquids — water, tea, and coffee — with vitamins, electrolytes, and yeast extract, the latter for essential amino acids).
[0]: technically he was put on a recovery diet of salting then sugaring his water for 10 days, so ate no solid food for 392 days, breaking his fast with a boiled egg and a slice of buttered bread
Our engineering team is a core group of about 15. We're looking for someone to distill and implement insights from the finest pedagogy experts.
You'll thrive here if you are a high-ownership individual ready to grow at full speed, value learning above other factors, and want the fastest path to growth (We have a two-quarter promotion policy), you are fully committed to transforming higher education (missionary, not mercenary).
Work Mode: Hybrid - Bangalore. 9 AM to 6 PM, 6 days a week. Product/engineering is in the office Wednesdays and Saturdays.
Pay: SDE2: ₹14L (Base + bonus), Sr-Lead: ₹19L-30L (Base + bonus), ESOPs based on interview and experience.
Experience: SDE2/3/4: 1.5–5 years (launched and maintained 1 product end to end), SDE3: 3+ years (launched/maintained multiple products). Beyond these - reach out anyway, and we can see if any other role fits. Lead: 4+, currently a successful IC, and you aspire to take on engineering management duties.
Tech Stack: Broadly GCP/Node.js/Next.js/React/Postgres.
Contact: Send an email to my first name @kalvium.com if you'd like to take on this mission