[Techie Tuesdays] Android Guru Amrit Sanjeev

Work-Life balance is a much talked about concept but in the life of a successful software professional, the scales are tipped very much towards the work side. Add to the vibrant software community that Bangalore houses, these same professionals have at least 5 different events to go to on any given weekend to speak about concepts and techniques that they have mastered.

Today’s Techie Tuesday is one who has taken this Work-Life balance concept to a whole new level. At work, one would think he is a workaholic and if you didn’t know him well enough you would think that he doesn’t have a personal life. Along with maintaining a high level of competency with respect to his profession, earning him the reputation of a superstar at every organization where he’s worked for and he also regularly shares his vast knowledge to

the software ecosystem at multiple events and meetups. Along with many other insignificant accomplishments, such as co-authoring books, being the youngest engineer to hold very senior positions at various large MNCs, Amrit Sanjeev is best known among his friends, for being one of the worlds best fathers.“American Style Geek”

Amrit proudly admits to being a geek. “I loved computers from a very young age. I think I was in 9th standard when there was this one time that I couldn’t get something to work. My father introduced me to the computer admin of his company to help me out with my issue. So I went to him with a floppy disk with my program in it and he saw many files in it. So he asked me ‘how many lines of code are actually there?’ and I said ‘about 10000’ and he asked me to come and see him the next day. That night he called my parents and asked them to encourage me in what I was doing as he thought I had some talent in this area.” Amrit says that he always understood languages quite well, but college taught him more about algorithms and data structures.

Along with being an exceptional coder, Amrit has an unquenchable zeal to learn. Even after all these years of coding experience, he still dedicates a lot of time to learning. As an early adopter of Android, this very zeal to learn made him the youngest architect for the Android Platform Development for IBM in the world.

Amrit’s love for Mobility has resulted in him amassing a vast amount of knowledge in the field, making him hot property for organizations looking to hire Mobility Experts. In sharing this knowledge, Amrit is one of the most approachable developers we have ever met. He often says, “there are no stupid questions; there are only stupid answers.”

The Android Affair and the Bangalore Android User Group

Early 2007 2009 (BAUG was started in 2009), Amrit got acquainted with the Bangalore Android User Group, which today is one of the largest meetups in the world for the technology. As one of the founding members of the meetup, Amrit is known in Bangalore and the Indian software community as an Android expert. Ranging from talks on UI and UX on apps to more technical topics such as Google Cloud Messaging Amrit covers a number of technologies with ease but maintains a heavy emphasis on user experience and user interfaces. He says, “You might have the world best algorithms running for you, but if your app looks and feels bad, then not many people are going to use it. One of the main reasons why an app stays on a phone is because it looks good. Many developers aren’t doing this right and I feel that they should take this more seriously if they want their apps to succeed in the market.”Amrit has 2 apps on the Android Play Store, one of which he built along with his friend in his free time. “One of my apps Pitara is a deals app. In this app you’ll see that there are no graphics or pictures. Everything is typography. It has got great fonts and colour schemes and has done pretty well in the market.”

Amrit’s other app is a news reader. Paperboy has been one of our App Friday’s and in our review of the app, we have mentioned how fast it is and more specifically about its gorgeous looks.

Testimonials

Of the many friends that Amrit has made over the years, we caught up with two of his best friends and they had this to say about him -

“Amrit’s biggest project is his daughter. How he finds time to do everything else that he does is still a mystery to us. He works a full time job, goes to all these events to speak, builds great apps and runs a community, it is really amazing how he finds the time to do all of these things. As a professional, Amrit knows many technologies and he knows them very well. For most guys, learning and mastering one thing is a big deal, but then you have people like Amrit. But like I said, his biggest abilities is the way he manages his time.” - Soham Mondal

“If you didn’t know Amrit personally you’d think he’s a workaholic. But at home, he’s the perfect dad and husband. And if you look at his app (PaperBoy), it is amazing to think that one guy has done all this.” - Ravi Vyas

We hope more people are inspired by Amrit. While everyone might not be gifted with his coding abilities, his time management, professionalism and his zeal to learn are things people can emulate. 

You can follow him on Twitter @amsanjeev and read his blog.