Articles and thoughts on software, leadership, and life by Tejas Kumarhttps://tej.as/https://tej.as/blog/2020-in-review/https://tej.as/blog/2020-in-review/A month-by-month look back at my 2020: the friends, family, and small moments that made a pandemic year worth being thankful for.Fri, 01 Jan 2021 17:15:40 GMThttps://tej.as/blog/5-things-i-love-about-my-website/https://tej.as/blog/5-things-i-love-about-my-website/I walk through five things I love about my website, including automatic dark mode, Next.js server rendering, whimsy, and GitHub as my backend.Mon, 20 Jan 2020 18:05:54 GMThttps://tej.as/blog/biggest-lessons-2024-honor-people-fear-failure/https://tej.as/blog/biggest-lessons-2024-honor-people-fear-failure/Dissecting honor, what it takes to overcome trauma, how to heal from the fear of failure and prioritize relationships.Sat, 28 Dec 2024 18:36:52 GMThttps://tej.as/blog/coding-nights-weekends-good-work-life-balance/https://tej.as/blog/coding-nights-weekends-good-work-life-balance/I love coding on nights and weekends because it's my favorite hobby. It only becomes a problem when it turns into a god or an expectation.Sun, 22 Dec 2024 19:27:38 GMThttps://tej.as/blog/goodbye-facebook/https://tej.as/blog/goodbye-facebook/Why I'm deleting Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp: FOMO, lost time, and engagement algorithms that radicalize people. I'm moving to Signal instead.Mon, 11 Jan 2021 14:09:01 GMThttps://tej.as/blog/health-fitness-devrel-hemophilia/https://tej.as/blog/health-fitness-devrel-hemophilia/A deeply personal post about my health journey and how it's affected my fitness, devrel work, and more.Sat, 03 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://tej.as/blog/hello-world/https://tej.as/blog/hello-world/My first post here: a quick hello world I published to make sure the blog works. The real writing starts after this one.Mon, 13 Jan 2020 13:36:14 GMThttps://tej.as/blog/how-long-should-a-keynote-speaker-speak/https://tej.as/blog/how-long-should-a-keynote-speaker-speak/A keynote runs 20 to 45 minutes, most often 30. What the attention research really says, what conferences schedule, and how to use the slot you get.Mon, 14 Sep 2026 18:30:00 GMThttps://tej.as/blog/how-to-grow-professional-relationships-tjs-model/https://tej.as/blog/how-to-grow-professional-relationships-tjs-model/My TJS model maps professional relationships across seven states, from zero-sum competition to toxic enmeshment, and why collaboration is the peak.Thu, 28 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://tej.as/blog/impact-pillars-web-engineering/https://tej.as/blog/impact-pillars-web-engineering/I break down the four pillars of impact for web engineers: emotional, social, creative, and technical, and how to grow each one over time.Thu, 10 Mar 2022 20:37:25 GMThttps://tej.as/blog/note-app-ai-benchmark-apple-intelligence-sucks/https://tej.as/blog/note-app-ai-benchmark-apple-intelligence-sucks/Apple Intelligence refused my voice note, so I benchmarked 11 AI models on it. A cheap one beat the frontier and my phone's Qwen made things up.Wed, 08 Jul 2026 06:56:00 GMThttps://tej.as/blog/what-i-learned-from-getting-pushed-off-my-bicycle/https://tej.as/blog/what-i-learned-from-getting-pushed-off-my-bicycle/A blog post about things I learned after being randomly attacked on the streets of Berlin when a stranger pushed me off my bicycle.Wed, 15 Jan 2020 08:56:36 GMThttps://tej.as/blog/what-is-an-agent-harness/https://tej.as/blog/what-is-an-agent-harness/An agent harness is everything around an AI model that grounds it in reality: tools, context, guardrails, the loop and verification. How to build one.Mon, 14 Sep 2026 09:47:55 GMThttps://tej.as/blog/what-is-good-taste-in-software/https://tej.as/blog/what-is-good-taste-in-software/Good taste in software is a trainable skill: judging quality against external standards. 6 practice protocols, with the research under each one.Sun, 20 Sep 2026 10:00:00 GMThttps://tej.as/blog/why-i-do-not-prefer-speaking-at-remote-conferences/https://tej.as/blog/why-i-do-not-prefer-speaking-at-remote-conferences/Why I'd rather not speak at virtual conferences during COVID-19: the hallway conversations are the point, and video calls lose that connection.Mon, 16 Mar 2020 16:36:28 GMThttps://tej.as/blog/why-i-think-remote-work-is-incredible/https://tej.as/blog/why-i-think-remote-work-is-incredible/Two months into my first fully remote job, I compare it with office life: deeper focus, better health, and the sleep rhythm trap I had to fix.Mon, 27 Jan 2020 13:40:59 GMT