"SHPNG SZN"
- Amjad Masad
"SHPNG SZN" is what my boss, Amjad, likes to use to show off any new features we make. It was meant to show our progress over the first few months of 2021, but approaching 6 months in and we're still going, which tells me that as long as you work hard, your progress will never stop. Another reason why I like this quote so much is that it actually originated on my 18th birthday:
SHPNG SZN
— Amjad Masad ⠕ (@amasad) January 29, 2021
The Social Network
2010 Drama/History Movie
The Social Network is a movie about what led up to the founding of Facebook and the struggles which Mark Zuccy went through in the following months and years. The movie itself, rightfully so, paints Mark as a pretentious a**hole. The one thing I like about this movie is the first scene, where after being dumped by his girlfriend, he drunkenly blogs about her while setting up a social network called facesmash. On this site, the end user would choose which of two girls was prettier and over time an algorithm is able to guess what the end user will pick, essentially allowing students of Harvard Univeristy to rank which girls at the University are the hottest. Besides the fact that he broke how many rules hacking into the "facebooks" of various Harvard houses to gather the images, doing so is an unethical thing to do at best. The reason why I like this scene is that he was able to set something up which had such an impact on an over-century-old university, all while bringing down the entire network in a mere two hours and receiving 22,000 requests, a number which is still impressive today for new websites. My description of this scene will probably be better if you watch it yourself here:
Apocalypse Now
1979 War/Drama Movie
Apocalypse Now is a movie from the late 70s which was mainly meant to highlight how absurd the US' involvment in the Korean and Vietnam wars were. It highlighted how the act of going off to these places was going to be "cool" and stuff, but in reality, its just a hellhole. These soldiers weren't there to defend the US or democracy, they were there for the political interests of the United States Government and they carried out rituals and activities which many would, and still do, see as absurd.
Amjad Masad
My Boss
Amjad is my boss, and at the first glance you might think he was a rich kid born and raised in the Bay Area who then used "Daddy's Money" to start Replit, the story is pretty much the oposite in my opinion. Amjad was born and raised in Jordan, which last time I checked was very much not the bay area. I'm not here to reiterate his life story, but more of how he was and is an inspiration to me. He started with pretty much nothing and ever since he came over to the US, he has been working hard to bring access to programming to more people. Starting out as a side project in 2009, Replit evolved into a proper company (circa April 2016) and has grown into a prosperous startup since then. He both directly and indirectly inspired hundreds of thousands or even millions of kids, teens, adults, and even retirees to get into programming. Without him, I wouldn't be where I am today, as I write this sentence on the website he helped create.
