149: Workflow Engines with Sanjay Siddhanti

Programming Throwdown

At scale, anything we build is going to involve people. Many of us have personal schedules and to-do lists, but how can we scale that to hundreds or even thousands of people? When you file a help ticket at a massive company like Google or Facebook, ever wonder how that ticket is processed? Sanjay Siddhanti, Akasa’s Director of Engineering, is no slouch when it comes to navigating massive workflow engines – and in today’s episode, he shares his experiences in bioinformatics, workflows, and more with us.

00:00:39 Workflow engine definitions

00:01:40 Introductions

00:02:24 Sanjay’s 8th grade programming experience

00:05:28 Bioinformatics

00:10:29 The academics-vs-industry dilemma

00:16:52 Small company challenges

00:18:18 Correctly identifying when to scale

00:24:04 The solution Akasa provides

00:31:38 Workflow engines in detail

00:36:02 ETL frameworks

00:45:06 The intent of integration construction

00:47:13 Delivering a platform vs delivering a solution

00:50:04 Working within US medico-legal frameworks

00:53:28 Inadvertent uses of API calls

00:55:47 Working in Akasa

00:57:09 Interning in Akasa

00:58:35 Farewells

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sanjay:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/siddhantis
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjaysiddhanti/

Akasa:

• Website: https://www.akasa.com
• Sanjay’s Q&A https://akasa.com/blog/10-questions-for-sanjay-siddhanti-director-of-engineering-at-akasa/
• Careers: https://akasa.com/careers/
• Interning: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/research-intern-ai-spring-summer-2023-at-akasa-3206403183/

References:

• Episode 33: Design Patterns:
  • https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2014/05/episode-33-design-patterns.html
• The Mythical Man-Month:
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month

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