Hi, I'm Venkatesh Patnala.

I grew up in Andhra Pradesh, studying at Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya.

At IIT Jodhpur, mechanical was the degree but I liked computer science (maybe it's easier to build). Second year we started shipping real systems. An internship at Aspiro showed me what software is. I liked the invisible work, the kind nobody notices until it breaks.

Since April 2025 I've been a backend engineer at Cars24, working on high-volume data flows: listings, pricing pipelines, event-driven workflows that have to stay consistent under load.

And yes — for the last 3 years I've been living in Gurugram, Haryana, swimming to office in the monsoons.

The "should you use AI" question bores me. The real question is how much I use.

I reach for AI on most of my work, trying to automate the flows that need less attention — a summary of stock news at 9 AM, a summary of office work and meetings at 10 AM. I use it to find the missing edge case, to write test cases, to test flows — not only to write code.

The pattern that works: AI handles the shape, I handle the architecture and intent. It writes the first version, I do the critical read. Working code isn't production-ready code, and maybe not clean code either.

• Get genuinely good at distributed systems — intuit CAP tradeoffs, not memorise them.
• Checking how much I can automate with AI.
• Write more, and more honestly.

I read a lot — mostly nonfiction. I travel when I can.

What I'm reading, watching, or where I went last — it's all on /life.