Compliments of Goji

Professional

Mentees

“Thanks for being a great mentor to [X]…., I know that [X] really looks up to you and learned a lot from you.” — manager of a mentee.

“Your mentorship through this past year has meant the world to me. I’ve been able to learn so much from you and you really picked me up when I was struggling the most … You’re always so generous in sharing your wisdom, both professional and personal.” — mentee

“Thanks to … Gaurav Sood [and others] for spending so much time sharing your wisdom with me. Our conversations helped me think much more clearly about my career path and life direction.” —- mentee

“Thanks for all the incredible tips and fantastic insights you always provide!” — mentee

“Your advice a couple [of] years back ended up paying dividends.” — mentee in academia

“As a father, I cannot express my gratitude for how you mentored [my daughter]” — dad of an intern.

“I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to ask me about my interests and point me to authors, papers, and books that relate to them.” — intern

“I’ve learned an immense amount from [gaurav] and will forever be in debt.  Your propensity to share knowledge and put people over work makes you one of the best leaders I’ve worked with.” — intern

Teaching

” thank you again for the course… I really enjoyed it as you made it so interesting and thought-provoking.” — student of an MLE course

Colleagues

“I am also very grateful that I (we) got to work with a smart and passionate leader like you. Thank you for your immense contribution to [] — to our product, our culture, and our team (especially putting together our datascience team from scratch).” — CTO

“It’s been absolutely wonderful working with you, and I truly enjoy and appreciate you.” — CEO
“I will truly miss working with you and all our wonderful conversations.” — VP, Eng.

“…thanks for your incredible efforts at [] and your guidance as a leader, colleague, and friend.” — ex-colleague
“Really appreciate working with you! Learn a lot from your leadership and knowledge!” — colleague

Thank you so much for all the conversations, giving me the inspiration and the support throughout! Thanks for being such a delight to work with!” — colleague

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You’ve single-handedly turned [my org.] from a data disaster to a data powerhouse ” — colleague

“You are very missed…” — ex-colleague

“Thank you for being a supportive and awesome manager.” — colleague

“I honestly appreciate your transparency and for keeping me in the loop of everything! … I believe I have A LOT to learn from you and am looking forward to do[ing] so.” — colleague

“Thank you for always providing honest feedback and having my back – I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.” — colleague

“I deeply appreciate the guidance and mentorship you’ve given me.” — colleague

“Gaurav is incredibly smart and very encouraging. He has an amazing ability to find the crux of an issue quickly and ask relevant and challenging questions to get at the heart of the issue and help you formulate a solution to the problem. Gaurav is also incredibly kind which makes him a pleasure to work with.” — private feedback to my manager shared anonymously by my manager with me

“Gaurav is a thoughtful and visionary leader, developing and mentoring junior members within and outside his pod. He has a good understanding of people, incentives, and organizations in general. I think Convoy is very lucky to have him.” — private feedback to my manager shared anonymously by my manager with me

“Gaurav is an exceptionally talented scientist with a deep understanding of both the business and the science driving it. I have found him to have extraordinary clarity of thought when it comes to the business and a very clear way of communicating it both directly and with storytelling. He is also our most talented experienced ML scientist despite being a manager.” — private feedback to my manager shared anonymously by my manager with me

“You are a great collaborator and you have helped us by sharing your knowledge in the ML space. You have helped by providing great insights, nudged us in the right direction and you’ve been very patient through the process of us learning to build our first ML model. Some of the insights you shared with us – the right way to frame the ranking problem, evaluating the model performance in the context of our ranking problem, pitfalls to consider when running the model in production, etc., have helped immensely to accelerate in our path to getting the first model out.” —  colleague

“Gaurav’s ability to distill extremely complex topics into simplistic conversations is unparalleled. This ability, which is rare at Microsoft, has allowed him to land ideas with non-tech/non-engineering partners that would otherwise have swirled for many months. Additionally, Gaurav approaches conversations with an optimistic lens that helps others around him bring a positive attitude.” —- colleague

“You truly brought out the best in me, and I know it’s true for several others at the company. You meet people where they are and put everyone at ease. You pushed me just the right amount, counseled me gently, and always had my best interest in mind through everything. I can count on one hand the number of people like that I have met in a work environment.” — colleague

“I wanted to write [to] you and thank you (again) for all the mentorship you have provided me.” — colleague

“[T]hank you so much for everything. your mentorship and support really made this experience stand out from anywhere else I’ve worked in the past. i am truly appreciative!!” — intern at the company

“Just got the lattice review packet and yours was the best feedback I got with clear action items! Thank you so much for taking the time here, really helpful for me [Heart emoji]” — colleague

“It was always excellent talking to you – I’ve rarely met someone as thoughtful, insightful, and intelligent as you. I’m glad to have at least gotten to meet and spend some time with you.” — colleague in a different group

“I learn[ed] a lot from the various discussions that you started on slack or otherwise. I really appreciate the effort you took to organi[z]e the session on Problem Solving With Data, learnt a lot from it. Very few people have the motivation to share knowledge with colleagues as you had, couldn’t thank you enough for this. Will always remember your infectious curiosity.” — colleague in a different group

Startup Advisees

“You know a lot of things about a lot of things! And that too in-depth. That’s a rarity.” — startup founder

“You blew me away, the first talk with your intellectual rigor and readiness to dive into the product, branding, and market. One of the most helpful things was prioritizing what needs to get done and strategies to get there. And recruiting!

You also been instrumental in helping me reflect on opportunities in challenges. After each one of our calls, I leave with at least one new insight or an action that I knew in the back of my mind I should take but didn’t commit to. Thanks for being a catalyst and mentor for the entire team.” — startup founder

“I want to thank you again for your feedback. It was clear that you took the time to explore our product and give us poignant comments. You also brought up great value proposition questions that we are currently working on with our marketing site. We all enjoyed the conversation and are excited to act on your observations.” —- feedback on feedback on a start-up
“I appreciate how you approach framing and thinking about problems.”—tech. lead at a startup

Writing

“You certainly have a keen literary sensibility… and you write beautifully yourself.”
Bapsi Sidhwa commenting on the review of “City of Sin and Splendour.”

“Thanks for that essay … which was beautifully written.”
Saira Wasim commenting on an article on Contemporary Art.

“…I wish I was capable of holding so many levels and details of argument in my head and maintaining the balance among them.”
Paul Sniderman on an essay.

“The paper is extremely well written …”
Anonymous reviewer on Motivated Learning or Motivated Responding? Using Incentives to Distinguish Between the Two Processes

Research

“… a real contribution to the literature.”
Ed Haertel on Guessing and Forgetting: A Latent Class Model for Measuring Learning

“This is the most important paper I’ve read in a while.”
Gabriel Lenz on The Parties in our Heads: Misperceptions About Party Composition and Their Consequences

“This is an outstanding paper, and I don’t often say that of manuscripts that I review. Well-written and chock full of carefully designed survey experiments.”
An anonymous reviewer commenting on The Parties in our Heads: Misperceptions About Party Composition and Their Consequences

“Very clever work — I like the combination of the two databases and analyses (including the hand-checking of 100 sampled at random).”
Donald Green on Propagation of Error

“Very elegant and nicely done.  I like the writing a lot.” — Jon Krosnick on The Face of Crime in Prime Time.

Reviews

“Thanks [Gaurav]. I really appreciate all your comments and discussions from which I also got a deeper understanding of mixture models.” — Gary

Personal

“I deeply admire your commitment to using knowledge generated through the social sciences for the betterment of society. ” — Ed Haertel, who is an inspiration to me and many others in how he conducts himself in life. There is no better feeling than hearing a good word from people you admire.

“…i think so highly of you.” — Paul Sniderman

Newsletter

Compliments for the newsletter.

“Goji Berries is always interesting. I enjoy it very much.” — Shane Frasier

“Very interesting[!]” — Ian O’Flynn

“Thanks, Gaurav–Always brings a smile (or several).” — Ed Haertel

“Thanks, Gaurav–I appreciate your fresh, novel marshaling of information–Always raises my consciousness!” — Ed Hartel