My blog is called ‘Unfiltered Thoughts’, though I have edited my blogposts countless times based on feedback from friends. Every time someone goes “Are you sure you are going to put that?”, I rethink, and sometimes edit. So maybe this blog is like 60% unfiltered thoughts and me calling it ‘Unfiltered Thoughts’ is not correct.

I have tweeted multiple times in the past that I don’t have many strong opinions in life. I don’t identify as a liberal or as someone from the right. I have my own position on a lot of issues, few well thought out, a few: what people might call slightly unhinged, and none on others.

I will tweet out one day that Naval’s thoughts on happiness changed my life while the next day I will shitpost about something he tweeted. The first does not make me a simp of Naval, the second does not make me a hater. Nor am I a Warikoo bot as people would like you to believe.

I talk about 2021 being the best time to be in tech. People are getting roles with 2-3 years of experience that took people 10 years earlier. But there is another post about most SPMs today not even being actual PMs, but glorified project managers.

I recently tweeted that web3 is a great equalizer: people sitting in tier 3 colleges are getting 100K offers because there is a dearth of web3 devs. The same evening I also tweeted that UPI is actually web4 and scalability in web3 is a joke. The same night I might have brainstormed with friends on potential ideas in the web3 space, followed by DMing a friend that a lot of people will burn their hands when the eventual price correction comes in cryptoland.

Am I bullish or bearish on web3?

Does it matter?

I don’t consider myself a web3 bull or a bear. I don’t like putting labels on myself. Once you put a label on yourself, you fall a victim to path dependence and your identity becomes justifying that label.

I have been skeptical about web3 in the past, but if I can convince myself that it is the future, I won’t think twice before jumping ship.

I will talk about Adhaar’s lack of security and all the leaks that has happened one year, a few years later I will say that it has greatly improved my life. It does not seem contradictory to me.

I will write about VCs’ relentless enthusiasm on Twitter and the cheap interest rates leading to frothy valuation, while also telling my entrepreneur friends to use this opportunity to accumulate capital. This is once in a decade market I tell them. Do I want a correction in valuations of Indian startups or do I want the one unicorn/ a week times to continue?

Will me wanting something make it happen?

I think people who have really strong opinions on things tend to relentlessly drive their agenda and lose the ability to think clearly. Relentless optimism makes money and is a good career strategy, but it does not lead to truth seeking. I am happy to change my opinion based on fresh data. Also tweet out multiple things that might seem contrary to each other.

I don’t have analytics on my website. You won’t find any link to my Twitter from this website. I like to think I don’t care about my Twitter, I am beyond distribution games, and I write for the sake of putting my thoughts across. But while writing my Group Product Manager promotion packet, I did go to similarweb and got the traffic info. Just so that I could write “Manas Saloi is a product thought leader whose website gets 200K visits per month. He has mentored dozens of PMs in the industry and advises startups.”

Why did I do that? Because for promotion to a GPM level, you have to show impact beyond Gojek. Even though I might not care about visits to my website, atleast enough for that to influence the kind of content I put out, I am happy to use the website analytics data if that helps me in my career growth.

I joke about people playing distribution games on Twitter but I also tweet out shitposts that I know will get a few laughs, and in turn, likes.

I think of it as holding multiple thoughts in my head; not all of them coherent. I might contradict myself from time to time. I am fine with it.

Does this make me a hypocrite? Yes, maybe.

Within 2 hours of meeting a friend yesterday, he managed to convince me that I am also signalling like the rest of them, my signal being that I can tweet out of free will, avoid group think, and my takes are more rigorously thought out. In the end I am also playing status games. Maybe the fact that I am writing a blogpost called ‘Am I a hypocrite?’ is also signalling. And I agree.

I also have far more honest discussions with my friends than the average person as they know I won’t bullshit and share surface level politically correct takes. I am who I am: rough on the edges, aware enough to know when I am bullshitting. I realised the benefit of posting takes like these much later in life, when I suddenly found very smart (and somewhat successful) people reach out to me on Twitter and wanting to have honest discussions about the things I post online.

Again, not the most optimal strategy for career growth. Ideally you would not want to burn any bridges, but following my Twitter strategy of optimising on bluntless can definitely help you make new friends who share a similiar worldview.

My POW(Proof Of Work) page is to signal that I don’t merely ship shitposts, I ship high impact projects too.

I have been honest about not being consistent with my thoughts. I have changed my mind on a bunch of things.

As this tweet states, there is no alpha in ideological consistency. All of us are hypocrites at some level. But I at least try to understand my hypocrisy and my biases. Go deeper on why I am the way I am. Why I believe what I believe. 

I recommend you all to do the same. If you have a strong opinion, then ask why. See if you can argue the opposite side. 

I constantly tweet about Wanting and The elephant in the brain, and others. Go to the Meta reading section here. These books will draw a visceral reaction from you. They are not pleasant to read.

Go deeper beyond the initial visceral reaction and you will have a deeper understanding of the world.