Shuayb Qureshi didn’t know many people in New York, and his work at Meta made it hard for him to find new friends.
So, on a whim, the now-31-year-old software engineer started posting videos on Instagram.
“I’m like, maybe I can record myself doing some sort of stuff like that, talking to strangers,” Qureshi recalled on a recent Saturday in Brooklyn. “I just wanted to express myself socially.”
Qureshi’s videos have racked up millions of views and transformed the once-shy, nerdy coder into an influencer who is now occasionally recognized on the street.
This year, Qureshi shifted from what he described as “tech bro” content to restaurant reviews, for which he dons Meta glasses, enters little-known food joints in Brooklyn and Queens, and asks for whatever the owner recommends.
One video Qureshi made in June, spotlighting a Polish bakery struggling to stay afloat in a competitive market, went viral, garnering over a million views, and helped the owner keep his store open.
“It gives me a natural human high,” Qureshi said.
From Meta burnout to New York influencer
As a child growing up in Kuwait and then Toronto, Qureshi described himself as outgoing. “I would just talk to anyone,” he said.
When he started working at Meta, though, Qureshi said he lost a lot of his “social flow.” He lived in an apartment complex in Menlo Park with several other Meta engineers. The company would send vans to transport them to and from the office each day.
Feeling a strong sense of “imposter syndrome,” Qureshi said he put his head down and worked around the clock to prove he belonged at one of the world’s leading technology companies.
“I was really stressed out,” he recalled. “I forgot what it was like to talk to strangers.”
In this struggle, Qureshi is not alone. Tech workers across the country are feeling higher levels of burnout and lower levels of optimism about future career opportunities. AI, which Qureshi said is now a big part of his job, has also made some engineers feel guilty for creating technology that could undermine thousands of human jobs.
Software engineers are also being laid off at higher rates, including at Meta. In May, the company laid off 8,000 employees, mostly managers and software engineers. That month, Qureshi made a video talking about the stress of hearing rumors about possible layoffs at his company.
“A lot of my routine goals and even my identity is kind of tied to this place,” he says in the video. “When I hear these bum-ass rumors, a part of me is like, yo, what the heck is the point of locking in this hard if I could just get fired?”
For Qureshi, making videos where he talks to random strangers became a way to reclaim some of what he felt he had lost as he built his career in tech.
“It just gets me out of my head,” he said.
Saving a Polish bakery
In many of Qureshi’s videos, the eateries he patronizes appear empty. Qureshi said he typically picks restaurants based on DMs from people who tell him a business needs support. In one case, he said, a lead came after he posted on Reddit.
“Somebody DM’d me saying that, ‘Hey, this restaurant is struggling. Can you go there?'” Qureshi recalled.
The redditor told him to go to a Polish bakery called “Star Deli” on Nassau Street in the North Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint, which its owner said was only months away from closing earlier this summer.
“The situation was very bad,” Zbigniew Stankowski said on a recent Saturday from behind the counter, upon which sat loaves of freshly-baked bread. “The summer was coming. People go on vacation. It was flat.”
“And then, after him,” Stankowski said as he gave Qureshi a playful sock in the shoulder, “it’s much better, much better.”
The first video Qureshi made with “Mr. Z,” as he calls him, has since racked up 1.5 million views and over 100,000 likes. In the video, which Qureshi posted on June 9, Stankowski talks about the difficulties of running a bakery and tries to refuse Qureshi’s tip for a cheesecake purchase.
In a follow-up video posted five days later, Stankowski shakes Qureshi’s hand and appears incredulous that so many people had seen the video.
“People see the story and then they’re attracted to the story,” Qureshi said. “I feel like, you know, my faith in humanity is restored.”
Soon after the videos began to go viral, Qureshi started an online fundraiser for Stankowski to pay for a new freezer, among other upgrades around the store. The fundraiser has since raised over $7,000.
“This guy is so good, man!” Stankowksi said on Saturday.
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