Trek to Thadiyandamol Part 3

The second day just all about relaxing and having fun.. Early morning we took a walk along the estate within which the homestay was located. Then after having breakfast, we went to visit Cheluvara falls.

There took a dip in the waterfalls, it felt like heaven. Enjoyed it the most, We was there for around 2 hrs  then headed back to the homestay. We then packed our belongings and set out towards Bangalore. Before that we thought of having a good old Coorg meal and stopped at a hotel in Virajpet.

The food was great, the location was great, in the heart of Coorg, the feeling was just awesome. Then we started from Virajpet towards Bangalore. All through the journey we were chit chatting talking about loads of stuffs. I ended up talking with almost all people in my cab also the neighboring cab, including drivers. So all in all it was great.

For tea we stopped at Maddur tiffany;s and then it was my drop at Kengeri around 7 30pm..

The two days went like a rocket. Met loads of new people which was the best part and walked few kilometers, which was even more fun.

Cheers,

Trek to Thadiyandamol Part 2

Continued from post 1

I was asleep after 2am in the morning, and was awake around 5 30 am. The reason being we had lot our way. Incidentally, the road which the co-ordinator used to take to reach the home stay was dug up for repairs and we tried taking alternate roads, but landed at the same place everytime.

But with the help of GPS, somehow we could track down the homestay finally, at 6 15 am.

We all introduced ourselves and one by one, everyone got up to freshen themselves. Finally around 9 am everyone was ready, finished our breakfast, which was some Kodagu food, the name of which I hardly remember and we started after having our packed lunch. Since the trek starting point was around good 5-10 kms from the homestay, we travelled by the van.

The trekking group was kind a fun, we had people from all age groups from 11 year old to a 50 year old. There were two instructors / co-ordinators.

The trek to Thadiyandamol was kind of fun, initial stretch was a plain road with no inclines. I had carried my D90 on this trek, and believe me it was a big big distraction while walking. In the month of december with lot of dry areas, there were no good photo captures (as usual). But all way long, I was lagging behind, just because, I was trying to take photos every now and then.

After 3-4 hours of trekking we reached the peak. It was kind of nice achievement, because the last time I went to trek was almost a decade back. I do not even exercise regularly. I really thanked God, that the trek to KP was cancelled, else I would have suffered.

And we came back the same day to the homestay and evening was kind of total fun. On the way somewhere in Virajpet couple of guys got down to get tapioca chips. It was tasting too good.. Bad that I did not get some.

Once we reached the homestay, we had tea coffee, cakes, and other delicacies.

Needless to say that day, I ate as if I had not eaten in generations.

And then there was campfire. That day, I slept in the open on the homestay terrace and under the starts. It was too good. The gates of the homestay was open, anything could have come onto the terrace. But still I was hesitant and slept in the open. 5-6 other guys too slept in the open..

Then next day woke up at 6 am and the rest part, I will post it sooon as part 3...

Cheers,

How I reduced my Facebook usage and saved countless hours.

Disclaimer - This post is all about MY usage of a Social Networking Site and it is not meant to offend anybody.

The year dates back to 2010. Before 2010 I was using orkut. I did not take much interest in facebook till then. The story starts in the month of July 2010, I was in Singapore, I had accepted an offer from a company over there, and one of my house mate told me, facebook is more popular than orkut these days. I simply said ok and told to myself, let me have a facebook account myself.

Within couple of months, I had accepted loads of friend requests, though I was kind of hesitant to send a friendship request to anyone, and to this date I am still hesitant. Then I started to travel within Singapore and started posting many pictures and also started going through what other people are doing via Facebook.

Through the next one year till August 2011, I started using more and more facebook, the primary reasons being.

1. Internet was kind a cheap in Singapore and I had no restrictions on my usage.
2. I had countless number of hours to spend, as I was alone, and each day, I needed some company in the form of Internet / facebook / blogs.
3. I found friends to chat on facebook and many people were like me, who stayed in different countries away from family and they too needed to kill time. It was a perfect match.
4. I was more interested in kinda boasting by posting different pictures ( I guess human tendency ).

Finally in the year August 2011, when I thought I had enough of working in Singapore, I left my job and came back to India. Initial two months, I did not check facebook. Coz I had no job and people knew I had relocated to Bangalore. In order to hide myself, I stayed away from Facebook.

Then once I found a job in Bangalore, I was again back on facebook, and this time I had enough enthusiasm to travel to many places in and around Bangalore, I started posting updates pictures etc etc.

But soon I tried to communicate with few of my older engineering classmates on facebook by leaving them a message, pinging them on chat etc etc. It was by the way after many many years. These are the same guys who had sent me a FB friendship request and now did not even reply to my messages.

Then I realized, all this is social networking is a gimmick. I wanted to shut down my account and never visit it. But I had seen couple of guys who deleted their account and within a month they were back.

So I had to do something where in I still had my account enabled, (because, I had many many photos uploaded into it. ) and yet spend lesser time on it.

The main reasons which told me to use lesser facebook are...

1. I had loads of other things to do in India, playing PC games, watching TV, listening to radio, movies books, cleaning my room, coding etc etc. So chosing FB over these was like letting myself down.

2. Internet in India is slow, and is priced. I still have a restriction of 1GB download limit. So I had to stop.

3. I was no more alone, I had loads of people around me, spending time in virtual world was no more necessary.

So my goals were these.

1. Retain my FB account -
    coz of loads of pics uploaded, I had loads of travel plans, I wanted to show atleast few people know about my photos if not all..

2. Spend lesser time on FB.

So I went about thinking what to do, and found out the main reason I spent more time on FB was because of other people's posts, their updates, their photos. If I could cut them out on focus on only a few people's updates, I thought I could save time and indeed I was right.

Out of the 100 friends I had on FB at that time, I put 85+ of them on RESTRICTED LIST. So that they do not get my updates.

On the other hand, I unchecked their news feed, so that my wall gets lesser posts, lesser downloads and lesser time.

It worked. I no more had to see other people's updates, and I no more had to tell them what I was doing as I was least interested (Remember, they did not reply to my messages on FB). My Facebook WALL is CLEAR !

All in all its a win win situation. I spend may be 10-20 mins each day on FB checking on updates of my trekking group , and other few people who share similar interests, may be 20 odd. For rest all its like bye bye . And believe me, its almost more than one year, till now nobody has asked me, " why don't I get your updates. ". Cheez I am happy.

Cheers.

Trek to Thadiyandamol Part 1

My trek to Thadiyandamol Part 1

I love to go for a trek. All these years I was never serious about it. Though I enjoy being on the road (esp on highways), I even enjoy being in the wilderness as much. So having loads of thoughts on going for a trek since the year 2010, it took quite a while to materialize.

I had plans to go for a trek in the month of July 2012, but things did not materialize, and one person whom I trusted to join me during the trek just said no. I did not take his NO that much seriously, but the fact is he went with his family for a weekend trip, while I was at home waiting for him to join for a trek, hit me way tooo hard.

I decided, hence forth there are no friendships involved in trekking, its only me all way and the trekking group. My parents were concerned how I would go for a trek with strangers, without me knowing anyone. But I was hesitant.

I registered for a trek to Kumaraparvata, and did not worry about who comes for it or not.How I registered for the trek is another story, which I hate to write, coz it will be kind of exaggerating to write about events what happened.

The day after registering, I did not get proper updates from the trekking group about the trekking registration. Finally on the day we were supposed to leave Bangalore, I came to know that, the trek to Kumaraparvata had been called off, due to lesser number of people of enrolled. Instead they asked me if I was ready to go join the Thadiyandamol trek, instead of KP. Unwillingly I accepted, but it turned out to be the best decision I made during the year 2012.

So we were supposed to leave on Friday and since we proceed on Mysore Road, I opted to have a pickup at Kengeri instead of some place within the City. I chose to stand in front of the Kengeri bus stand. That day there people digging a borewell in front of the Kengeri bus stand, I reached there around 10 15 pm and came to know that the pickup would be around 11 30 pm. I waited and waited watching people pass by and also watching people digging a bore-well.

The cab finally came sometime after 11 pm. There were all strangers in the cab. I did not speak to any of the fellow trekkers till the next day. Initially I occupied the last seat. Since the windows were sealed, I chose to move to the first seat instead. Sat next to the co-ordinator and behind the driver and then all through the night, kept on speaking to them, finally after 2 am in the morning found great sleep, I was snoring sitting in the front seat, which was kind of funny.

Also sitting right next to me there was one guy whose name I could not pickup even after  4 times of him repeating. Never mind, started speaking with him too. Told him, about my crazy road trip which I took to Goa, during the year 2011 December. I spoke about all the things which we did in Goa, just to realize he was a native of Goa. What a co-incidence I thought.

Then after I found sleep I was woken up around 5 Am when we lost our road. Incidentally, the road which was supposed to lead us to the Home stay was dug up and even our co-ordinator was kind of clues less on which road to take and it was pitch dark.

What happened next.. I will continue in the next post....

Cheers,

Things to write about !

Though I told myself, I would write about 25 posts, during my 2 day weekend, of 9-10 March 2013, I haven't been able to do so. One reason being I could not get enough things to write about, the second being, I sat down to watch the movie Forrest Gump today and after which I slept of totally.

But before that, I have listed down few stuffs which I would love to write about.

1. Trip to Hubli Dharwad and Gadag. November 30, 2012.

Though I have already written couple of posts about my travel to Hubli, Dharwad and Gadag, I still feel I could write more. I thoroughly enjoyed myself on the trip and Gadag was one awesome place to be. Far far away from Bangalore crowd, I felt harmony, peace over there. Hence want to write some more stuffs.

2. Trip to Vellore Golden Temple September 27, 2012.

I went to my neighboring state of TamilNadu to visit the Golden temple at Sripuram, Vellore. The trip was indeed fun.

3. Trip to Kasargod, Coorg December 2012.

Would want to write couple of more stuffs about this trip as well.

4. Trek to Thadiyandamol. December 2012.

My first trek after planning for more than 3-4 months.

5. Trek to Kumaraparvata February 2013.

Some amazing events and lots of walking !

6. Series on IT industry Tamasha to be continued..

7. My Indica Vista TDI
On owning one for 3 years period out of which I was out of India for about 1years 2 months.

Cheers,

Now its time to go back sit, and write few lines in my notebook and come back and type in over here.!

Things to do or learn this year !

There are loads of things which I have on my list of things to do.. Not sure if I can call them bucket list, but yeah...happy to have a big list.

So here I am trying to list down few of them.. along side topics of posts which I intend to write in the next couple of days..

I am two down,, #23 posts pending 48 hours remaining !

Without typing any more unwanted trash, let me start writing actual stuff which I intend to write.

On thing which I wish to do in the new year

1. Travel -
       Though in the last couple of months there has not been much interesting related to travel, I still have the    entire year open, and I am pretty much optimistic about it. Though I am not keen on travelling out of Karnataka, coz it takes longer duration, I am still open to it. Also keen on travelling with cousins and relatives.

2. Photography -
      I have been taking photos for quite a while now, I have been using my D90, wherever possible, but I still end up with crappy photos most of the time, and it leaves me embarrassed all way along. So I wish to improve my photography skills.

3. Drive -
    Driving goes hand in hand with travelling, but sometimes I travel using hired vehicles, so keeping this option as a different point. My love for driving has increased by many folds once I did my 1100km drive to Hubli Dharwad and Gadag !

4. Photography editing.
    Photography not only deals with taking pictures, but also editing them. I have installed GIMP since long time, but kind of not getting interest or time to invest into it. I have loads of plans to modify pictures which I have already taken to make them better. I get very jealous when people use all kinds of tricks just to get one photo right ! When they can do, why can't I ? Well, may be I have pretty much other stuffs to look into !

5. Read some books.
   Have almost not read any book to completion in last 6 months. Started couple of books, but could not complete them, somewhere in the middle just lost interest in them.

6. Learn something new technically.
    Love to learn ASP.NET MVC / Ruby on Rails and something using which I can build a website. So this includes stuffs apart from my routine office work.(Javascript, REST, some more web related stuffs is my priority).

7. Write proper code professionally.
    Though I have been writing code since quite a while, still not satisfied with quality of code I write. I am realizing this after interacting with a European counterpart and finding it difficult to get 30 lines of code pass through review. Actually would love to scrutinize each line of my own code in future, instead of unneccesarily putting in few kilo lines which in the end will never reach production.

8. Join a new organization.
   I currently work as a consultant to a company, so one of my priorities would be to join an altogether different company. For years I have been evading and trying not to become a lead (team lead / tech lead whatever crapola) but looks like now, its inevitable. Wish me luck !

Cheers, will update the list as and when I have more points !

First post for the year 2013.

After a casual discussion with my friend at workplace, thought of writing some posts over here. So here I am writing the first thing for the year 2013.

As usual I do not have any strong content or opinion to write for in the year 2013. Just its the usual crap / cribbing etc etc.

I see, I have written only 25 posts in the year 2012, though the year had loads of charm, both work wise and travel wise. This year, its started out on not such a great note, with not much travel in the first couple of months, but I would not mind, there are 10 more months left.

I wish to write 25 posts in the next couple of days, not sure if I can achieve that or not. But I am already 1 down.. Let me take a notepad and list down what to write, so that I can get it up and running phast.!

Cheers,

Sri Veeranarayana Temple, Gadag

Absolutely loved, Gadag, nice place.. was there for a purpose and believe me it was a bliss.. 

Utsav Rock Garden, Gotgodi Park, Shiggaon

On the way to Hubli, I had a pit stop at Utsav Rock Garden...
And it was fun..

Adding few more pictures as I see few hits for this post!

North Karnataka trip

As the Kasargod trip happened in the month of November, I had couple of functions to attend during the month of December. Also I had plans to travel to North Karnataka for a marriage and couple of other reasons.

The thing which makes it memorable is that, I was supposed to travel by road and I was the only driver :)-. It  felt good but it freaked me out at the same time. I still was pretty scared. I had to drive 1100 kms all by myself, which was a big big thing. But in the end I did it and I feel pretty proud of it.

Here is the list of places I visited

1. Ustav Rock Garden, Gotgodi Park, Shiggaon,

2. Hubli

3. Dhaward

4. Kurthkoti

5. Gadag.

6. Lakkundi

7. Lakshmeshwara.

8. Magadi

9. Bankapura.

Cheers

Bekal Fort Beach , Day 1 , Kasargod

Along side humidity there was also lot to cheer on day 1.. There was Bekal Fort beach.. and it was just mesmerizing..

Cheers,

Bekal Fort, Day 1 Kasargod

My first day in Kasargod, was all about humidity, Bekal Fort and Bekal Fort beach..

Cheers,

Sri AnanthaPadmanabhaswamy temple, Kasargod

After visiting Madhur, I proceeded towards Sri AnanthaPadmanabhaSwamy temple.. and all this was well before 8 30 AM..

Surely, It is such a bliss to visit a temple early morning after having a bath and an empty stomach. Let it be the first thing in the morning. Sure your day will go awesome.

Cheers,

Sri Siddhi Vinayaka Temple, Madhur, Kasargod

On day 1 in Kasargod, the humidity was unbearable. I was sweating like crazy, and during night, it rained like crazy with lightning as well. But the second day was pretty much fine. We started early.

The one thing I remembered not to miss in Kasargod was Sri AnanthaPadmanabhaSwamy temple. But unable to find directions on day 1 and being too tired I had left it for the second day.Early into the morning, I started and on the way decided to ask few autodrivers about the directions to the temple.

Luckily, instead of telling about Sri AnanthaPadmanabhaSwamy temple, they asked me whether I was looking for directions to Madhur.. When I said yes, they told me the directions and then only I came to know that there was one more beautiful temple in Kasargod , which I haven't heard of.. May be I do a little bit more searching next time.

So finally after having found the directions to the proceed to Sri Madhur, on the way I saw a board mentioning about Sri AnanthaPadmanabhaSwamy temple.. I thought today was a lucky day and indeed it was.

It is such a bliss to visit a temple early morning after having a bath and an empty stomach. Let it be the first thing in the morning. Sure your day will go awesome.

Cheers, here are some photos.

Time to recall some of my travel this year.

The year 2012 has been a pretty good one for me.. I have learnt a lot of things, read very few books this year (which is sad..but true). I have also traveled to loads of places some of the places I am going to write about here and also post some pics. Apart from that I was super busy in the months starting from February to July working on a product, which went out pretty well.

Then there was some time off which I took then again wrote some code for a prototype which went pretty well. Now during the last month of the year 2012. I have started working on a new project, I have loads of work for the year 2013.

But the thing which I would like to mention is that I have almost travelled 2200 kms in the last one month and I am extremely proud of it. At the same time, what makes me even more happy is that this year I could take full responsibility to deliver a product and I did it... Loads to look for next year..

Cheers

Who is responsible ? An Indian IT Company example

I have had the privilege to work across few different companies in the last few years. Most of the companies where located in India. And this series of blog posts is aimed at IT companies in India only.

In one of the companies I was working for a manager. I was previously working for a different team and had recently completed a project and had been allocated under the new manager.

I worked on a couple of tasks for a week under him and after which he told me, even after two weeks of hard work there is nothing which is achieved. There is no progress on this front. It pretty sad he said. Honestly speaking I felt offended. I had tried to do some work that too hard work within a short span of time. All of which failed.

But instead of finding what went wrong, I was at the receiving end, thats no surprise you get when you work for a NON Technical Manager. Its like a leading a team of mechanics without even knowing basics of mechanics.

So I left the manager say his thing and for the next 3 weeks did no work, just pretended that I was busy.

The manager took leads into this particular task of evaluating something for the next three weeks. At the end of three weeks, he too was not able to prove anything. He raised his hands saying " WE CANNOT DECIDE ".

He also said. " If I cannot decide after 3 weeks NO ONE else CAN decide " which sounds absolutely ridiculous.

So he called for a meeting, and went to the basics and started asking us about our opinions and what are the criteria we are evaluating against. But the criteria itself was not clear. He again asked who sets the criteria.

Well atleast none of the developers set the criteria. It has to be some guy who is the end user or manager I feel. Now since nobody was taking responsibility for defining requirements, owning the evaluation criteria the non technical manager just raised his hands and said we need to put an end to the task.

What a sad way to end a stupid task. But when I analyzed, the whole thing we did for a month and half  was nothing but bullshit.

When there are no clear cut requirements why should we take up the task.?

If the manager says there is no one to define the requirements, its upto the manager to set the stage, arrange for a minimum set of requirements  He should get hold of the stake holders to get a bare minimum set of criteria as to what the end users are looking for. After all he is being paid to get the project on track. If the project manager himself does not know his responsibilities, what is the point paying him such a hefty sum of money ? (Or is he aware of his responsibilities and just absconding ?)

Without this how can we dive into the task. But these non technical managers are in their own world. They want huge salary but hate to take even a single bit of responsibility.

Yes they hate their responsibilities, which seem beyond their intellect. Failing in their responsibility might lead to the loss of job (which they think), which would put a big cut in the monthly EMI which they are paying for the newly purchased big FLAT.

So finally who is responsible ? Its got to be the managers, if you do not put goal posts within a football stadium a player will be simply be kicking the ball.. yes but where and what is the ultimate destination, is unknown..

cheers,

Recruitment in the Indian IT Industry (developer role)

Having worked in the IT industry for over 7 years and after having worked few different companies, I have a fair amount of idea on the recruitment process and what people really are looking for.

When it comes to hiring a developer each recruiter wants to hire a developer who is the best and wants to pay a meager salary. Recently one of my friend got an offer from a company, he has about  5years of experience and he got an offer of 6.5 lakhs.

I mean what kind of shit is that ?

People want best resource but they want to pay less, so that the senior managers of the team can show cost cuttings or lower budget and they themselves get good appraisal / hike for running business on low cost ? What crap.

Also while recruitment there comes into picture a thing called technology. Its a specific area where a person has worked or specializes  As a software engineer people are willing to learn and adopt any new technology. But who will allow them to adopt?

If you have worked on technology A for 5 years, but the requirement is for Technology B,. do u think you will even get shortlisted ??? who wants your 5 years experience on a different technology ?

Technology B means technology B.. who wants Technology A...

Assume a derby race.. you have horses running over there. Suppose if you bring a untrained horse which needs to be groomed for may be 3 -5 days .. you think you can run the horse in the derby? . I guess may be after 3-5 days.. but in IT industry its different.. you do not stand a chance.

But bring a donkey which is wrapped in the skin of a horse into the derby and tell its ready to run the race.. Its allowed though it ends last or may not even finish.. but its allowed.

The Indian IT industry is like that.. One technology people are not entertained in interviews for another technology.. Unless they provide fake experience and prepare for interview questions from the website. (wrapping donkey in a horse skin I mean).

If you think that the job is so challenging that it needs a real developer instead of someone who needs to be groomed, you are wrong.. India is the outsourcing hub.. you can imagine what kinds of projects we end up with. You can get the job done by a high school drop out, forget having an engineering degree..

Cheers

Disclaimer - any co-incidence is regretted.. this post is my personal opinion.

Working as (software) Contractor in India ... Why do I get offended often?

These days I am getting offended pretty often. Today was one such day. Though some crazy reasons, some of which really should not bother me, but I am cribbing, hence this blog post.

Earlier today, I had a short introduction meeting with a senior manager of the neighboring team. There are 5 members in the team, which I have voluntarily involved myself in. I do not charge anything out of the project fund.

So I was the last person in line to give an introduction to the senior manager (who happens to be an expat). No sooner I started saying about myself, my immediate manager from the team interrupted in between and told the manager that I am from XYZ company (I am a consultant / contractor).

Somehow I got offended, I could myself have told this one, was there a need for someone else to point out saying I am not a permanent employee of the organization.

Working as a contractor or permanent employee is altogether my decision. But is it so much important to pin point in a meeting saying I am not an employee.

Well, what can I do, its my choice of employment, but really is this some form of discrimination ?

Never mind, cheap minded people and cheap gimmicks, who value permanent or contract other than work..

Cheers,

PS - I am working 100% full time in a different project. this project is voluntary involvement. Nothing related to bench warming btw.

99% of all Meetings are waste of time

Why is work from home option, not available in India ?

Today I am in a good mood to write.. So let me punch in few more lines on this blog after which its pure source code..

There has been a debate in my office shuttle about why work from home option is not available in India. Its available in few companies.

So here is my take on the so called topic.

Work from home is a superb option when the work we do actually adds to the client's business. You may sit at office or at home but still the client wins because you help him with your solution, which you churn out from your home.

But in most (so called) software companies, adding value to client's business is far far away. Not sure we actually add value, but we sure add loads of TIMESHEETS / INVOICES at the end of the month.

Each individual working from office is billed in the timesheet at a particular rate (say 25-30 USD per hour).
So if work from home option is provided, and if the client becomes aware of this ( yes he will, he will only have to provide for the infrastructure of course), he will tell the company to cut down on the billing rate per hour.

Yes, per hour billing is inclusive of AC / power / biscuits / water / tea etc etc. So work from home drastically reduces billing and therefore loss of business.

Yup, I re-iterate, here in India business means sending timesheets to clients for approval.. Whether your work adds any value to the client or not, seriously takes a back seat or may be the BABY Seat :)-

So work from home option is strictly NO NO in companies which only do business via TIMESHEETS.

Secondly managers (who get paid a lot) hardly involve in any technical stuffs and are more interested in doing contractor kind of jobs like asking status to developers would end up being JOBLESS if all developers start working from home...

Thirdly some bare basic infrastructure cost which company hates to invest !

Cheers ,

PS - Some companies have work from home option available.. Kudos to them :)-

Disclaimer.. All of this post is only my opinion. Any co-incidences is regretted

Why are non technical managers billed in a software company ?

Disclaimer - this post comes out of my own head, and any co-incidences with anything, anyone is mere fictional.

In a software company each individual is billed based on the number of hours he puts in. Software companies can be generally of two categories (atleast two is what I know. there may be others which I do not know).

1. Product based software company.
2. Service based software company.

Product based company can be India based or it might be a company from other country which has set up a shop in India as a subsidary. Remember its a subsidiary, there are hell a lot difference between a subsidary and one headquartered in other country.

Service based company  provide customized software services to clients on demand. external clients pay money to them to get the work done. Services can range from consulting, software design, development, migration, 24X7 support, maintenance, enhancement. (Honestly speaking, I have seen only maintenance and 24X7 projects in India).

What I feel the main difference between product based and service based is that, Product based companies have their own intellectual property, their own software (own stuffs) which they can install a 1000 times over 1000 different places and sell to 20000 clients and still no one questions them.

But in service company everything is owned by the client, including the source code. Whenever the client wants, he can shift from one vendor to a different vendor. (cost cutting I say ).

This post is all about billing, my main area of confusion is

" Why are non technical people in a project billed out of project funds "

I have seen this happen in both service and product companies and in some service based companies where it does not happen.

As we move up the career ladder (in India) we are mostly inclined towards a managerial role. Which means managers are people with more number of years of experience under their belt. Managers hardly do any project related work like coding, debugging, bug fixing. (Exceptions exist of course) They are more into project planning (using estimates prepared by developers of course), budget allocation (hardly you need a SSLC pass candidate for doing that mathematics), talking to the client and promising whatever comes to their mind, the developers being caught off guard (of course)

So what do these managers actually do after all these years of experience which actually adds value to the business. May be I have wrongly interpreted the meaning of business.

Business for me is how much value add we do to the client's business. like how much of our code goes into production and saves time and earns revenue. But for managers business means, how much billing happens for the company (where they work). They are hardly concerned about what value add we do to the clients. (well in most companies this happens, atleast in the last 7 companies I have worked for in the last 7 years this happens).

In case of 24X7 support / maintenance we directly add value to the customer. .but yeah..do you need an engineering degree to do that ? to change a single line of code over few weeks ?

If this is the case, why are these so called managers billed under project funding when they are doing NOTHING TECHNICAL WORK concerned to the project.

How a company manages its projects should be its headache. (I mean it should be at its own cost, not at clients fund). Why does the project funding gets eaten up by these people who hardly contribute.

Such is life. I hope we soon have a famous CEO like that of the 80's who used to fire people. Until then I crib I crib...

Cheers,

PS - I hope to remain technical in many more years to come.

I literally had a manager who used to stand behind people to see what they are doing. Oh yeah.. I forgot, once a lady said.. " They are actually paid to do that "... O really .. " You are the next (managerial candidate) I thought "

New software development versus maintenance

Recently few of my friends in the office shuttle were asking me or rather teasing me whether I had opened my own company recently. I replied to them by saying yes and also told my company name.

I told them its called " Classic bathroom cleaning solutions " with specialization in pink commodes (water closets). I know it sounds weird, from software to this kind of job.

Actually there has no such thing which has happened. I have no personal interest in opening any kind of company. The reason why I told them that I would take up bathroom cleaning is because of my frustration.

I seriously think there are very few software development prospects in India and most of the jobs are to do with maintenance / enhancement .

Most revenue is generated by cleaning code written by others preferably in regions outside APAC, and doing good business, so as a part of humor I told them, I could also do good business by opening a cleaning company (bathroom cleaning) and stay in business.

Many people tell India sustained recession (with respect of IT) because of ... whatever reasons... I dont care.

But I seriously believe India sustained through recession because of its rupee value and the low end jobs outsourcing companies undertake.

Low end jobs involve working on stuffs to keep production running. And no one wants to pay more for these kinds of jobs. since its more or less brainless. and it gets sent to countries where its cheap and I think we have a good chance to bid for them.

So these tasks continue to operate recession or no recession. Hence no affect of recession.

If you have some NEW / SCRATCH software development work which is directly funded by business, if business goes down, no wonder funding will go down.

If you do maintenance related stuffs (for ex take elevator maintenance) it will go on, recession or not.

So I equate maintenance to bathroom cleaning. just that the latter has lesser dignity (well in India only I guess).

Cheers.

Disclaimer-  All this ranting is mine and has no co-incidence to anything or anybody. Any similarities is deeply regretted. Classic bathroom cleaning is just a name I have taken for name sake..

Perceptions of Engineering Student - Is engineering meant for India or not ?

Here goes my first post in the IT industry related series. Its all about the perception a student (student means me, myself and I and no one else ) has while undertaking (software) engineering courses in India, and its also about what is the hard core reality which exists in the Indian IT industry (well as per my perception).

Disclaimer

These series of posts regarding the IT industry has got nothing to do with any individual or any organization. Any co-incidences are fictional and deeply regretted. All the views expressed through these series of posts are solely mine and carry no guarantee on whether the information is correct or not.

Not so long ago I too pursued a course in engineering. The stream being Information Science and engineering. The year was 2001. I passed out in the year 2005.  Through the 8 semesters which I went through, I studied various subjects all related to computers. Many were related to programming, few others theoretical.

I would like to mention that all through the 8 semesters, I was uninterested in any subject which did not have programming in it. Nothing to hide, I could not crack the programming subjects like Data Structures, but I did have a liking for them.

My IQ was so low that I could not understand abstraction and other OOPS concepts. I somehow managed pointers in a way which I dont really remember.

After working for so many years, and having figured out a little bit on what abstraction really is and how to put it into practice, I thought of writing this post. This post has nothing to do with abstraction but just the engineering degree syllabus which is so much abstract when compared to the Indian IT industry and the Indian IT industry which is so much abstract when compared to the IT industry of the WEST.

So let me start writing my intended content for the post.

During the course of my engineering study, I felt a need for loads of subjects on programming. We had C, C++ but somehow I developed a special liking to Visual Basic ahead of Java.

Visual Basic aka VB helped me to write code faster .. well .. fast enough for me to chose it ahead of Java. I always wondered why we did not have VB instead of C, C++. By the way VB was procedure oriented and not object oriented, else the case would have been different though.

I always felt the world outside was a different one, different from the one involving the subjects which we were studying during engineering. It is different to be precise. I wanted to have more subjects on programming so that, I could prepare myself for some interviews after my engineering. Nothing to hide, I loved coding and even love to this day almost 7 years since I have turned pro.

Throughout engineering, I wished we had more programming languages instead of theory.

So, cursing and cursing finally I completed my engineering, with basic knowledge on 3 programming languages, C, C++ and VB. I somehow learnt bits and pieces of C# but Object orientation was too much for me ( well atleast at that time).

When I joined my first company, I was put into a development project which was on .NET and the first thing my then manager told me was to unlearn what I had learnt during engineering, believe me, which holds relevance even to this day.

Theory and practical are two different things. What I learnt during engineering did not help me with my first job. It got me the gate pass to attend an interview. With due respect I have no hatred towards an engineering degree.

I got my first job through an off campus interview. But few of my friends in other colleges had been campus recruited into some MNC's. I was cursing myself that, here I am working on some project which feels like going nowhere, and out there, my friends, in those MNC's are churning out code which shall be put into production somewhere in the WEST.

Later I got to know,I was absolutely wrong. 6 months into my job I spoke to one of my friend who studied in a top engineering college in Bangalore and asked him straight " Do you write applications from scratch... Do you code ? what do you do ? ".

I was shocked to hear the answer. He told me.. " Who would give a development job to a fresher?  We have been told to debug some legacy code and fix issues on the same ".

Hearing this I was so much blessed. Atleast I was not cleaning up legacy code. This is the abstraction which exists when it comes to syllabi and Indian IT industry.

Abstraction -> Engineering students are often believe that they will write production code once they come out of engineering. 

Real Stuff -> there exists all kinds of jobs in the Indian IT industry. But DO NOT ASK coding for a project from scratch. It literally is NON EXISTANT. 

People often write production code, but only in bits and pieces , those one liners for a bug fix.. And NOT THE ENTIRE APPLICATION. ( Well atleast in most Indian OUTSOURCING companies)

Even if you write fresh code, chances of it going to production are pretty less. Even if it goes into Production chances of it earning revenue (doing business) is pretty less. Main reason being well.. you will come to know in series of blog posts.


Now coming to the IT industry in India when compared to the WEST.

There is lots of market for software in the WEST. People are addicted to technology. It is enhancing their lives. But it also needs lots of investments, which they have. 1 SG = 44 INR. People in SG can afford technology and hence money can be spent on custom software development.

But here in India, we have problem for drinking water. Where is the scope for investment on Custom Software development. Well.. Only a few people can afford it.

When there is no market for technology / software in India, how can you expect software from scratch to be written ? And it is pretty easy to develop software for European markets sitting in Europe.

One on one meetings with client , interactions with end users, the professionalism all exist in the WEST. Here we have loads of blockages, like stuck in traffic, heavy rain etc etc which cause delay in software development and nothing ships on time. Moreover Indian IT industry employs all kinds of people, most people do not want to solve problems, rather talk some shit and go home.

So how can you expect a software to be shipped from India.

It is the same reason, Indian IT industry is all about OUTSOURCING and getting projects which are out of date in terms of technology from the WEST and maintaining them for many more years, because the same task would cost loads of money in the WEST.

It can be compared to the shipyard where all the old fleet of ships are broken down after its lifecycle. Same thing happens to software. All new software gets written in the west and we in India are happy maintaining decades old programs ...

PS::: still I am wondering the relevance of the Microsoft Tech meetings which happen in Bangalore time and again. Has someone enough budget to spend on writing POC's for new technology ? Because none of those POC's will ever go into production.

PPS:: I have seen lots of websites custom built for Indian market doing good business. I agree. There is some development when it comes to plain old websites which have loads of goods to chose from and a payment gateway.

Cheers...

Introductory post

After working for 7 years in the %&*^ industry, I somehow feel that, I have become a cry baby. I end up cribbing at, well almost everything, at work, at home, while travelling.

I keep on telling people as to how we are different from other countries. So I got a thought of putting all my learnings during the last 7 years, in a series of posts.

Dont you worry, these series of posts will have nothing to do with technology or coding. I will try to concentrate purely on the business side of the IT industry, only from my perspective. 

I have loads of topic to write about, starting from timesheet approval, what kind of value add we do in the IT industry to the nature of work what we do in the industry etc etc.

Atleast there will be this so called place where I can record my thoughts. 

Let me add a disclaimer as well.

Disclaimer to the series of posts which are to follow.

These series of posts regarding the IT industry has got nothing to do with any individual or any organization. Any co-incidences are fictional and deeply regretted. All the views expressed through these series of posts are solely mine and carry no guarantee on whether the information is correct or not.

I would be more than happy if the reader assumes these posts as fictional.

Cheers

How the people in my shuttle got offended indirectly (or directly) by me

Today was one such day, when few of my shuttle (cab) mates got indirectly offended because of what I said to my friend over the telephone.

One of my friend works for a company which is a few kilometres from my workplace. He too travels to office by shuttle. Incidentally, at Silkboard junction, his shuttle came and stopped exactly behind my shuttle. He called to me just to confirm it was my shuttle which was standing in front of his.

As we were casually conversing, I asked him, if he was still in the same company. The last time I spoke to him, he had intended to shift to a different workplace.

On hearing this two other shuttle mates expressed their displeasure. They felt offended because they thought they had completed 7 years in the same organization. [ I never say its bad to complete 7 years in one organization, its good.. but not all five fingers are same ]

I had a hard time convincing them that one person's food is another person's poison. .But yeh.. in the end I could still feel they were offended..

Never mind, I cannot take back my words.. just have to be more careful in future.

Cheers,

Planning a trek the next weekend 7 July 2012

Hey there, found some time to write.. I am quite excited.. I am planning to register for a trek to Kodachadri the next weekend. Many people have told me against it, since it will be raining. But since I have lost the last 2-3 months working on weekends, I want to make full use of this opportunity.

And doing a monsoon trek would be a different thing in itself. I know path would be slippery and full of leeches.. but I would like to experience the same first hand..

As of now quite keen on joining.. I have started to do morning walks for the couple of days. .Walking should not come to me as a surprise package on the day of the trek.

Cheers,

How frequently to blog

Cheerio,

Its again quite sometime, I have not written anything. So just was wondering if I could blog about something. But no... I seem to be totally wondering what to blog about. Its been a loong break. Wish I could fill it up with loads of stuffs which I do / have done / doing currently.

Today I had been to my cousin's place. Met some relatives who have come all the way from Pune. So kind a nice weekend again.

Apart from that, had a big fight with one member of my team at office and I ve stopped talking to him :)- Not a nice thing to write about. But atleast its a kind of pointer..

Cheers. Have loads to tell about what I did in the last 4 months, but yeah.. cannot reveal workplace secrets as to what I coded in the last few months.. But have learnt loads. Travelling is a bit less these days.. Work keeps my busy even during weekends.. Need to see what is in store !!!!

Tada...

Writing something after loong time..

Its quite some time, I have taken off blogging, Now hoping to start again .. lets see.

I have been working very hard on a project for the last couple of months.. with lots of code written , dumped, re-written etc etc. So one hand life's kinda been good. But on the other hand., there still is a thing which is worrying me a lot.

Hopefully, that thing will get resolved soon,by God's grace. And then I can plan some trips out of Bangalore.

So now, keeping my fingers crossed and praying to God.

Cheers,

PS - Tomorrow I have a major release tomorrow. Hopefully things fall in place quickly..

Time to change - Stop breeding RACE HORSES !

Disclaimer - This blog post is for the " Time to change " contest on Indiblogger, sponsored by Stayfree.
The link to the same is https://www.facebook.com/sftimetochange

All the contents in this post are based on my personal experiences. I am trying to pitch in my personal opinion based on my experiences, none of which are meant to offend or

hurt anyone. All characters mentioned or talked about are purely fictional and resemblance to anyone or anything is co-incidential. I also do not mean to offend anyone.

Prologue -
I would like to start this post with one of the encounters I had in my previous workplaces. I used to work with this so called company "____" for a so called team "____". As a new joiner, I expected a lot of documentation to be available as a part of on boarding process. The documentation could be anything related to project / process / business etc. otherwise how do you expect a new joiner to get inducted into the team.

Sadly there was no documentation available, days passed by and I somehow managed to get inducted into the team, though I did not have a clear idea about the business / process.
Few days later, I got to know the original reason for not maintaining a documentation [ though the official reason was different for not having a documentation.]

The reason was, employees were safeguarding their jobs by not having a documentation. If all documentation was in place, who would care for the employee in times of recession. If the employee only knows all the process, business, design, applications, come what may he shall never be let go.

Part 1 -

The above episode made me think,

1. Why do people put personal interests ahead of ethics / integrity ?

2. Are the people over there really enjoy what they are doing ?

3. Why are people so insecure ?

4. Why are these people so afraid to take risks ?

Let us try to find an answer to the above questions and go to the root cause.

People put personal interests ahead of ethics because of insecurity. They feel they have a family to take care of, they are so worried if they lose their jobs, they would have a mountain to climb. All these people are highly qualified and have degrees from good reputed universities. Are their engineering / Master's degrees of no use, when it comes to recession / job hunt that they resort to these stuffs.

If people really enjoyed what they were doing, they would never have bothered about job security. They would have been bold in taking risks.

But why do these people not enjoy their jobs? After all this is what they have dreamt of being.

Part 2 -

Not everyone who becomes a software engineer likes to write code. The salary in this profession is a bit high than other professions, as a result, many people chose this field over their interests.

So in a software company we do end up meeting people who wanted to be painters/ mechanics but instead ended up as software engineers.

The root cause of this leads to our educational system, where every parent wants bright future for their children. They can see bright future only in professions like doctors/engineers. No wonder, nobody encourages their kids to study literature or become a song writer.

So as kids we are bred as race horses instead. There is no scope to fail. Even before the school starts kids are enrolled for tuitions so that they do not fail. If failure is never seen as an option, how can we take risks, because, not all risks end up in being a success.

This answers the question as to why people do not take risks. - question 4.

After a while all race horses grow old and do not run at the same pace. As a result after few years in IT industry people lose interest and end playing dirty games instead of writing code, because coding which is natural to any software engineer never interested them in the first place. This answers another question. (Question 1 & 2 )

Now we try to figure out why people are insecure, if you love what you do, you give 100%, and since you give 100% you would be best in what you do. You will never have any difficulties finding another opportunity. This answers the question of insecurity. ( Question 3 )

Part 3 -

Now lets figure out what is the effect the educational system has on our contribution to the world.

1. India provides brain / manpower to almost all the countries. Some of the finest brain who have done some amazing jobs are from India. But have we contributed something indigeneous stuff from India, like a product in software which is sold across many countries or an automobile built with completely Indian technology which is in high demand across the globe ?

  We can see some of the automobiles from German makers in such high demand. Why so?

  My assumption is that,

  1. only people who are really interested in automobiles end up as automobile engineers over there. So they give their best shot at it. Unlike here where artists end up as software engineers, just because the profession is lucrative.

  2. Over the last century the German car makers have made all the mistakes possible and have learnt from them, so that now they have nothing else to fail at. Over here we are not allowed to make even a single mistake, how do we get perfect at an art without failing?

2. This effect you can see in software industry as well -

Do we have a flagship product of our own. Does some quality product ships out of India or is it just maintainenance and enhancement related activity.?

Epilogue - Time to change.

In this part let me write about what needs to be changed.

1. Allow kids to become what they really want to become.

2. Allow kids to make mistakes and learn from them. Make failing once twice thrice an option.

3. Stop putting personal interests ahead of integrity.

4. Take risks

5. Give 100 % in whatever we do.

May be after 100 years we can have an Indian car / an Indian operating system which would be in high demand across the globe.


Cheers,

Things not done in the last 6 months.

Its been close to 6 months I have been back to India, from Singapore. I found a new job in India, not once but twice (not boasting, but just telling the bad situation I was into.. I had to..) I haven't blogged much in the year 2010 nor 2011. But there are loads of things which I have done.

All I can say is I am fortunate, I am thankful to my parents and God.

I wanted to write a big philosophical post, but now too lazy to type so much so changing the title as well as the content of the post.

There are loads of things which I would do while I was in Singapore, which I havent done after I came back.

The list is long, But I would like to write about these 4 things which I used to do predominantly.

1. I used to regularly read dumb little man for some inspiration.
2. Read lot of travelogues.
3. Use facebook a lot. (after work though)
4. Watch tintin movies.


These days I have stopped reading DLM, not sure why, I guess either my parents are my inspiration, or I do not need any further inspiration (which I guess is absolutely false), or may be I am just too lazy.

Never mind, these days, I get lot of time, since I have stopped doing the 4 things mentioned above. Yes I travel a lot these days. Cheers

Hopefully I come out my laziness and write more.. Let me see. Its surely taken a back seat these days. :)-

Tata Docomo .. !! Not again !!

On a mobile which my brother purchased, there was a free tata docomo number given, and I continued to use the number even when I came back from Singapore.

Once I was back in Bangalore, I gave the docomo number to my Singapore Bank, as my Internet Banking contact detail. So the confirmation message would come to this number.

It was one of the biggest blunder I have ever done. When I tried to transfer my remaining money back to India, what all I got was an incomplete message. I could not complete a banking transaction with an incomplete message. I called up the bank's call center and they told me its the mistake of service provider.

I should never have trusted Tata Docomo, for crucial banking related things. I raised a complaint with tata docomo guys, they told me it will be resolved within 2 days. But simultaneously, I used a bit of my head (brain I mean) and got my Singapore bank contact number to AIRTEL (alternate number)..

And believe me I could do bank transaction with AIRTEL, almost instantly. I got a free flawless message on airtel (right from start), where as on docomo the main characters itself were missing (incomplete text).

So now even after 3 days, I have done many transactions, but still TATA docomo has not got back to me with a solution to the problem.

All they say is the problem is on the side of the Singapore Bank.

What a pathetic set of losers man.. !!!

Will never trust anything which is of brand Tata again .. for sure..

Thanks Bharti Airtel. .you sure provide a gem of quality service.

Cheers,

First post in the new year

Happy new year 2012.

I haven't taken to writing posts over here for quite sometime now. Its just that, I am preoccupied with some or the other work over the last couple of months, including those days I had not opted for company transportation, I was busy travelling by BMTC bus. And laziness as usual made me take writing not so seriously.

Apart from this, I am writing whatever comes to my mind, in a 400 page notebook. I had thought of writing it on a day to day basis, but again, I do not have that much determination. But do manage to update it once in 5 days atleast.

So all over the last month and this month, I have been reading, the book "Shantaram" by Gregory Anthony Roberts. I am surprised, over 1 month 10 days, I have been able to read 670 pages of the book. Still 260 pages pending.

I need to finish it ASAP, so that I can start reading 59 Seconds, which I have abruptly stopped, once I started reading Shantaram.

I had been on a roadtrip to Goa, Karwar, in the last week of December. A one which can be as memorable as it can get. Will put up a travelogue sometime soon.


Cheers,

To FLIPKART or NOT

Today is one such day where in, whatever book I went searching for in Jayanagar 4th block was missing. I went to Book Paradise 2 times and then to Sapna Book House 2 times.

At the end after roaming for 45 mins, between one and the other book store, I ended up sore loser, except that something interesting happened, the second time when I went to Sapna Book House.

Well, when my search for some technical books in 4th block jayanagar, at the 2 most popular book stores left me high and dry (because of unavailability) I felt like kicking myself. I was gutted that, here I am roaming in the sunlight with nothing to get. Also when I referred sapnaonline.com for the book I wanted, I could see the search returning an entry saying; there was something which was available. But when I went there they told me, the book was neither there in this branch nor any branch across Bangalore.

They told me, they had sent the book back to the publisher, since no one was purchasing the book. Then HOW COME the website search ended up with a book result. Looks like something is out of sync.

I was so angry that, I thought never I shall come in search of such books, rather get it done via FLIPKART. And believe me, to my surprise, at SAPNA book HOUSE, the second time when I went, I bumped into one guy who was carrying a bag with a FLIPKART name embedded on to it. He was depositiing his helmet over the baggage deposit counter. On close examination, I could see his FLIPKART, ID card.

So I asked him,  " are you supplying books for Sapna book house as well ( rather a pretty pretty dumb question I guess. ) "

He told me " I have a procurement list, and I am trying to get those books over here in Sapna book house. " VOILA... ( i thought it was the other way round, how dumb I am ).

Ok never mind. Now I asked him,

" I am looking for some books which are unavailable even at Sapna Book House and thought of getting it from FLIPKART, but now since you too come here, I guess, I wont get it in FLIPKART as well "

to which he replied

" We procure books from different places, if not this, someone / somwhere else "  or they might ask Sapna Book Stall to get the book from the publisher and get it delivered at our place.

But where does the word PROFIT come in this scenario. Never mind, its their business model. I have lots of things to worry about, apart from trying to figure out whose making profit over here and one thing for sure is I would think 100 times before venturing into any book stall in search of a programming book..

So now its time for FLIPKARTING..

Cheers

UPDATE:: Just did a search on flip-kart website about one of the books which I was looking for.
It was listed for Rs 699, on the catalogue of the publishers at Book Paradise (+ 15% discount given by these guys ), the same thing costs a whopping, Rs 1700 at yours truly flip-kart. [IMPORTED VERSION]. The low cost book has not LANDED in India I guess.. :D

Just called up book paradise and told them to get me a copy from the publisher. I do not want an import by any means, costing me almost 3 times the money. [Imported version you see..]

UPDATE 2:: Neither did I go to the book stall, nor ordered the same on FLIPKART. Found the same on the internet. You guys know how ( If not leave a comment ..I will tell you). Now its time to get print outs of the selected chapters at office. So all in all its a free exercise.. Cheers

New post using my brand new keyboard

This post is dedicated to my new Logitech Keyboard, praying for its longer durability. I do not want to get one in anytime soon. Also my intention of writing 100 posts for the year comes alive once again.

I know 100 is a difficult number considering we are in the middle of November, but will try to write something atleast in the meantime.

Cheers

Working in India versus Working in Singapore - Part 2 - Interaction with END USERS

This one is my favourite. I simply love LEANER AND FITTER team structures. So let me start with my abroad work experience.

While working in Singapore the team structure was very simple, I had a manager, who in turn had his manager and then there was the END USER or client who uses what we develop. I was lucky to be involved in meetings with end users several times [I learnt a lot out of it]. So now you can understand what is a leaner and fitter structure.

But over here in India its totally different.

There are so many people involved in the project that at the end of the day

1. we actually forget do we really have a client or are we developing prototypes or side projects.

2. the client gives requirement X and we end up implementing 1/X [inverse of  X] courtesy a phenomenon called CHINESE WHISPER .[rather, because of the number of stake holders, you see too many cooks spoil the broth. quote suits aptly].

There are so many people involved in one simple implementation, I would love to sum them all, like
a. program manager.
b. project manager.
c. technical manager.
d. group manager.
e. resource manager.
f.  project lead.
g. delivery manager.

I can actually see all these people involved in a small project, and mark my word, NONE AMONGST THESE ACTUALLY WRITE CODE, nor have any idea about TECHNOLOGY.

And by the way, correct me if I am wrong, these guys dont even take responsibility, if something goes wrong blame the developer and sit in a meeting room and spend the entire day doing ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS [ yeh I guess these guys are SIX SIGMA CERTIFIED, or rather PMP] while the poor developer [scapegoat] has to debug the issue all by himself and find a solution. The RCA done by these guys is of no use because the developer fixes something and something else breaks, so the cycle continues... I mean time to do RCA again.

They just crap crap crap, all the time and spend so much of time in meeting rooms and eat up a major chunk of the project bill or funding that the poor developer will have to COMPLETE the assignment in HALF the time. Believe me when these guys sit for a meeting all by themselves, their time goes unaccounted for, not a single time, I have seen any MINUTES OF MEETING from them.

PHEW..

too much to think about whether to continue in technical line or not or whether to continue in this stream or not.

Cheers,

Working in India versus Working in Singapore - Part 1 - Time utilization

Disclaimer - I have no rights to use the word 'WE'. If anyone of you feel offended, please let me know, I shall change it to singular form.

Cheers, this is my first post about my work experience in India versus abroad. Its about time utilization.
I will try to write a few lines about how I end up spending my time while working in India while how I spent it while working in Singapore.

Well, here in India, we do enter time-sheet for say 9 hrs including 1 hr lunch, the question whether we work for so much time really has been around since I have started working (around 6 years back). I had always questioned do we end up working for 8 hrs (doing nothing personal work during this time). Well sorry to say the answer is a BIG NO NO...

Its sad to admit, we do all sorts of CRAPOLA in the allotted time.

Here is a list of things that stops  us from putting 8 hours flat out towards work.

1. Travelling to office is more like a pain in the ass.
     How can you expect us to start working as soon as we reach office, when we have spent so much of time traveling, people tend to relax for a while after reaching office, so there goes some time out of your hours work. [ Not all people travel long distances to work, but there are people who travel long distances and one among them is me.]

Working abroad - Will update shortly..

2. Reaching office late due to traffic -
        Well all of them if not everyday, someday atleast would encounter some traffic snarls while coming to office. I do encounter it everyday, even though its 7 30 am in the morning. This in turn upsets our mood at workplace and it takes time to set it right. So there goes some time out of your 8 hours.

Working abroad - Will update shortly..

3. Making weekend plans.
       Weekend starts on Friday evening But unfortunately whilst working in India, I have always felt, we start planning for weekend on Thursday only. Hence you can take for granted that some Fridays of the year are rest assured an UTTER WASTE. ZERO productivity. We end up wasting Thursday as well.

Working abroad - Well, while working abroad I would have been engrossed so much work that, there is no time to even think of weekend. I enjoyed work so much that, weekend takes a back seat. So there is less chances of taking time out to plan for a weekend .

4. Coffee breaks.
     Coffee breaks are the so called reasons to bond with your team members. But unfortunately we end up not only bonding with team mates talking about work related issues we are facing, but also end up talking so much about personal stuffs that we lose a pretty huge amount of time.

   While working in Singapore, I tried so many times to take a longer break, but honestly speaking everytime I failed, either due to
1. lack of friends.
2. loads of deliverables.
3. miscellaneous reasons.

I ended up with coffee breaks less than 10 minutes. So losing out on time due to coffee breaks was the last on the list while working abroad.

5. Meetings.
       One more brilliant way to waste productive time in a LEGAL way, no one can question you about the meeting, nor ANYONE has the GUTS to ask MINUTES OF MEETING. So anyone and everyone is free to attend a meeting or jump into a meeting room to do some discussion to pass time, knowing very well that there wont be any OUTCOME of this meeting.

While working abroad, I did work as a consultant and by the way meetings were so hard to come by, All interactions were work related and result oriented, there is no question of BEATING AROUND THE BUSH, trying to waste time as we end up doing here.
 

Cheers,

Working in India versus Working in Singapore - Introductory Part

Disclaimer - All the content in this post are out my personal experience. I had the privilege of working in Singapore for a while, which I absolutely loved, hence I am trying to jot down my experiences about working in India and working in Singapore or abroad for that matter.  Any resemblance to any characters or for that matter anything is merely coincidental. I am not trying to bring any sort of dispute between the two forms of things which I am comparing over here, its just my personal opinion. 

Here's me finding some time to write again. I wanted to write a series of posts on my work related thing, comparing what I did in India versus what I did in Singapore in a post or like a table comparing the both in an excel sheet.

But I do not know how to infuse an excel sheet into a blog post (nor want to edit HTML code trying to insert a table via HTML), hence thought of writing it as a series of points. Then I felt I can do this by writing it as a series of posts. Well, I do not know if I can write 100 posts for this year, but sure will try considering another couple of months left.

I wanted to write these posts while I was watching the movie Buddha Hoga Tera Baap, but unfortunately was engrossed in the movie so much that, could not write anything for 2 hours. Now that the movie is finished I can write my introductory post.

Post #1 - Time utilization while working in India versus overseas.


Cheers,

Not writing much these days.. why?

these days I am not writing much. The reasons are a plenty.

First excuse being, The PC where I hook up to the internet has its shift keys disfunctional. This means I cannot type in Capital letters. [ So where am I typing this from ?]. As a result, everytime I have to use my laptop. Considering the fact that I do not have a wireless router, you can imagine the pain of connecting the modem here and there again and again.

Secondly I am not finding much time to write. I do travel a lot during weekdays for work and weekends I do a lot of time pass.

Thirdly, I need to write a lot of posts which indirectly somehow is slowing me down. everytime I think of writing something or about some topic, another topic starts bothering me and I end up not writing anything.

I need to jot down all the posts which I am planning to write and then start to blog again before I lose track of them forever.

Cheers,

Back from a 1050 kms long drive

It has been a good month and a half for me now. I am able to do few things which I have always loved to do. Travel is one of them. At workfront, I have been able to code some complicated or not so easy stuffs which have really won some favor for me, considering the fact that I work as a consultant at an organization and not as a full time employee.

Regarding my travel, I made a recent trip to Hubli Dharwad and above all Yellamagudda, the temple of Lord Yellamma, our house Goddess. Then I visited the village where my mother grew up and stayed for 15 years. Also saw the ancient home where my mother grew up. All in all it was a fun experience coupled with a drive for about 1050 kms, first of its kind since I have owned my car.

I would like to thank God for making it happen. Apart from this, I also made short trips to Melkote, Ramanagaram, Big banyan tree. So a productive month for me both in professional and personal terms.

Cheers,

Bloody AIRTEL and their bloody cheap GIMMICK...

Disclaimer - Sometimes in life, when I get cheated, or ditched or left out, this is the place where I vent my frustration out.. Please bear with me..

Till this day I thought airtel was a good service provider. But they suck, suck big time. My mother uses an airtel prepaid connection. For the last 3 months AIRTEL has been deducting Rs 2 every day, without sending any notice or information for a so called cheap gimmick called DEVOTIONAL PACK, which has got activated. I am 200 percent sure, its not activated by my mother who uses this phone, since she does not even know how to send an SMS.

Finally after 3 months of Rs 2 deduction, we realized something was wrong. And when we called airtel for help, they said, we have been sending you SMS everyday and we have an update at our end. BLOODY AIRTEL AND BLOODY UR SERVICE..

Feels like cheated to the core.. cheated of Rs 100 plus of HARD EARNED MONEY by the bloody airtel.

cheers, such is life.

What happens if you fight with your manager at work...

Disclaimer - All the events mentioned in this post are related to my life. There is nothing fictious about the below occurings.

Well, sometimes in your life, you end up encountering the repercussions of the wrong doings of your past life. One such thing which I did wrong was having a altercation with manager at work. This was in the year 2006 and it was nothing serious. It was just disagreeing on a particular point of view.

Somewhere on a blog post, I read that politics in software means going by personal view overriding the technical view. Something of this sorts had happened in the year 2006. I vaguely remember it, since its almost 5 years.
That was point #1.

And at the time of quitting the company, I had an altercation with an administrative guy with related to transport. The company cab used to go close to my house, but I was made to walk 1.5 kms because the company refused to stop the vehicle at a point close to my house. (how ridiculous). I made this whole thing big and then it just took off as the prime reason for quitting the company.
This was point #2.

And now 4 years quitting that company, I have moved on with life. Infact the manager has also moved to a different company altogether. One of my friend now works in the same company as him and infact when I was about to come back from Singapore, he told me about the opening in his company for a developer.

I thought this was a golden opportunity to work with some like minded people. And by the way I had not a single clue that this manager had these opinions about me. Well infact the altercation I had was with a person who used to report to this particular manager ( who currently works in the company I am trying to apply ).

But look at my bad luck, when I sent my resume to my friend, he immediately forwarded it to this particular person after which I did not get a response at all. My friend kept on asking me how is your bonding with this particular manager, have you done something wrong? Why aren't you being approached ? Finally it took a month for me to come to the conclusion that, it was because of the altercation and the transport related thing because of which I am not getting a call for the opening in that company.

Now in that one month, I had moved on to join a new organization, but now I got a call from the same company for a different project altogether a different manager, and this particular manager was not even aware that I would be attending the interview. The technical rounds happened and I cleared them, but the next round is still pending, and would be taken by this manager. Its already 2 weeks since I attended the technical rounds, so I guess, I have been ditched (alas will update this post if I get a call ).

And let me tell you about the second place where it has had a serious repercussion. When I was jobless for a month or so during July 2011, I had gone to one of my ex employer for interview again for a job. This company was the same as the one where I had the altercation. I cleared the interview and even filled the application form with major details. But look at my bad luck, I was ditched. Then I realized why. In one of the places in the application I had mentioned that I was the ex- employee of the organization and had given out my previous employee id.


According to my guess, what really has happened is that, when I quit the company in 2008, this manager with whom I had an altercation and this guy who works for a company where currently I am interviewing, would have written something rudely about me whether I could be hired again or not. So as a result, I was ditched.

Honestly I have no intentions of working for my ex employer (considering how much third grade interview process happened over there) nor crossing roads with this manager. But I wanted to work with  my friend and thats it.

Let me tell you about the interview process that happened at my ex-employer. I had one round of telephonic interview with some bare basic questions. When I went to the face to face interview they asked me the same set of questions. I wondered why, when I asked them, they told me, we are trying to confirm whether you are the person who took the telephonic interview or was it someone else. (Jee what an assumption).

Cheers,