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,