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,