Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday My Co-Authors ... Avi da and Dada.. you are the oldies of this joint..but both younger to me by heart..have a great party... May the US and The UK serve you ample Bourbon and Single malt respectively

Have a Great day ahead

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Mark of Shiva

Damn you cartoon u missed a frigging point point blank, scowled the one of the shooters...Abhishek was down in the ground wenching in pain.. did not know what hit him..it was the standard issue FN Browning Gp35 9mmx19mm bullet,it was his temple that hit.
Bloody joker, we need to bury him now.
Sorry saabji replied the other shooter in low key voice.
They were two of the elitest of marksmen in the country, and they had marked their man well from the international Bus depot they , since he arrived. From Saltlake to Esplanade they followed him from noon to dark they were his shadow, waiting for the opportune moment. The man had no clue what fate he had, their order was simple shoot to kill.
The Man had gone to the biriyani shop in the afternoon..they had their lunch at the table behind..then to the movies they followed him for the raunchy C grade soft porn flick.. They for a moment thought were they behind the right man..was he the Conspirator, or just another tourist from across.
Even with their doubts they followed him ..now to a bar, no, no way can be a conspirator. Yet their orders were simple shoot to kill. The man was a guzzler drank cheap whiskeys after another.. they could not seat idle them selves.. as his count increased.. so did theirs..they did not want any body to be suspicious.

This was now the man made his mistake, he streched his arms to yawn in a very sozzled fashion, giving them a sneak peak of his pot belly, and the colt double eagle, cozied in his trouser..
Thats an expensive weapon for a lout like him, they knew they had their man.
" saabji yehi tapkaun kya?" Sir should i take him down right now? asked the junior personnel..'nehi hume presswalo ka jhanjhat nehi chai ye" No we dont want the press hounding us replied the superior.. there were far too many people in the bar.

"Bahar jake thokte saale ko" will shoot him once he is out.


It was 11:30 in the night, Abhishek a bit drunk him self came out of the bar lit a smoke , he was expecting a call since evening which never came..
he should not be in this part of the town at this hour he thought, but were will find cheap liquor when your wallet does not assist you at the end of the month.
More so he was in this sulky mood whole day and needed a drink, he came here for some work.. but cheap booze stopped him and made him miss the last metro .

He was walking down the alley as many a taxi refused him to take him to his destination, as they thought he was drunk, and this was no up market locality.

He was walking when his phone rang .

They had taken their aim, it was difficult as the man was walking like a crab now.. was in state of drunkenness could not walk straight, yes we will take him down at the turn, they thought.
They aimed and they shot.. right at that moment the man bumped into a young guy who was about to take his phone out from his pocket..
Both fell.. abhishek was bleeding and and the man had passed out.

"Saale point blank tha woh.. Chal ambulance bula dekhte hai zinda hai mar gaya..
Chal chal usko thok."
."
That was a point blank you idiot.. anyway call an ambulance, and check if he is alive...and shoot the other bastard was the order.

Saabji he is alive.. but in shock.. lucky ass just has a flesh wound. the bullet grazed his temple .. worse sabji, we need a hush up
and he , he started laughing like a rogue.. my name is Shiva..

Shiva's browning cracked twice more.. with the silencer it was just soft thuds.. now mistake this time.

Abhishek woke uo at a nursing home.. all his bills were already paid. He had a letter right next to him.
You saw nothing, and a cheque with a seven figure some on it...50 lakhs to be precise.

Abhishek still had no clue what happened..the bullet grazed his temple leaving a wide horizontal mark.. it resembled the the parallel marks of shivites or devotees of lord Shiva were on their forhead.. the Mark of Shiva.

If his phone did not ring that day he would never have been shot.. if he was not shot , he would not be as rich to be precise..

Friday, August 10, 2007

Human Resources: Do we need them?

Often in office we wonder who makes the most money by almost doing nothing. It’s the Human resource guys. They come later that 10:00 AM and lecture on punctuality and work ethics. As soon as the lecture is over they head for shopping in office time. When they come to office after elongated shopping and see some hardworking guy chatting on the google, they start over again on lecturing on the work ethics and using company resources strictly on official purposes.

Soon the clock strikes 3:00 PM and they head towards the Café Coffee Day to discuss gossips column, relationship trouble and so forth. Heading back to their offices at five they take out some files and check their emails and then head home. In the entire day they however keep their "office" chat window in "too busy to chat" mode. Indeed, they are busy.

The basic question is "Do we need them". They are the people who try to templatize everything. For instance the questions
1. Please walk me though your resume (this has attained a particular importance in India owing to the fact smarass English speaking is the key to success)
2. Why are you looking for a change.

And then they ask you when is a right time to call you…and then they never call.

Here I share some of the experience with HR people. And I will also mention the names of those people.

Frost & Sullivan
Ever since Anmrita Vakil joined Frost, most analysts left the company. The reason is not just the stupid HR policy in Frost but also her lack of knowledge on anything under the sun coupled with her behavior that fails to maintain all codes of modesty. I remember during our HR appraisal, she had asked the Senior Analyst and the Industry Analyst to be frank about our experiences, and we bet we were, thinking that all our conversations were confidential as promised. But in reality she just poured out to the directors and seniors and so things became a little (actually a lot more tough). Now also Frost takes away the same amount in Provident Fund for all the employees. For me the contribution was clearly, just 6% of my basic while the government rule is (12.5% from employees salary and 12.5% by the company). So when we clarified it with her, she said that everything is according to the regulations. Later when we got our statements of account our basic salary was shown reduced to match the low EPF contributions. Upon enquiry her behavior led to several resignations.

In fact I remember her sending an email asking her form 10 for my PF payout a month back. I am yet to get a reply.



Hewlett Packard
I was offered a position in march and the HR person was Amrita Dhar. I was to join on April 21. From April 10th I kept emailing Amrita Dhar(HR manager) asking about three trhings:
1. Which campus should I report to?
2. What is the address of my guest house?
3. Will there be an airport pickup?

Till noon 20th I had no answer so I had to cancel my tickets and paty a huge penalty. On April 23rd they realized that I have not reported and started speaking to me. I said I will be there a week later you answer my three questions. Till today (August 10th) I am yet to receive my answers.


SAP

This is by far the most unethical recruitment ever. Their HR manager is Richa Bhargava. After two rounds with Gurgaon office head and one with the Germany office head, she said that their will be an HR round with the team. I said fine. On July 24th she asks me to book a reliance web world. I requested her is she could do that from her end because its expensive for me. She said “ NO U HAVE TO DO THAT” and banged the phone. The next day she calls and tells me that in case you have booked you cancel it and fly to delhi tomorrow. I said what about the cancellation fees for the web-conference? She answered “ we wont pay that”. I said ok then send me the tickets”. She said “You book the tickets we pay after 2 weeks”.

Then I remember a friend of mine who went to SAP Gurgaon office 2 months back for an interview. I asked if he was reimbursed. He said no. Then I informed Richa that since you are interested in hiring me please arrange for the tickets, else I am not interested in booking the tickets myself. The culture SAP under Rich’s l;eadership is simple " we will interview candidates on their resource not ours”.

NetScribes
They had once offered me a job in their Mumbai office in 2006. I rejected the offer because I was underpaid comparison to my experience, designation, and also the cost o living in Mumbai.

From 2007 April an HR guy called Nikhil called stating that they would like to open an office in Calcutta and if I were interested to take a senior position. I was happy at the prospect. From that day onwards Netscribes forgot about me. Then in almost end of June one of their HR Sukanya Gowda, called me and asked me to be free in a particular time. I kept waiting but nobody called. Then this was done for few days and ultimately someone did call. On June 30th I was called by the Swimming pool in Oberoi Grand, and a guy called Deepanshu assured me that I will be a part of their team. Days passed and then I called Suknya, and she said that I was selected. The next day I received an email thanking me for my interest and that I was not selected. I enquired with her and her boss (another mind of a pea nut size) called me names.

Compare Infobase
This is an organization that copies web content, rephrases them and call them theirs. I was called for an interview. I knew that they cannot afford my Frost salary but I was looking for a job that gave me financial independence without stress so that I can paint in my spare time. I was asked to write a paragraph on the impact of globalization on Indian economy. I used game theory and perfect competition to come up with answers. It was a neat writeup and having a GPA of 4.0 in my grad school I was confident of nailing it. The next day their HR person Shoma, called and said that my performance was poor. A friend later told me that they look for class X standard write-ups.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

re:Much ado about engineers

Nice argument sir, but I have studied the subject too. Software maintenance has three parts Corrective, adaptive and perfective. Adaptive maintence take about 80% of all the maintanace cost and efforts, because the underlying platform on which the system runs keeps changing which is not quite the case of classical engineering deciplines.

Corrective maintenance is plain removal of bugs while perfective maintenance is the REAL IMPROVIZATION which is done by those who builds the software. Right? In this regard Brhma and Vishnu are the same.

Much ado about engineers

Well, already a dual attack on the poor third person singular number I see.
I think you are missing a point by trying to establish another.
If research and development were the last word, then there would be a chaos once a new product was brought to market. Let me use a bit of Hinduism in this - Shrishti (Creation), Sthiti (preservation) and Lay (destruction).....makes sense?
RnD is the Srishti bit, and I do understand your concerns that US are doing more of it with the help of Indian and other engineers who are not really contributing directly to their motherland.
But going by the SDLC (software development lifecycle), and the concept of Sthiti, Preservation (or maintenance) of what is created takes up 70% of the lifespan of any product. So if US be Bramha, Indians can always proudly say we are Vishnu. For it is this maintenance industry, run by Indians, from or away from India, that is driving a bulk of our economy. We may not be making the Ferrarri, but we have a major part to play to make sure it keeps running. And in doing that, we are directly adding value to our economy, as we are an Indian company, based in Mumbai and working all over the world!
Some people are techno-thrilled, so as to say, they like making things. And they dont and wont get satisfaction in making real time technology in India, for India. But then there are others who like keeping things the way they were made, and may be innovating a bit more to increase its life expectancy.
So when the wheel was created, nobody though much about its wear and tear until a certain Mr. John Dunlop thought of the improvisation. And then some others who made the Tyres more durable and strong. And then some who made better road design to suit the tyres. And some who kept the road surfaces smooth, to justify the value of the wheel in the end.
Complicated? Just food for thought.

Engineers: Are they the real......? Part II

Considering the wealth spend by the country in creating an engineer and also the number of engineers created in comparison to the benefit realized in terms of technological innovations which results in receipts to the government I have no option but to agree with your postulate.

Yes traitors indeed. Sixty years to the independence, we still buy even the smallest of weapons. Sixty years to the independence and we could not even come up with a “Tommy gun”. Seventy percent of the defense budget here is still on procurement while in the US its on research and development.Be it the M-16, the antidandruff shampoo, or the RAY ban sunglasses all came from the DoD Labs.

Actually the problem is with the passion. Education is considered here as an avenue to make money rather than attainment of enlightenment. From Standard IX my class mates were hooked to Brilliant Tutorials. The paths were well laid out. IIT or REC à MS / MBA from USà Job in USA with HI/B à Green Card. The entire value system is wrong my friend. They become engineers as its often the easiest way to get through an MS or MBA and then a green card. Engineering is never a passion for most engineers save patriotism.

We cant even expect that they are salesmen to products that eats their nation’s wealth.

There is also a flip side. I know of some engineers from Caltech who came down to Indian defense research only to be frustrated by bureaucracy and corruption in the ministry level and went back.

So I agree that they are traitors, but our systems breeds such traitors.

Its a recursive relation, my friend.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Engineers: Are they the real......? Part I

They have always preferred working for Lockheed Martin or Boeing rather than HAL... NASA is more prestigious than ISRO..and why not the pay is good, its a good Career, earn dollars, get the green card.. have a great life all in all.
Have they ever thought why ISRO is not at par with NASA.. how many Indian engineers and scientist have built NASA.. who could have helped ISRO reach the helm..
Today HAL engineers are struggling to make the LCA, where as Indian enginners at Lockheed martin have successfully built the F-35.. which will be sold to India by USA along with the F-16 for multi million dollars??

Some people do say so whats the big deal, every body has the right to earn a living.. we send those dollars home dont we?
well yes you are earning a living at a cost to the Country who has spent thousand on your education or subsidising it in the IITs.. the country thought they would build new India.. well they have built a better USA already.. and those u have stayed back have done their MBA ..and have entered the finance or marketing sector.. or else taken the IAS way out.
These engineers even after sending the dollars home are contributing more to the US economy more than Indian.. their staying in US contributes to the US housing sector, food and Bev sector, clothing sector, medical sector.. and consumerism sector.. so whats their contribution to their nation..
oh yes we will built those Boss speakers in USA.. you can buy it with a120%customs and royalty to USA .. or the Lockheed martin will come to India
or even the software that I use in wtiting this, may be made by an Indian in USA.. which Indians pay royalty for...

Now the most important part of the story.. Its not i dont believe in globalisation.. but its personal .. its the Battle of the E's (
engineers and ECONOMISTS)
no points for guessing which one i am.
So my question for you guys are.. Are these Engineers the greatest traitors???...over to you Avi da.. for the part II