Recession and Indian Mangers

I was watching someone wait in the queue to collect his bowl of cut fruits. Soon it arrived and he asked, "Oh! Can I have some honey?" Immediately came the reply from the shop keeper, "Recession Sir". I could not control my laugh. He barely was able to pronounce the word and he takes that as an excuse. Such is the situation everywhere, not many are sure how tomorrow is gonna be. My friends say, they have butterflies flying when their Manager or HR calls them for a meeting. 

India is a cost effective development center for many MNC. But the crisis is so bad that even the cost effective centers seems costly. So each companies handle recession in their own degree. 

- Layoff Employee. Clean up unwanted workforce even though they are completely in control of their economic position. 

- Have mandatory unpaid in a month. 

- Going Green.

- No free food or lavish party or Sal hikes.

- No allowances for travel, internet connection and hardware.

- Shutdown or Suspend projects. 

I heard an interesting case, where few employees are selected in their organisation. Each one is given mini project (may be a research enigma) and asked to complete it in 30 days. In successful completion they get a chance to stay with the company, else they are laid off. :) I was wondering what great ideas people get. 

One other situation is where, they know that the employee will not quit his job since the situation is bad everywhere. So they decide to take everything out of him/her in this period. More assignments and stringent dead lines. Remember: If you can write a component in 5 days, it never would be possible to build the same in 2 days since we are in recession. (It will take 10 

months to deliver a baby). Hoping on Obama's bill for some improvement. But we are sure for a rough 2009. Hope this will pass away. So I asked Sankaranpillai for some advice to improve the situation.

Me: Mr. Pillai, how can we improve the situation?

Pillai: Ask every to mangers to code if they are not already doing?

Me: Ah! :O Can you tell more about it?

Pillai: Kanna, well its simple. Allocate 50% of managers time for coding. Ask them to cut the meeting that they were doing all the time. So 2 managers is 1 developer. More workforce at the same cost.

Post Disclaimed...

Restart Blogging

Off lately I was banging my head reading ASCII chart and gdb. But Its fun you know. Also was trying out pair programming for two days and seems to work out of the given problem. Tried venting out in a coffee break conversation all about Blogging with a friend.

I started blogging almost 2.5 years back. Made around 200 post. I don categorise on what I write, I just write all the junk I feel like. I write when I feel liking. Also got to confess that adherent follower of Blogger platform. During this whole journey, had formed small sets of blogger around me reading and exchanging comments and reviews. But today I was reminded of all the old bloggers I knew. I thought of saying them a "hi" and give them a nice whip on the butt to re-start blogging. Oh yeah! I know everyone is either busy at work or married. Still give it a thought. Here are some of them... If someone is really think to rethink. Let me know. :)

kim - antony - arula - rashmi - tom - harish - vivek - JK - Karthikeyni - Yeskay - Lakshmi - Rohith - Reghu - Karthi - Gopal - Ramya - Rajeev - Ramki - Bairavi - Anitha - Smitha - Haarish - Madhu

This laptop is running of charge, I need to rush. Happy Birthday Rohit. Wishing you all the glamour and get ................ :-)

Take care when you invite for your wedding

Hey just few things only. At regular intervals I find wedding invites getting to my Mailbox. I love and respest them all. Just that I just hate some of the things I see in the mail. Some time they are personal invites and not as a backup e-invite. So take atmost care of what one is sending to their friends.

- Send the mail with contacts in BCC. People with 'Reply to All' will shoot at thier leg by sending it to all. Some times I find some X contact getting added into my contacts because of this.

- Take some care in making the image! Crop and resize the scanned image to best fit size. Make the orientation fit to page. Rename the file. (Front page.jpg, back cover.jpg...)

- Best would be embedded the image in the mail and send it rather than a mail attachment. Also have a P.S that there is an embedded image.

- Try writing down what is there on the image as mail content. Images are not allowed in all mail servers.

- I would prefer getting a soft copy from the Wedding card printer rather than scanning it.

- Give equal importance like your printed cards is all I ask. :)

Cyber Cooli

I came across this term "Cyber Cooli" recently and was crossing my thought often now. I'm just trying to debate myself of what this could mean to me and my present. Cooli reference in this context.

School education is something that lays the foundation. Platform for ones reasoning, ones intellectual, communicative skills and more. One get to learn various subjects like Maths, Geometry, Atomic Physics, History, Civics & Geography. So its horizontal knowledge. Up to until 10grade one would be reading all irrespective of their choice. Now this is the foundation, I got less complaints here though that some syllabus are not competent with other I guess still they do a good if we get good teachers.

Next one got to choose a specialization in the Bachelors degree. Now whats makes people to make this choice here? They go consult friends and scholars to make this decision. Some parents are smart enough to identify the best of their children and help them realize their dream. (this is happening with the next generation of parents) Here one got to choose various stream of specialization like Electrical and Electronics engineering, Computer Science, Chemistry, Aeronautical and many more...

Now what happens! After this you are supposed excel in the stream that you choose. What happens in instead, every graduate has an vacant seat in a software firm to write code. Yes healthy in one way and sick in many ways. Whats healthy, we made global players to shift their focus to India by producing so many software engineers in numbers. When compared to US or UK it was a really big astonishing number for them. So this shifted their focus here. Also the economy was low which made any tom, dick and harry to invest in Indian market for cheap labor. Sick part is, "whats the conversation ratio of the students perusing their own area of specialization". It could be true that one or two in a batch of non-computer science students have extraordinary skills to switch their branch to computer science. But not 60% of the total strength landing up on a software job. We increase in quantity and decrease in quality which is a very bad sign. I call them "Cyber Cooli".

To me a community of good software engineers is directly proportional to the number of commits they have made to OSS. You can judge it for yourself of where India stands.

What brings these "Cyber Cooli's"? First thing that drives an normal Indian is the money that you get in these jobs. Say a Chemistry graduate who wants to do his MPhil and start as a lecturer in college. How much would he earn on a basic scale, it should be around 6k-9k per month. When compared without any prior computing skills today's software industry is in a way ready to pay you around 12k-15k per month with an additional skill. Tell me what would you prefer now? The second set are those bright chaps from non-computer science background and take up a software job. They sailed all the hardship in school and college for this computer science job. No! They got their own plans. Some software firms put in freshers out of college into this bonding where they cannot get out of the company until X months. That's a good time for them to earn some money, write minimal code and aside prepare for their higher studies (MS or MBA). Once their things are done, chuck the company and go in search of their dream. Crap, whats about the employer who has made so much intangible investment on one? I don have to answer it.

Cyber Cooli's risk is the current recession. If not coding whats next? One needs to really thing of it now.

Is the education system to be blamed or the individual to be? It should be a collective responsibility of all. All cannot be Hendry William gates. So let your child pursue his dream, tell him that its not less when compared to any. Let the educational system be non-partial enough to make all courses as important as the other. Let there be so many different jobs that flourish with in the country. Let there be no Cyber Cooli...

Disclaimer: When it says this post is written by kvijesh, Its me and only my opinion. Not in a way directly or indireclty refering to my Employeer.
Update: I know this post is badly written, I myself hated to read it again.

You got to live in US to use KSRTC

Look at the time zone these idiots want me to book tickets. :) Damm! Am I promoting these fellows by this.

Change...

Ah! Finally I started to realize that I too have a blog and apparently not writing anything. I do not want to give an excuse that I was busy and I hate that too. Spending my time mostly in front of the monitor and behind the lens. Change could be a good solution.

People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them.

'Virgin' mobile

This huge banner near a main traffic signal, caught many commuters when they were waiting for the red to clear. I was also one among them. Took a quick second to click it. No wonder why cellular industry is booming.

But ironically my question was who is going to be benefited by this offer? Guy or girl?...

Plan your travel

It has now become a routine for me to crib about the annoying things that happen around me. The latest inclusion is the private travels that run across the city. I'm bad at planning or would simply say work occupies my mind most of the time. So tend to miss appointments, dinner notes, mails, msgs, calls and end up getting left & right from all. Thats ok (I dont explain myself.... My friends understand me and the rest wont believe it anyways... - courtesy Karthi).

In my usual style, for traveling for Thursday afternoon I landed in Madiwala at 9pm on Tuesday night. Fortunately I got a ticket, was happy to take that and quickly walk away. Then for the return I asked my Dad to try out something in Coimbatore. Some days back he called me and said he booked one! I was happy again. Then part of the conversation, he said I only got seat number 38. Damm me! Seat No.38. Are you kidding! I never knew that Airbus had so many seats. So I asked him to call and confirm the booking center again. There the ticket booking girl, "Yes sir the bus has that seat number. Infact it comes in the middle so no worry. This is a special bus, it has 52 seats." F$(k! you call that as special bus, a 3+2 seater. On a normal travel itself I fold myself two times, before parking my leg (or the girl in the front seat would turn back giving a killing stare! conveying don shake my seat and disturb me!). Most annoying part of all is that it would take costlier than regular buses. Its was Rs.420 for an Rs.210 ticket. I would still think, if they really have permit for this bus.

Before canceling this special 52 seater. I want to book my seat in some other travels. Many of them turned down the offer with repeated dialog of, "Sunday full sir". Then finally KAVI travels said he had ticket for Bangalore on Sunday afternoon. It was a non-ac sleeper. Funny part is it costs Rs.500. I asked him why, he says like a cool cat, "Its a special bus and we cost every Sunday like this." WTF Even the night sleeper would not cost like this.

The actual thinks that happen within are, the booking agents book the online ticket when the open and show the status in FULL status. Then at the last moment, they hike the ticket at high rates and sell them to all such late comers. I have even spoke to some agents like this, they would say at the moment the ticket opens there would be many agents from other locations trying to book the tickets. So they just type the Name / Sex and rest fill with 1 character by pressing tab and booking the ticket. One other interesting thing would the cancellation charge would be 20%-30% for any time cancellation. When you cancel 4-5 tickets you could have planned another travel with the cancellation money. You can even see a booking guy from KPN get tickets for CONTI & ABT. No government or police would ask them until its been taken to lime light.

Another specific travels to talk about is ABT. ABT would have really entered passenger transport to compete with KPN, Since the ABT parcel service got into a toss when KPN parcel service started growing and sliced good portion of the profit. When they introduced the ticket rates where Rs.360, which was nominal for a non-volvo A/C bus. But they brand it as A/C coaches, really there is a lot of difference in traveling in Volvo A/C and normal A/C bus. As days progressed and he got some good customer base because anyone would accept an A/C travel at a lower cost. But he then hiked his prices to Volvo rates soon (Rs. 415), which is never worth when compared to Volvo experience. But people really take time to differentiate them.

Thought KPN has introduced ID card proof for the online ticket bookings. This would reduce by a small number but still there are hundreds of travels that continue to operate this way. Also its encouraging that SETC get into these routes with good buses, they need to increases the buses many folds to give passenger a good relief from private monopolization.

Conclusion: Finally I planned to cancel the ticket in Kavi too and go to Bangalore on Monday. No harm I can spare a working day.

Moral: Plan your travel days ahead. Dust your calender. Atleast a month ahead, else cancel your traveling appointment. :) Put appointments in your Google calender of when all you need to book tickets for long time.

Good Night.

Coding food

I wish I write a simple C program that makes tea for me. I just run the binary and get me tea. It would make me feel good. Being practical,

Why can't every degree in Computer science have a course in cookery?

My Second Home

Now a days, this place has begun to become my second home. This home is simple in construction, just four walls. Also to be economic the engineer did not keep a door for the house. There are around five neighbours to this house, interesting too.

Neighbour 1:
This house is always silent & atmost empty with minimal things. The person occupying it is always focused on what he is doing. There are frequent visitors to this house. At times my chat companion.

Neighbour 2:
I need to visit this house often, since we need too. The maximum neighbourhood ping for me comes from this house. Often people from there visit my home.

Neighbour 3:
This is the most happening place of all the 6 houses in my colony. Too many visitors for this house. Thought the owner will not be in his place most of the time. A place I don want to visit for a code review.

Neighbour 4:
This is second best happening place, atleast no serious stuff goes here. The person reads books at an inhuman speed. 1 page per min. It seems to be the most decorated house in our colony. But also awarded the messiest place (at times)! You just can pull the house owners legs 24/7. Guaranteed entertainment in terms for comedy, conversational drama and weird sounds.

Neighbour 5:
This was so far a visitors home. Who ever plans to leave the colony comes and stays here for some time. Depending on the owner, it seems to be most decorated or most empty. I made great friends in this house. Now recently a new tenant has taken this place with desire or staying there for a long time. Good luck.

Havoc in Hosur road

I'm a daily user of this Hosur road. I don't travel the entire stretch of the road, instead I travel 4 Kms from Silk board junction. The construction of the new flyover is creating more disturbances than convenience.

I would depict the scene that happens in this road. Major disturbance is the Fly over thats constructed. Its a useful project of the public, but will it be really used after so much annoyance during the construction. The major reason for this fly over is for the population thats traveling to Electronic city. Because of the fly over construction the center of the existing road is being blocked with barricade. The intrusion is so much that there are certain points in the road where only a bus can go at a time, which slows down the traffic at those points. Next moderate annoyance is that the road is divided into service lane and main lane. Both the lanes are at different levels, the vehicles that are in one lane are not able to shift to the other lane. This leads in one lane having kms of vehicles piling up and the other lane like a freeway. If the gentle (bmtc) buses shift lane, there is nothing more than that.

No proper planning. The rain water drainage that was completed is dug again and its open for last one week. Today a gentle (Bmtc) driver uncle parked his bus in that open pit. :) Pitty traffic was not moving on the service lane. Punctured trucks, intelligent traffic police and most importantly the public who cross the road in flash.

P.S: Dad, I drive safe and responsibly in the road.

New Year Greetings - Readers

Wishing you all a very Happy & Prosperous new year 2008. It has been an superb year (2007) for me as a blogger. My readers have increased dramatically. I also have become an voracious reader of many blogs. Thanks all for taking time to read my 'Scribbling' and pouring in your comments.

I promise to improve more in 2008 and keep this space more interesting.

365

As one of my friend wrote, "I wish life had an undo() function". How would it be when you are given an option to rewrite the last 365 days in your life? I would the first to implement that interface. For few its a success for sharing sweets. For few its like writing this post...

It has been an eventful days in my life. Somethings to remember, Somethings to forget. Life goes along as looking forward for a better and another eventful future.

Lost in ... ,
~ Vijesh

Challenge

The Challenge of my Job is not as challenging of making enough time for my loved ones!

Parking lot

Wondering, what data structure can be used?

Desktop

Desktop has many interpretations. Here I refer to the graphical home page when every operating system boots up. Literally, its the first screen from which the users starts using the system and will the last screen from where the user stops using the system. A desktop would contain a background, few icons, taskbar and few widgets (occasionally). Have a look at what one of my colleague's desktop.

Its an art to maintain a Desktop. Just ask your friends to send their desktop snapshots, you can keep on enjoying it for hours. There are so many different kind of desktops that are around us, some I have observed are, Default desktops are ones those have their default wallpaper and settings when they are shipped. There would be icons flooding around the screen. Many project managers and HR's would be having this (You can wonder why... :)). Default - but changed desktops they are those where the wallpaper of the desktop would be changed but set to some of the default set provided already. I guess managers would have this kind of desktop. Plain desktops are those with a plain background (may be a selected color is filled, usually would be a dark color) and few set of icons will be are present. This gives a clear visibility of the icons that are present. I guess technical lead would have such desktops. Next would be some self portrait desktop where a picture of yourself that came around good in the last picnic or last family party would be seen. Come on no guesses, only a girls desktop would look like this. Some times they keep flower occupying the screen, cute puppies and kittens also get a place. A guys desktop would have a cool sports car or a freighting bike poster else a sports person or some latest bollywood heroine. Mr.Organized desktop, this is some kind of professional desktop that has things organized. Like similar icons are grouped and pushed to one end of the screen. Recycle bin in bottom right corner and few set of application launches are at one corner. These kind of desktops can be seen with some experienced software engineers who are slight geeks who doesn't want to waste time in searching. Also many are launched using keyboard shortcuts, since mouse clicks are costly. What a mess desktop, ah ahh here is the famous category of desktops. They can be spotted at developers pc's. :)

There are lot of tools available to organize them and give a new look and feel often. But only a few are using them. Finally if at all these 2D desktops are bored, try looking at future desktops like bumptop

You got some more interesting desktops, write back to me!

Nov 1st - Testimonial

Here a short sweet summary of what people got to say! They are extracts from internal mail thread.

Vignesh
First of all Thanks to Peeps who made the initiative for the Trip.
He was the one who kept alive "the thread" regarding the Trip.
Also thanks to Jayakumar for Cab Arrangements.
Spl thanks to Santy for Choosing the place and making required arrangements for the same (Also thanks for his Shoes)
Thanks to Daams and Tom for bringing their Cool Hi fi Cameras which captured the moments of the Most Exiting day
Thanks to Vijesh for Capturing those Unforgettable Moments and breathtaking Snaps During the whole day ... Great Skill Vijesh
Thanks to my class guys Prashanth, Vinodh, Kishore, esp Tom(Who came directly from cbe and came for the trip) , Jayakumar who all made the trip the most unforgettable day in Bangalore
Enjoyed to the core...

Srihari
It was great fun. All the 3 paintball activity , swimming , food & not but the least volley ball was great
So to keep this going we need to arrange such trip atleast once a month :-)

Arun Rag
Thanks 2 all guys!! It was a great show yesterday..
@Santy
Thanks for suggesting the place... (don't forget to include other company names during the next trip... ;) )

Jaya Kumar
Trip super ah irunthuchu....
But Kaal vali thaan thaanga mudiyala.....
;( ;(
Thanks all for arranging a great great trip.

Krishnan
Nice Pics da... I missed it... but great that u guys rocked yesterday... will not miss any next time

Kishore
Had a very nice time and enjoyed a lot yesterday.. thanks for all the guys who made the trip a memorable one..

Prasanth
besting outing for me in bangalore so far....

Jaya Kumar again
Solla maranthuttaen...Yesterday wen i closed my eyes after going to bed, I was able to feel somebody shooting at my eyes...takkunu muzhichutaen...
:)
Cant identify who shooted... Summa sallunu straight ah kannukae vanthuruchu...

Dams
am enjoying at home.
trip super da. as sri said, lets go often. peeps vidave illiye, vida muyarchi :)
ellorume vara mudincha mathiri, place, time/date, budget ku suggest/arrange panna santy ku oru O.
paint ball game, volleyball, vijesh photography skills, meen varuval
ellam mention pannungo.
advance happy deepavalli wishes to you all :)

Finally Vijesh
Others who were there are tom, pradeep, santy, vinod who were not able to send in their testimonials due to tight schedule at work! :P Due course I might silently push them in. Well for me...
peeps held the plan together.. santy nailed the execution.. with JK pitching in with his managerial skills for the transportation.. the shouting in the field of paint ball (my throat is still recovering).. arguments off the field.. peeps & myself head on head shooting.. nice take away coffee mugs.. swimming pool & santy.. TT.. shuttle.. lunch & ice cream.. awesome volley ball, credit goes to all esp tom, kishore, santy.. not last by least Canon powershot S5 IS..

Then I went home, took a bath and silently slept :P

Don wish, you wont get!

Its Halloweens Holiday now, even its the same date in Cuckoo's Egg - a book I read (when ever Mr. Time permits me). Even life of person reading the book and the person in the book are same! Cliff has been fed up in searching the hacker, since none really wanted to help him. Even I feel the same now, I had even been in search of something for a long time and no one is really fruitfully turning up. But still I go by the book!

~ Research is not just finding results ~

Energy Conservation

Here is a mail that hit my mailbox this afternoon. With prior permission from its owner taking it online. Thanks Harshad for taking effort and sending this across. We will do our part! As a part of this, I will create a notification program initially to remind people to switch of their work stations during evening hours by sending out an email. Just in case you want to be on the list, just drop me a comment or mail - kvijesh at gmail dot com

>>> Harshad Sovani 10/25/07 12:17 PM >>>
Hi folks,

You may have heard about the global warming process umpteen times. But, now these words have become so common that we turn a deaf ear to the appeals made to us to conserve energy.

I routinely come across so many systems in our office where our colleagues keep their systems and monitors turned on when they've left office. I've been turning off all the monitors I come across on the way to the exit. Sometimes, I'm tempted to just press the power button and just switch off the systems, but obviously cant do that! I'm amazed at how ignorant and careless we could be! I asked one of our colleagues why he wont shut off the system as left office for the weekend, and pat came the reply 'Ah.. who will do that man? Why should I do it? I've to anyway use it on Monday!! '

Would we do the same had it been in our homes? Definitely not! Why? To cut down on our electricity bills. So, why not here? Electricity bills will be cut down definitely, but more than that it should be done as a part of an effort towards conserving energy.

There are a number of articles out there on the web on global warming and energy conservation. Just to list a couple of them:

Natures-Switch
How-Your-Computer-and-TV-Add-to-Your-Energy-Bills
Wiki

Some of the many things that we can do, we must do:

• Switch off your monitor when you dont require - when going out for meetings, when going for lunch, when checking out of office. An easier solution is to use power management in your system to switch off monitor automatically after inactivity of 2 to 5 minutes.
• Hibernate your systems / put them in sleep mode when you leave office.
• Switch off monitors in other cubes when you see that there's nobody occupying the cube (doesnt matter whose cube it is, wont do any harm!).
• Try to conserve energy everywhere.. not just in office.. but at homes.. yours and others.. switch off fans, lights, TVs when not in use.
• Spread the word and follow it religiously
  

I hope none of us will simply ignore this mail, and will do our bit as a responsible human being to save our planet from meltdown.

Cheers!
~ harshad

Black Out

Yes, this would be my first step towards energy saving. Its obvious fact that white pixel (RGB - FFFFFF) consumes more power than dark pixel (RGB - 000000). Hence even Google made its Homepage blacked out for one hour in San Francisco Bay Area. This is an on going effort with lightsoutsf if you fellow bloggers also are interested join us. I will remain like this for some time!

Further on this effort I thinking on ways to save power, I created a custom theme on Gnome that blacked out 80% of my monitor display. Now other applications also have a view like my favorite terminal. What else can you think of saving energy. Open to comments.