Respect National Anthem

One of my favourate videos from Youtube.

I am not big fan of commenting on any work of any kind. That too in a public web site. But this time I wanted too but to my ill luck I wasnt able to. The Comment section didnt allow me to. So I decided to pen down my views here. And this is the video and below is what I struck.

Its Election Time!!!

Off late I have been in a little low sprit. Dejected as you can call it

Lots of new attempts/ventures have failed and I really feel bad that I am a little off-age. I am not sure if anyone can understand it but I am sure most of them about my age would understand. Be it new startups that friends or relatives have suggested or higher studies. Anything

So to burke what is happening in my life and not to bore the reader (I know there are hardly any). I am going to blog about something different. It’s going to be about politics something I have never understood. Not that I was ever interested in understanding.

Readers: WORD OF CAUTION. I am tempted to write this blog (those few who might have accidently stumbled in) just to fume out my feeling of gloominess and not knowing what exactly to write on. It’s strictly user’s discretion to read any further.

Once in an Interview Cho-Ramaswamy, (it my opinion the only sane Politician who is aware of what he talks) said. “People don’t have much of a choice. It given an option to choose among A Pick-pocket, A Thief and A terrorist, people would obviously choose the Pick-pocket.”

Yes!!! That’s true. According to me, there is never a solution to it. With all the power and might the pick-pocket turns into a Terrorist. And the first thing he does as soon as he comes to power is jail the Terrorist and the thief. Choice is just an illusion.

With Elections around the corner, politicians don’t know what exactly they are doing. All they know is to do something or anything to get into power. Never in history has congress and CPI been together until last Election to show majority. Gone are those days where party ideologies are priorities. At the helm of the affairs, all MP’s are in their drawing boards busy doing their math.

In a recent chat with a friend of mine, said though he supports BJP ideologies he would abstain from voting to BJP as the Local BJP MP was/is a Dada of his constituency. I first looked at him in dismay, as in not understanding what’s wrong with people? Should he not be supporting the ideologies of the party than the party men? But I could not argue with him, coz he made sense. He didn’t want to choose a terrorist (Cho’s words). May be I wouldn’t want to choose a Terrorist or a thief myself.

BTW do checkout CHO’s Political views and interviews. You can find a plenty of them on YouTube. I am attaching one of my favorites.

A draft I got when I dug up my old archives

When I first started to blog... I thought I would do it regularly. Or at least I thought I should do it regularly. I was too cautious not to rubbish my blog. May be! May be I was too cautious… I took care to complete a document before I posted it.

But at one point, it all looked vague; most of it was very disorganized and disoriented. Some time I blogged about some funny things that occurred or a mail conversation between me and my friends about some issue that means inconsequent to me or the reader. Some of the posting still does not make sense to me as to why I put it. So with all due respect, I am removing few of them that look stupid to me.

Below is one such document I had drafted sometime back. I do not remember the exact date as to when I drafted it. It looks like I took care not to put it until it is complete. All I am trying to brief is; the document below may be mere Rhetoric to the reader but... It brings me fun when I read it from my old archives. Here it is for your eyes. May be it will redo it and make it more sensible for the readers but for now please bear with me.

"A New Framework– My First Step towards becoming a Software Architect

Why Software Architect? – What more can I expect being as a 2 year old kid in the software Industry. I was never inspired by the Dead, may they rest in peace. Why dig the grave when you have thousands around you. Each day each hour each minute each moment I face new Challenges new people new emotions new feelings. I was never the same person what I was a minute ago. I am little more than what I am. Thoughts were never concrete. Anybody with tough and sturdy thoughts was always a step ahead of me. I respect them for what they are and anybody one shot less than that was just under my foot. I have a hard stricken Ego. "

The Blame Game.

Even Stupidest of stupid wouldn’t believe 500 stupid were employed and getting paid for nothing.

No one is playing blame game here.

I don’t know why TCS laid off just 500. They have got more. Let’s back Track. Chuck the entire Training team who are just vegetating doing almost nothing, the so called PIP (performance improvement plan) team who have proved themselves worthless, Resource management team for not knowing what they are supposed to do, the HR’s who negotiate for cheap resources and the interview panel who think they are oh-so-holy great that they can judge anyone and anything within a period of 1hr to 45 minutes.

For All Big IT Firms out there: Please introspect there is something seriously wrong with your Trainers, HR Planners, Resource management team and the interview panel.

Introspection on why employees don’t perform.
· Most company has the bench policy and employees vegetate for months together doing almost nothing. The performance of the employee for this period is not monitored. Not a fault of the employee!!! I don’t blame the company too. But give these employees a little more chance
· Moving resources just before the performance appraisal period. Crazy. The Employee, Team lean or the Project manager know what to do and how and what to rate. It’s the Employee who gets all the beating.
· Resource Management team: Cascading resources within multiple technologies. I hate this. Most employees don’t have option. The quality of work is lost. Not many can groom well.
· Interview panel: For interviewing candidates 2 yrs or less most companies employ juvenile resources. STOP this please. They most often quiz them on what they know. Ask them to quiz them on their algorithmic skills and problem solving skills.
· Trainees and PIP (performance improvement plan) team: You are not a school teachers to say more than 60% of my students are brighter and 20% average and ONLY 20% are weak. And people who sit there are not school children. They are educate. A good teacher will know who is dumb and who is good the very first day they step in.

I am not blaming any IT company in particular. It is fine to layoff but a little introspection would do wonders in the lives of many.

I completely subscribe to Sridhar’s Blog

I read this posting from Sri Ji’s Blog (that could be found in one of my Links) about the Handling attrition dated 27th December 2006. I am sure the points that he mentioned does not only go with Photon but also with other Medium size organizations. With out taking this personal I would like to address few of the points he had mentioned.

1. Of course yes!!! People lie and try to be nice when they quit a company. They do not voice the actual reason. Why? I find that there could be only 2 reasons for that. Either the Employee tries to be smart or he is really dumb. In most Medium sized companies, I have heard. Employees are often threatened or there is a rumor that goes around about this. If this is true, then the dumb ones are often victimized. More importantly this does not portray a good picture about the Company. It creates a bad impression within the inmates about the company. It spreads around like the Chinese whisper.

Solution: Relieve the employee without any problem. These companies should be clear “Why do we conduct the exit interviews?” Stopping the attrition is out of the question. We are just trying to minimize it. Make the employee feel comfortable when he leaves. This does not only help the employee but also the employer. Where in the relieving employee does not stir any new rumors within the organization. More importantly, employees might come up with their actual problems. Like salary hikes, Designations, Co-employees being treated special or feeling of being left out. And I personally feel most of these issues can be addressed with a one on one talk with HR or a PR manager.

2. Yes. Overloading the other employees with the work of the left ones (here I mean both the ex-employee and the ones in furlough or leave). Most of the time employees don’t find time completing their own work in spite of working hard. Over burdening the employees, leads to stress and other political issues within the inmates. Most often training a new employee could also become a burden. New employees often come up with doubts and could become a real pain. They take away most of your time adding fuel to the fire. Most turn out to do night outs. Night outs are exciting during the start of the carrier but is not a comfortable feeling with in becomes a routine.

Solution: It is always easy to find out which team does most number of night outs (an easy way to find out if the employees are overburdened). Time to Pitch in. PR managers can talk to the individuals (which is virtually possible :-) ) or find out if there is any problem with the projects resource management. Even if the above two are not possible. Announce incentive, or compensation off or something that can makes the employee feel comfortable. But want ever you do, DO IT FAST. If you promise for an incentive and delay it, you better not promise it at all. It leaves a bad remark, especially when it comes to money. (I remember once I got my incentive almost 6 months after they promised to give. Fortunately I was one of the first ones to get it among the others. The only consoling thing, at that time.)


The best over all solution that I can think off is to have a portal or an internal website (like most big companies do), where a call can be raised for any issue that an employee faces. This could be anything like finance, payroll related issues, IT helpdesk or anything from pin to paper.

Make it a mandate. Make it a habit for all the employees to see this web site daily. Post all the internal happenings in this web site. Anything that an employee needs should always be routed through this. For example if an employee needs a mouse or any other IT accessories, a call should be lodged. And more importantly it should be addressed :-). If not addressed, call should be automatically escalated to the higher official of the concerning department.

With Microsoft’s Sharepoint Portal, these portals are just minutes away. I am not exaggerating. If at all you need help in Sharepoint portal. I will help you out.

A Common Mistake...

Most of us, even Software Engineers do not keep their Personal Computers and Laptops Organized.

A perfect example is the pathetic condition of their desktops. I often see people having a clustered and unorganized desktop. Most don’t realize that more the desktop Icons lesser is the performance. Word Docs, Excel sheets, Images and other installables, are few items that can be seen more often in these clumsy desktop. These docs can be segregated and organized in their own personal folders in side the Hard disk or the “My Documents” folder. For Novice and amateurs “My documents” are very useful.

Installing unwanted and unknown applications lead to leakage of important data and important information. They degrade the system performance very badly. Most prominent are the software downloaded from the P2Ps. Most of the exes are Virus and Trojans. But most of the time we might be able to diagnose it unless it is installed. For example, I badly needed a “Turbo C” compiler recently. I wasn’t able to get it from the internet so I had to download it from “Limewire” P2P software. After I downloaded it, I ended up getting one of the worst Viruses I have seen. It got in all the “Ad wares” possible and my CPU was always full. At last I had to format it.

So please be aware of any kind of exe you download and install.

Most of us don’t really have Anti-Virus software to handle this. If at all we have one, we fail to upgrade the latest virus definitions.

I recently found this web site http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ that does Virus Scanning online. It’s a very time consuming but a very effecting process. This comes for free and is very reliable.

Do check it out.

If at all you don’t remember the URL. Goggle “Micro Trend”. And the first site you get it this.

Hope it is useful to you.

Hilarious...

The one below is a very hilarious Comedy I have ever admired. Anytime you see it, you will laugh like crazy. If you can understand Tamil it would be even more fun. Anyways you will have subtitle. Hope you enjoy.