Confusions-galore

Yesterday I was asked a couple of questions by 2 "mutually exclusive" people - what do I want to do? How long do I intend to stay in the US? I suddenly realised that an immediate answer was not possible since it involved work, personal life and all the fundings towards the balance sheet of my life's finances (actually at this point in time - 2 of us) and I have to decide. Something I want to balance out are opportunities that exist at a time and the opportunities that I can create. I would ideally like a good stay but for the fact that money and ambitions are not exactly doing a tango. I guess this blog update is confusion enough.

Stay Hungry Stay Foolish

Four words, but of enormous depth. That's what the graduating students from Stanford got to hear from Steve Jobs. In effect, leading to my principle of - "everything that happens in life, is for a reason and sincerity always pays".
I am seriously planning to take on the PMP certification heads on. Infact, the latest feeling I've been brooding over the weekend is that I'm bored of sleep and I can invest some of the time I sleep into learning new things. After all like JF Kennedy said -

"Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other"

So lets see if I still have the zest in me for learning!!

Diamond or carbon - subtle choice

It’s not exactly been a bright day at work, especially the fact that the weekend is looming. I've been unable to sleep the whole night with strange thoughts in my dreams. All I've been doing is finishing up things that I needed to have completed at least 2 days ago. There is a lot of research that’s been waiting for my attention and also need to solve a lot of implementation issues. I hate doing this. Not that I cannot do this, but then solving these easily does not impress on higher-ups the fact that I'm capable. Not that I ever think capability is a factor considered for getting to a higher responsibility level. I'm slowly realizing the fact that there is a lot of ability in me that’s being unused. I know for a fact that my financial ability and number playing is extremely good but then after 2 years of latency on this skill, it’s something I feel I'm loosing out on.
I also have a good feeling on project management but I need a little more dabble with the marketing to be sure that I can handle it. According to me, project management is the true outlook of management that utilizes the all-round ability of the manager. The manager has to make the numbers look good, do proper allocation, needs to have knowledge of operations of the field he/she is in, run it successfully and before that plan/strategize it accordingly and sell his plans to superiors and client. A total all-round ability and the icing on the cake - politics involved in every stage. Operations and finance I am confident of handling, resource allocation and planning/strategizing I can improvise with time but marketing is something I've never messed with till now. So guys in project management, you actually are not relishing the pressure you are into. It’s the same as driving a beautiful vehicle at top speeds without ever waiting to enjoy the sounds and mechanics behind it. Till you relish pressure, you are still a piece of carbon resisting to be converted to a diamond.

Debate - new topic yet again!!

Yes folks - another new topic to debate on though for this one I'll try not take sides. The topic is -
"Should a person's appraisal/promotion depend on the performance/capabilities or the experience?"
We newer B-school pass outs would vouch for the former while the old school of thought would go along with the latter. The reasons are simple - path of progress for individual holds the key and experience is a wiser teacher than books. But the first thing I was taught at the B-school was "increasing share holders wealth" which by my simple brain calculation means organization comes first. And stupid being me, have always believed in this. But like my dad always told me, charity is not something to be indulged in when one is a beggar. And the sad part is I never have thought of myself as a beggar. I've always gone along with the decisions, whether right or wrong for my individual perspective, but then as everyone can still see I still get the lowest salaries among batch mates, struggle for almost everything in life and like most losers have lost hope in dreaming for something for myself since meeting my other dear ones need is the higher priority.
On the other hand, bookish knowledge is no great tutor. The vast experience of doing things right and wrong accounts for some amount of points compared to a few people's judgment on ability. And moreover, a leader who has not tasted or understood failure is a risky proposition for the organization. Its equivalent to the fact that riding a bicycle slower is harder than doing the same faster.
But the end result is the fact that given the open market for jobs, the facts for judgment are governed by performance in past, capability, employee morale, retention and organizational value. The major fact I notice missing in my current organization as in many is the last one - organizational value. Higher ups are very evident of the threats posed by bright sub-ordinates and it generally ends in company loosing a valuable person or employee losing faith in the system leading to poorer performances. In either case, organizational goals take a hit and hence decreasing shareholder wealth. But in any case, I'm no Peter Drucker!!

Splendid San Francisco

Finally a place in the US (after San Diego) that I found to my liking - San Francisco or SFO in common terms. A beautiful and green city, with a decent amount of fellow countrymen and locality and a interesting yet down-to-earth downtown. I visited Fremont (places where my friends lived, Indian temple with more authenticity, Indian restaurant) and downtown - Golden Gate Bridge (it was truly a long and high suspension bridge that looks strikingly beautiful in reality than the cold purpose for which it was built), Lombard Street/Crooked Street (nothing can describe the drive up the steep incline of Lombard to stop totally at the stop sign an the very top while coming from the Golden Gate bridge and then through the curves of crooked street and finally down the incline of Lombard again), Pier 39/Fisherman's Warf (a section we can see a lot of street musicians, robot men, hilarious scenes, sea elephants/lions (I actually don't remember what they were) and of course 'machli bazaar' where you can see a lot more than 'machlis') and Union Square (gives one more of the feeling of NY downtown which I am not a fan of). I was also pleasantly surprised to see the greenery and have to acknowledge the fact that it is colder at night, perfect to my liking. The only reason why I would rate San Diego above SFO is for the simple fact that the place has more open space and things here are simple compared to the big cities. And not to mention that I loved the drive from SD to SFO and reverse route. Wonder how it would be if I had taken the scenic route instead of the 7.5 hrs short drive (for the simple fact that I wanted to drive all the way)?
Definitely would love to spend more time in this city than the 1.5 days I spent on the last weekend. Looking forward to being in more such cities too!!

WANTED: Long weekend

Finally the much awaited long weekend after the tensions of 3GToday started. Ideally I would like to have a peaceful weekend of not doing any hard-work, enjoy life and just laze around. Plans are for Sea-World on saturday, loaf around and grocery on Sunaday and take Monday entirely peacefully. Would like to play some tennis over the weekend (my first tennis in more tha 3 months). The hectic schedules of 3Gtoday started last december, right after my vacation and gradually ramped up to hectic frenzy that concluded this week with the site going live. Everyday was filled with calls, bug fixes and having to convince the client the reason why something was not do-able. But in all, a super learning and fun project it has been. But hey, I still would be cautious to ask for another one like this. At the end of this project my earnings are: pride of having helped some team members to improve, learnings of handling client and situations, learnings of portal and portlets (including JSF) and having fun in the face of tension. My weaknesses exposed (hey PM if you are reading this, you shouldn't be using it against me in my evaluation) are: lesser patience, losing sight of work priority to the ambitious heart of doing a lot of stuff and ability to multi-task among highly asking projects. But then overall, my balance sheet is still profitable and would like to invest the profits in the long weekend!!

A Toast to 3GToday Team

When I was complaining about work, it was the 3GToday website that I was working on. Looking at the site, its hard to judge the complexityin the technology, architecture and effort behind it. Hats off to all my team members who have been working hard (day and night) to get this up and running. Vinay (our project manager), Lakshmi (who has unfortunately for us has moved on), Aruna, Ramesh, Niladri, Kannan, Ananth, Vinod, Jyoti Ranjan, Pankaj, Sunil, Harisha, Saritha, Saravana Kumar, Mullai and Shyamala (analyst and test lead) form the successful team of which I was a part. This may not have be the best project ever, but given the experiences of people, complexity of technology and the fact that most of them were new, it has been a project of which I am really proud. We also went through a lot of effort in the end, but I must say it was worth it. Though there are senior members in the management who have no regards for the effort of the team members and think a congratulations mail is a formality that everyone has to pass through, I cannot let be stopped from rejoicing. For many of us, even our families had to put up with the erratic schedules. But after everything is said and done, this has been a success story in the organization.
Coming to part of management, if upper middle management is not going to be people oriented, their survival will only lead to the demise of the organization. Today we recieved a mail from one member who thinks a person totally unrelated to our project is the one to be attributed to the success. And this was after he had challenged the teams technical capability and finally mentioned that the delivery was a 'fluke' and only future would tell us how consistent we can be. And none of the members were attributed to the success and all it indicated was the formality of the event of being congratulated. Extremely irritating and left a dirty taste in mouth. For sure this person will never earn my respect even if he does the 'bestest' act in the world. And it also indicates to me the fact that if such members form the part of our top brass, I amy not survive long.
Anyways, I would like to personally thank every member in my team and hope that as we build the site further and fix any bugs that still exist, we'll only taste success. Thanks everyone.

Rewarding Work Life

Life would be less complicated if poeple completed their immediate tasks at hand before doing a role-play for someone else. And to add more to that, if they would care to use their brains once in a while. I can better relate to people if they don't understand rather than when they talk about things which they have no clue about but are not willing to accept their lack of knowledge!!! And to be in a Fortune 500 company and to deal with such creatures, RIDICULOUS!!!!!!
But being in a client servicing organization, I'm forced to put up with all this and its supposed to be a part of life. And not to mention, have to take it with a smile and say "thank you for all the hard work". And at the end the company rewards these brainless nit-wits while all I get to hear is "good work". And does my organization know what we go through in execution? Sure. But will they do something about it? Nothing other than give the sales guy his cut of the revenue!!! Strange cycle for me to think that the work I'm doing is a great learning experience and rewarding, when infact your promotions are held up (when it should be prompt if they think I deserve it), your non-work life is as screwed up as it can be and let's not go to monetary aspects of it. As for my ambitions in life, I don't think that this life time is even close to achieving half of what I want (and trust me when I say that I'm not ambitious). My well-wishers think that I'm in the wrong organization for achieving my targets and keep flooding me with opportunities they think is beneficial. But for the most of it, I am not confident of what I'm capable of since it is an unknown to me (and not to others). So I'm hoping to build my confidence and strengths in the organization that first recruited me out of grad school and among folks whom I trust. Not a bad thing I suppose, except that I seem to be running out of time. I am very confused as well as frightened. But where most people look at me for whatever little I achieve, I take the pleasure of success in every small problem I over come while for the big ones, I seem to be loosing out.

Proxy me please!!

Finally a solution to reduce the load on the server - put a proxy caching server in front of it. After days of struggle and long hours at work, my determined boss finally got the proxy caching to work. Well lot of short-cuts and forbidden paths undertaken, but the we fnially got the performance imporvement we wnated on a non-clustered environment. To put it simply, we put a proxy server in front of our web server & application server so that all the users get the content that is cached (it is updated periodically) in the proxy server instead of requesting our servers who serve real-time information. Please note - a way to relieve stress. So, can I put a proxy in front of me at work so that all static and monotonous requests can eb served by the proxy while I am enjoying my life?? This whole week I've not spent any quality time with my wife and she's already mad with me for making her run through everyhting from grocery shopping to birthday parties.
But the best part is I still manage to amaze myself most of the times (if you guys did not get me - modesty is not my virtue). I have managed to work on everyone elses modules when I had not written any myself in offshore. And I'm no geek in java!! And all this after members in my team said - "there is no way you'll make changes in the code since you did not write any". I think there is someone out there who definitely looks out for me and I'm very grateful to that 'someone'. Me looking forward to lot more fun in the coming weeks and put all this behind me.

Has time moved?

I've been in the US for over 3 months now. I'm still doing the implementation of the site. Though it is scheduled to go on for more phases, I've my doubts. I was to do requirements for another project, but this one closed me out (and my hopes of being an analyst). And the worst part, dealing with pathetic infrastructure guys who feel that the site going live may add burden to their already existing chores that they are determined to pull down the application for development issues. Haven't we moved onto the era where everyone was aligning their goals with teh organizational goals? or has time stopped for these people? I know there are tweaks possible in teh application developed and I do not claim perfection. But why does everyone else think they are perfect? Or do I have a kiddish attitude towards competitiveness? My life does only move in the negetive direction with the fact that I get lesser time and energy towards home. My career ambitions are more realistically seeming to move on a horizontal level. And on the monetary front, there is only movement backward (this one is for sure). Where is my motivation coming from? What is making me come to office at 8 AM and leave after 6:30 PM everyday if not later? Am I making a fool out of myself?
Anyways hopefully it gets cleared in the next few exercises and I'll be happy to come and work again. But really, now the site seems old to me, nothing exciting. Afterall I've been seeng it since last October!!

Life in the US

Life has been so hectic in the last 3-4 months. Not only are there issues at work with tackling new technology, grooming/getting work done from relatively fresh people to deliver as well as get a good rappot with them and, delivering results on time, there are also the personal issues of not spending much time with people you care for, invest time in the house I'm building and having my personal life and hobbies in complete disarray. The few events that took place on the way are getting US visas for Payal and me, getting the housing loan approved and being in the good books of my entire team (the last one is my assessment). And yes by the way, I also managed to land up in San Diego (not to mention that I am eagerly waiting for Payal to join me this weekend to start enjoying).

US is a strange country (perfectly normal to the poeple here I'm sure) with a lot of differences where I come from. Will Blog more on my experiences soon to prove this point.

Tsunami and globalization

Tsunami - the giant killer waves spreading in the oceans caused by disturbances in the ocean floor (this time near Sumatra), created a havoc in India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia with other countries in the Indian Ocean also enrolled in the destruction list. They did not confine themselves to the realms of Indian Ocean but tried a hand at globalization by reaching out to Australia in the south to eastern coasts of Africa in the north. The one thing they offered everyone free of cost was 'DESTRUCTION'. The first one to embrace globalization in a win-win situation for it!!

Important Management Lesson

The best managment lesson I've learnt and managed to apply in most places is - "Listen to people". The catch behind the listen to poeple is not just to hear them out before you can start replying, but the skill lies in the fact that the reply should not be formulated while you are listening and only after you have heard the person completely. Why you might ask? Some of us are so caught up in the idea that we should give quick solutions that we might solve the immediate problem being heard, but might fail to eliminate the root cause. And in not way does a quick reply raise the caliberation of a person as a good manger/leader!! And the better part to it is that employee loyalty is ensured for a longer time. So my year resolution is going to be a better ................... any ideas?? Well better Manager :-)

And hey, wishing everyone a happy, safe and successful year in 2005!!

Vacation week of partying, enjoyment and work tension!!

Finally, the dreaded moment has arrived - visit to my in-laws and that too for a marriage. After adopting a self imposed ban to large social gatherings, this is the worst nightmare coming true. Anyways being away from work means that I'm always mentally with my colleagues fighting it out, which will also lead to the tension. But I hope the vacation does refresh me.....And its about time I got a break! My body needs it, though my mind will refuse to rest :(

Promotion to God from lesser mortal!!!

In the current setup in India, I feel as though I've been promoted to being a god after being a lesser mortal all the time!! The reason you ask - at office I've upgraded myself to a P IV 2.8 GHz 1 GB ram machine (I was managing with P III 750 MHz 512 MB ram) and at home I've got a new system, P IV 2.8 GHz 512 MB ram CD R/W-DVD combo (I was struggling with a Pentium 450 MHz 64 MB ram with a faulty CD drive). And compared to most friends, I atleast enjoy the speed of computing if not the mobility of computing. And on a personal front, the Diwali was a blast!! I spent the first day spending a lot of money on stuff I would never have thought of buying and then ended the night with bursting plenty of crackers (sadly contributing a lot to environmental pollution on the pretext of my first Diwali after marriage) at my friends place. On the second day I was at Neetu's place for a fabulous lunch and I realized that the family there was quite the type I enjoy being with - not much fuss, very open on matters, an opportunity where both couples talk without reservations (otherwise generally interactions happen between the same genders or between the people who are friends, without care for the spouses - something I'm terribly uncomfortable with) and a son who makes everyone run around to get his way!! I came back at night to burst my share of crackers with them and it was a thrill seeing Aryan (their son) enjoy the lights and sounds. He's only closing up to 2 years in age. What a Diwali it was!! I was extremely happy and thrilled to enjoy this diwali in a looong time!! And hey, I must add that Payal was dressed in a sari on both days and she was really beautiful!! On Saturday I was at office since morning and managed to do a little bit of installations for my project. But sometimes I wonder why am I so committed to work when I go out of the way to do things. On Sunday I played quite a bit of tennis though I my service is now giving me a problem. And then I saw King Arthur - a movie that I enjoyed totally. It was definitely worth the money and I can see it many more times too, though I liked The 13th Warrior better. So my long weekend was totally fun and now I have the power to compete with the better crowd in the world of computing - any takers??

A long weekend, booze party and tennis rounds later.......

Well a cushion to last weeks extremely disappointing week - long weekend away from office, loads of booze with friends and best of 3 set match with a friend which I won 2-0. Not that I like what happened last weekend, but I've overcome it by resigning myself to be the 'scum' of the batch. Maybe my expertise lies in being a student and getting to learn stuff and take exams on them. But when it comes to career, I am a miserable failure. Who else would stagnate at a position after completing an MBA, seeing their juniors at a rank above them? Well, now I've accepted and have decided to move ahead with whatever has to come. Can't afford to waste too much time on this silly reason. True, I may have to scale down my dreams; but hey, that not something new. But then there is a catch - all this is if my good friend (actually my project manager) does not succeed to find his way around the system. He has been trying to cheer me up and will try for me and I do hope he succeeds. Thanks a lot da!! Till then I shall try and enjoy the treats of colleagues who have been promoted.

And then coming back to other things in life - I'm going to get a chance to play around with a Sun Solaris box. And I have to get my home plan approved and then the back breaking work of scouting for a loan, getting the estimates in place and get my house to look good too. All that I need to do before I leave for my vacation towards the end of this month. I need to get a new book to read and also a new bag (cause the zipper on my favorite blue one, which I had for over 7 years, conked out). Life is getting tougher and tiring, wonder how I will survive this day and any day in future!!

Oh, the cruel life!!

Finally the facts are beginning to sink in. Seems I am facing the biggest failure of my 'planned' life. Maybe not to someone else, but I guess my planning has been wrong at some place. While my colleagues at office are contemplating the hike, seems like I may have nothing to look forward to. Seems my faith in people being fair is not holding good anymore. Not that I am very naive, but I always thought everyone has a better side and it always comes into play. I thought the same when I was joining this company back, but after 6 months and rumors of no increase in pay or promotions and no judgment to my work done currently, I am really at a loss. I know I have done my work well and also gone out of the way to do things (at the expense of my personal life) and it will be the same in any other organization too, now or in future. But then I will definitely feel cheated. I've been pretty laid back regarding the 'money' matters and soon I'll be crushed under the weight of my attitude and the company trying to take advantage of me. Not to mention the salary gap between my peers and myself (which was not much of an issue till now as I was content with work, but then the gap is becoming at a distance of a few light years). Maybe I should seriously contemplate trying for that opening at Intel that a friend was telling me about. Of course there is gain for him, but then I too will be compensated better, atleast twice better. Even though the primary aim of my MBA was the work I wanted to do, the hidden motive of 'materialistic' wealth is going to catch up faster. I'm still not happy in this rat race (something my dad always ridiculed me for), but I think there will be a time when I give up my principles for my selfishness to survive. And then I know I will not be this 'nice' person anymore (not that being 'nice' has done me any good other than the good friends I've made). My wife is already angry with me for various reason and one of the thing she resents is my love for the work I do and the long hours I spend at office (time cheated away from her). I know she understands me perfectly well, but now I think she is right. At the moment, both professional and personal life are in doldrums and the reason (sadly) is ME!!! Whats good if I'm in charge of every thing when there is nothing but poverty in my kingdom?? Well I know the fact about fighting spirit and all that load of motivational series thoughts, but suffer when I, myself am the root of it??

Given to the foils of time,
And shattered like plate glass,
I imagine unconsciously -
Darkness now lives at daylight,
And shadows turn to ghosts
And while pretending to sleep,
I realize - Nothing is what it seems anymore.

Its true, its real - I'm living in a dream and weakening the foundation of my future. Maybe its time I stood up to ask for myself and take decisions centered around me. Let me think it over and till then see if my principles hold water!!

Life in "New York" of India

Firstly, my sincere apologies for not posting in the last 15 to 20 days of which half the time I spent in Mumbai (in fact this post is from Mumbai too) . I am here for the design of a project. In fact, my nomination here was based on the pick of the straws and as luck might have it, I came up with the shortest one. The reason?? Well this city has no soul, full of disconnect, extremely high pollution (maybe in further Health Insurance policies, they should take into account the number of times one visits Mumbai) and the water supplied is considerably hard being near the sea cost (it results in rampant hair-loss!!!). Only those who can absorb these anomalies, can fit into this city (which is actually over 12 million people). Hey, I am more human than they are!! For a culturally gifted country, Mumbai is almost a confusing place - exposure levels are at the highest, smoking is a way of life, celerating all festivals are a must but then communalism also runs high, highest amount of young couples (I've seen) are here and most of them are immature in many ways (though I'm no judge of maturity, lot of incidents opened my eyes on this) and of course a extremely high cost of living (surprisingly, this is overlooked and lavish spending is a way of life - man, what a lot of money people have here!). Being in this rut of a place, especially without my wife and moreover the tensions at workplace - well there is nothing else logical than to hate this place on the planet. It wasn't this bad even when I was in Princeton!! And to compound all the irritations, the road I take to office (of all the good roads in Mumbai) is under construction (part of the governments 'Golden Quadilateral' project) and every day, twice, I am tossed around like a ball in the back seat of my ride. Wonder why is this a 'heaven' for the 12 million+ population??
And coming back to technologies, now my battle is with JSF. Barely had I managed to do something with JSR 168 and WebSphere Portal, I was "crowned" the expert to now add JSF along with them. Another fight, but I guess that's how the software community works. And I definitely like it, which I guess helps me boost my enthusiasm. And somehow, I have a feeling this time the wall is much higher to scale and I might find myself in really hot water!!
Apart from that, there is this book titled "5 Point Someone" by Chetan Bhagat - a masala, fast paced, enjoyable book. Its a good book to spend some time on for some hilarious anecdotes and an embedded love story. Other than that, I'm currently reading "Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follet. Will give comments on that soon. Otherwise life is moving fast and I'm all excited to be going back to Bangalore this weekend and then relaxing since this weekend (as well as the next) is a long one. I also promise to blog more often too.

Change Mangement / Strategy implementation

Have been reading up the latest book from Kaplan and Norton called Strategy Maps. Seems a real interesting concept - connection between intangible assets and value creation. Also talks about implementing strategy with sustained value creation based on management of 4 internal processes that are operations, customer relationships, innovation and regulatory & social processes. Anyway, I've just started on it, but I think its an extremely cool concept.
Apart from that, I've been a spectator to change management (though it being done in a very crude manner) wherein the management is trying to introduce hierarchy in de-centralized management situation. The company has already lost a valued employee (important since the organization is about 30 member strong with 'aggressive' growth plans) and has visibly upset atleast a third more of the remaining. One thing visible to me as an outsider is the fact that the only people who raise voice in change management situations are those concerned about the organization while those who resist it, don't talk about it but fill the grapevine. Unfortunately, the management in this organization thinks that the best way is to support those people who do not say anything or resist change, that obviously in this case are those without opinions which means that the organization now lacks people with leadership capabilities. Its the same situation wherein the CEO has a board of directors who don't oppose anything he/she says. We all know, from existing data that these organizations don't move forward a lot. In this situation, I felt that those valued employees should have been used as vehicles for bringing about the change, rather than treating them without confidence. Now the management is aware of their performers losing interest in the organization and are trying hard to retain them. I'm waiting to see what happens next.
Other than that work is going on smooth. And yeah, Bangalore is getting with interest all the rainfall due till 2004. What a season it has been!! Rains started in April and has been going on, which has definitely brought out the pit falls in the city corporation on maintainance of roads, sewage, traffic load, etc.. But then, on second thoughts, I love the rain (except when it traps me and gets me wet). I guess, I better get back to work soon, else I might never leave for home today.

Whats with ability when number of years count??

This is one thing I've always wondered about - who looks at ability when they go by thumb-rule that if you have spent a number of years, you are automatically blessed with ability. Maybe thats why people like Narayan Moorthy had to move out and start out on their own. Its probably the "most st###dest" thing a manager can do. Its soon going to be difficult to keep the ability within the same organization. I'm not advocating that all resposibility be give to the able guy without the years under his belt, but then keep the person involved.
HBR quotes:
"To manage is to bring out the positive energy that exists naturally within people. Managing thus means inspiring and engaging, based on judgement that is rooted in context".
This context shouldn't be the biased to number of years. Anyways I am tired of being work that is only technically challenging and keeping me away from my skills that I believe are more people oriented. I came back to my first employer with the hope of started indulgement in management skills, but unfortunately no one believes in givng me a chance. Maybe I too should step out and try doing things out on my own. Or maybe I should be patient, a virtue that conviniently avoided by me all the time. But you know what, I just might make a good manager, and some one else might crib about me :)
My wife would definitely like a better say in this regard!!!!!