Embarrassed?

I had my share of embarrassing moments but they are not the ones i want to remember and absolutely nothing comes to my mind when i am asked to tell one, but one which i remember is about a Bihari friend of mine. Why being Bihari is important here is because Bihari boys are very uncomfortable when they have to talk to girls. My friend had cultivated a habit of watching all sort of movies in his computer, so he befriended one person who used to supply pirated CDs. He used to go to his home to take all the new movie CDs being released. During one such visit of his i accompanied him. We went to the guy's home. My friend called out “Guddu!Guddu!!”.One woman came out, supposedly his wife.

My friend asked if Guddu is there? She replied “No! But what do you want 2X or 3X?”. By the time i could have looked for the expression on my friend's face, he had completely vanished from the scene.

I had no option but to come back. I found he had covered many quick steps out of the shock, he was almost running. I asked him what happened, and his face was as if police had caught him red handed committing a serious crime. We came back hurriedly. And this same friend of mine never hesitates to tell “Bangali log bahut darpok hote hain!” and i am always reminded of that day.

Why Blog?

I started blogging to have a proper web identity. Earlier if i googled for “Sujoy Neogi”, the results led to some MD/MS student list who qualified in a exam. Now it leads to my blogger profile. Having a uncommon name helps for sure as i think there are only two “Sujoy Neogi” in this world. With a very common name its almost impossible to have your blog ranked first in google 'Page Rank'. And if you share your name with a celebrity you can never get your results on the first page. When i started blogging my blog didn appear in the search result immediately,i guess google updates its web indexes every week and may be every day for news/popular sites, once i found a rediff.com article with major goof ups cached in google news even after it was removed from the site. Coming back to blogs, the way to move your blog up on the search result list is by having more people linking your site on their blogs.

It may be not be that common in India to search about person using google search as not many of us have our profile online. But now the trend has started as many universities offer space on their official sites to the grads for having their resumes and other info online. And this will continue as more and more people joining software companies.

One advantage of writing a blog which is same as that of writing a diary is it lets you know how and what you thought when you read it after say 5-10 years. So start writing a blog if you haven't started it yet. The benefits of writing 2 paragraphs everyday is worth it.

A happening day!!!

Radio Mirchi launched in Hyderabad!!!

Finally the wait is over, 95 FM Radio Mirchi is here

- but the content is TOTAL TELEGU boo! boo! boo!

- AIR FM Rainbow is better with alternate hours dedicated to Hindi Film Music

- And what i feel bad is not being allotted any shares for ENIL(Radio Mirchi) even though my bid was at the cut off price! It has a good future, Times Outdoor media has filled Hyderabad with Ads related to everything. Every day i return from office i am forced to look at the big billboards supposedly owned by Times outdoor media, i doubt so as Hyderabad Times keeps on mentioning about Tanla & other recruitment Ads near the Lifestyle Flyover.

The big news on CNN IBN was Manmohan Singh hinting for reservation in private sector, followed by long debates on the issue.

Does reservation really help? If adversity brings the best out of a man 'reservation' brings out the worst of a man. Protecting or giving some one relaxation does not help anyone grow. May be because of reservations the so called weaker sections didn't grow. I know few SC/STs, they are rich and they don't work hard, as they know they will easily get jobs in government sector. And the poor people who need scholarships don't know anything about institutes/profession/companies forget about their rights for reservation.

Most poor children do not complete school, so no point in giving reservation in IIT/IIM or even private companies.

Well the debate will continue........

Waiting for 2020

India 2020: A nation with a population of 1.265 billion people and more than 30 million software engineers. This will happen but i want more, companies like Microsoft or Google coming out of Hyderabad or Banglore? May be a IBM to show the scale of revenue. And why not more brands which stand for India and not for outsourcing,................

I always thought the right time to join as a software engineer was 1995-98, as all those who joined software industry at that time have grown more because of demand than their talent. It is very unusual to become project managers with 3 or 4 years of experience, but in Indian scenario where software companies have recruited heavily in the last 2 years all those who joined in 95/98 have been made project managers. That does not mean all who have joined in the last 2 to 3 years will become project managers in next 5-6 years. But what will happen to these software engineers if they don't see any growth in their roles, will they turn to entrepreneurship? I hope so as that is what Indian software industry needs today. Now when Indian companies are going the IT way, they should do so with Indian software products and Indian service providers to implement it. But Bharti's outsourcing deals going to IBM and Nortel speak the other way.

Coming back to the role of managers, in service provider companies where it is very difficult to predict the estimated time to complete the project because of the nature of work, which does not involve fixed things, needs more experience on the part of managers to allocate resources properly. A product based company has fixed dates for release which are decided long ago and work of that kind has been done for prior releases to make the estimation easier. But the services company which handle many maintenance projects find it difficult to allocate proper number of resources to the project and the result is some people working more than 14 hours a day to reach the deadline and the rest of junta on bench wonders why the work is not being given to them. Though a mandatory number of bench employees requirement under SEI CMM kind of dilutes the issue it cannot justify the poor management skills of mangers at higher level who look into execution of projects in companies like Infy or TCS . The kind of deal between outsourcing companies and the Indian companies which bill per person per hour or are fixed cost make it more difficult to change the deal at a later stage. The result is dissatisfaction for everyone.

The number of Indian product development companies is too less and the India development centers of US product companies never go for handling independent releases. So how are we going to have the vision 2020 which requires more of experience and skills which come over time.