Abhivadaye Athreya Archanaanasa Shavasava treya rishiyaha pravaranvitha, Athreya gotra, Ashwalayana sutra rik shakha adhyayee Sridhara sharma namaha aham asmibho:
Monday, August 10, 2009
Living Life
But, learn from them.
Joke over your troubles,
But, gather strength from them.
Have fun with your difficulties,
But, overcome them.
That's the way to live LIFE.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Smile
And they confront him saying that you smile because you have no problems or else you wouldn't be smiling like this. I have so many worries and thats the reason I don't smile is their explanation for being morose or moody.
For all those people who think like this this is what I have to say..
"The person who is always smiling doesn't mean that he has no problems...
But the smile shows that he has ability to overcome all those problems..."
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Tough Times
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Commitment v/s Compromise
Monday, May 18, 2009
Develop an Attitude for Success
How we deal with misfortune can make the difference between defeat and victory in our lives.
We’ve all heard stories about Thomas Edison. He went through thousands of unsuccessful attempts before coming up with the filament light bulb. When his factory was virtually destroyed by fire, he simply remarked that the disaster provided him with new opportunities to start again, and weeks later he invented the phonograph.
How many of us, when faced with misfortune, have that same outlook as Edison? We view these misfortunes as failures. We must learn, however, that these failures, properly handled, lead to great personal growth and professional success.
Here are some are six attitudes that you can adopt that will help you claim victory in your life:
Never Give Up. If Edison’s experiences don’t convince us to never give up, I’m not sure what will. There are countless other examples where a failure turned into an opportunity to, as Henry Ford said, “begin again more intelligently.”
Live in the Present. Keeping a focus on the present and future, rather than dwelling in the past, helps us avoid the quagmire of regrets. We must never lose our vision for other possibilities in our life.
Accept the Challenge. Don’t wallow in defeat, instead we must renew our efforts to succeed and do even greater things. In difficult times, we frequently learn just how much drive we have inside of us, challenging us to set our goals higher still.
Banish the Word Failure. The word is full of emotional baggage and negative connotations. We must choose to think of it as a temporary setback, a time for adjustment, or some other emotionally neutral word. We must not give away our personal power to a word.
Continue to Learn. It’s the only way we grow. If we don’t learn from the past we are destined to repeat it.
We Can Succeed. Failure isn’t fatal. We can learn from and overcome our setbacks, growing wiser and stronger along the way. It’s been said often enough, but it’s still true, we can turn tragedy into triumph.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Manager - How Not To Be
5 Qualities a manager should not posses:
1. Show Attitude
Many manager's suffer from this feeling of bossism and that they are here to command the employees.The feeling of insecurity inside them make them more bossy. They somehow feel that if they donot show attitude or boss over his/her subordinates the subordinates are not going to listen to them. But they miss the fact that showing attitude does a reverse affect on them, which they fail to notice. Althought the employees do the work assigned to them by their manager, whether he/her shows attitude or not, the manager loses the Good will. The subordinates start disliking him/her.
2. Never look upon on your subordinates
This is second most important thing that one manager should always keep in mind when speaking to his/her reportees. He/she may not have done well the last time but that doesn't make the employee a bad one. After all he has been selected and assigned the process by the recruiters only after thoroughly interviewing him/her. It is normal for humans to do mistakes, but its the responsibility of a good manager to sit together with the employee and retrospect and try to see what went wrong and why did this happen. If necessary the mistake must be shared among others during team meetings without revealing the name of the person who committed it,such that it never happens again. But please "Donot look down on them just because they made a silly mistake and make them feel that they are good for nothing".
3. Donot pass any sarcastic comments over your subordinates and Donot group up with other managers and leaders and ridicule your assosciates ( this is seen more among the young managers)
Another major thing seen primarily among young managers are that they take their assosciates for granted and just to show them off before their assosciates they tend to make comments over their subordinates during team meetings and team hurdles. This does no good for the manager, infact it does more bad and no good at all. If they feel that he will be taken to be as a jovial and friendly manager then they are wrong. Although it may feel to the managers at that moment because the employees also join the laugh with him/her. But dont you get fooled, they laugh not because, they liked it, its because they are left with no other options. You are just increasing the hatered for you among them and believe me they are never gonna forget the comments that you made on them although it is quite obvious that you are not gonna remember them. And when they hit back its gonna be real hard.
4. Don't tell your subordinates that he doesn't expect anything great from them
A good manager must always be optimisitc and he must install that optimism in his subordinates. It might be that your previous team haven't performed well or might be that you may not have had the right people for the right job. But one should not look with the same eye everytime. Donot tell you new joinees or your new team that you have never had a great team or your previous team never functioned well and hence I dont expect much from you guys either. If the previous team has not functioned properly or according to the function required its the managers fault and not the employees. Its what the manager is paid for, to make the team function properly and effectively. If you cannot do that then the problem is with you and its you who needs to change.
5. Donot expect new joinees to become perfect in a single day
All the managers are in a hurry to get the new joinees trained fast and make them productive and their hurry is justified as they have commitments to keep, but donot take it too far. Donot expect them to be perfect with the process and tools in a single day of training. Train the employees, and give them time to come up the learning curve. Think of the time that you had taken to learn the process. Make a note of mistakes that new joinees commonly make and teach them that so that they donot do it. Be innovative in training.
Importantly
Donot laugh at your subordinates when they do something wrong, its not gonna help you in anyway, instead smile at them, clap them, pat them when they do something right. And this is surely gonna help you.
Hope this helps new budding managers.
To learn how to become a great manager read the book "The One Minute Manager". Its really a nice one and will definitely help the new budding as well as old managers.
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and achieve more, then you are a LEADER.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
What BPO industry has brought to India ?
Suddenly there was a huge requirement for english speaking graduates in the country. Massive recruitments started, only qualifiction that needed was to be able to communicate in english effectively , no other knowledge was neccessary. Huge packages were given to lure the crowd and many even got opportunities to fly abroad for training. If you could talk in english without your MTI (Mother tongue Influence) that was enough to land into a BPO sector. Many new big and small training centers started that taught Indians how to speak english in an accent, what they called a 'Neutral Accent'. This came as a huge opportunity to thousands of young, talented unemployed graduates. Their dreams for working for multi-national companies was standing before them. This was huge turning point for India which changed some parts and some section of people in India completely.
Indians started working for multi-national companies, got adjusted to their timings (night shifts). India started becoming popular around the world as one of the largest service oriented nation.
Huge money started flowing into the country. Stock markets boomed, young Indians who could never have dreamt about the amount of money started taking home that amount as their salaries. Huge malls, showrooms started blooming to fuel the needs for these young indians. Automobile industry started growing. A family that had just a scooter now had two motor-bikes and a car. Many started feeling that India has started to shine.
There was a rush to get into these industry, mainly because it offered good salary, home pick up and drop which was something unheard of before, status in the society, and working in an magnificient environment. These multi national companies had built up a huge palacious office environments which looked like resorts and every Indian aspired working for one. Before a student was out of the college their packages and job was being fixed at the campuses. So the student had no worry of job and need not had to hunt for a job after he completed his studies. It was like heaven. The company used to train you and then put them in some process depending on their requirements.
However all was not good. The smoking and drinking went up. They had lots of money in their hand which they didn't know whether they were eligible to have. Loyalty and sincerity had become words of distant past. People started jumping job cause the other companies offered them higher packages. The situation became like there was huge employment but the problem was unemployability. Land rates boomed up. Only people working in those organisation could only afford buying houses. Yet there was a large amount of population that was not an english speaking crowd. These industry did do one more good, it provided secondary employment too, like employements for the cab drivers, the bandi walas etc.
But what this did bpo industry actually do to India ? Did it really made India grow ? Did it provide employment ? Did it or Will it do good to the country ?
The answer surely would be "Yes" on the first go. However, if I say "No", its not so. Why is it not like that, would be your instant question. After all it did give us employment when we had nothing to do. It gave good money so that we can build and secure our future. It gave us everything that we couldn't possibly haven't imagined about working for a small indian company.
All the above points are valid and justified, but if we think deeply on it we see that although it looks like winning in the beginning we are losing on the long run.
Reasons:
Huge amount of educated and talented youth are working for a service based industry which has got nothing to do with India. We are spending all our knowledge and talent for someone else.
We are not producing anything. We are just providing service, something like, what a mechanic does.
Reasearch and Development is done by others, all we do is troubleshooting silly problems.
Customer care and Technical support jobs are jobs that needs to be done by a undergraduate person. But when I see Post graduates and Engineers woking in that sector its heartbreaking. Mainly because India is losing their talents and who knows one of the brilliant brain among them would never get recognized. Who is losing ? Its India that Losing ?
When the whole world is competing for Innovation, developing new products and for market share, being only as a service based industry will do us no good. Countires like China, are growing on both ends. But their first priority is production not service. They produce innumberble different types of goods that are exported world wide. What does india do in comparision to that, nothing. The only thing that we produce is software and that too not for our internal use, but for US or European nations. How can one country be dependent on other countries for its survival. Isn't it foolishness. I dont understand why so many educated people holding big positions in the Indian government aren't doing anything about it. When there was a sudden IT boom in the country, every tom, dick and harry started doing an engineering course. To help them out the government increased the number of engineering seats. Now its no longer needed to do hardwork to secure a seat in engineering. All one has to do is appear the entrance exam and its done. He/she gets the seat. May not be in a reputed one though but he still becomes an engineer. Students no longer aspire to take up courses in advanced mathematics, chemistry, physics because they know even if they did passout in distinction there is no future for them. So even such students are forced to follow the band wagon. What we are doing is slow poisioning ourselves.
I hope atleast this recession comes as an eye opener for the government and the students. The government should understand that we cannot be dependent on other nations for our employment. we need to create employment for ourselves. When the american markets crashed, indians started losing their jobs and new graduates aren't getting any job in the IT sector for which they have aspired for a long time. Now we are all running towards the government and bank jobs which we were not even bothered about a couple of years ago. But even here we are doing the same mistake, searching for a secure ground. Instead what we can do is realize our inherent talents, hone our skills, understand ourselves and plan for a better future. India needs more enterpreneurs. Young Indians need to come out and start bussinesses. Huge multi national giants like google were started by college graduates only. Government should also ammend their policies, only then there can be a good future for our nation. If we continue to move forward like this, it wont be long before we see our country single and backward when the whole world had moved forward.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
The Pragmatic Programmer
Am I a programmer? What makes a good programmer? How do I become a good programmer? These are some of the questions that keep coming up to every mind of a budding programmer who want themselves to see in the niche of the programming world. So here is something I found when I was reading the book "The Pragmatic Programmer", that might answer some of your questions.
What Makes a Pragmatic Programmer?
Each developer is unique, with individual strengths and weaknesses, preferences and dislikes. Over time, each will craft his or her own personal environment. That environment will reflect the programmer's individuality just as forcefully as his or her hobbies, clothing, or haircut. However, if you're a Pragmatic Programmer, you'll share many of the following characteristics:
Early adopter/fast adapter. You have an instinct for technologies and
techniques, and you love trying things out. When given something new, you can grasp it quickly and integrate it with the rest of your knowledge. Your confidence is born of experience. Inquisitive. You tend to ask questions. That's neat—how did you do that? Did you have problems with that library? What's this BeOS I've heard about? How are symbolic links implemented? You are a pack rat for little facts, each of which may affect some decision years from now.
Critical thinker. You rarely take things as given without first getting the facts.
When colleagues say "because that's the way it's done," or a vendor promises the solution to all your problems, you smell a challenge.
Realistic. You try to understand the underlying nature of each problem you face. This realism gives you a good feel for how difficult things are, and how long things will take. Understanding for yourself that a process should be difficult or will take a while to complete gives you the stamina to keep at it.
Jack of all trades. You try hard to be familiar with a broad range of technologies and environments, and you work to keep abreast of new developments. Although your current job may require you to be a specialist, you will always be able to move on to new areas and new challenges.
We've left the most basic characteristics until last. All Pragmatic Programmers share them. They're basic enough to state as tips:
Tip 1
Care About Your Craft
We feel that there is no point in developing software unless you care about doing it well.
Tip 2
Think! About Your Work
In order to be a Pragmatic Programmer, we're challenging you to think about what you're doing while you're doing it. This isn't a one-time audit of current practices—it's an ongoing critical appraisal of every decision you make, every day, and on every development. Never run on auto-pilot. Constantly be thinking, critiquing your work in real time. The old IBM corporate motto, THINK!, is the Pragmatic Programmer's mantra. If this sounds like hard work to you, then you're exhibiting the realistic characteristic. This is going to take up some of your valuable time—time that is probably already under tremendous pressure. The reward is a more active involvement with a job you love, a feeling of mastery over an increasing range of subjects, and pleasure in a feeling of continuous improvement. Over the long term, your time investment will be repaid as you and your team become more efficient, write code that's easier to maintain, and spend less time in meetings.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Management
Management is an Art
Management is an art and not everybody can do that. If you feel that managing is all about dictating people and yelling at them this one is for you.
Feeling pretty good about his first firing, the CEO looks around the room and asks "Does anyone want to tell me what that goof-off did here?"
With a sheepish grin, one of the other worker utters: "Pizza delivery guy from Domino's".
The Little Bird
The Lighter Side
Corporate Lesson III:
Moral of the story:
1) Not everyone who drops shit on you is your enemy.
2) Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend.
3) And when you’re in deep shit, keep your mouth shut.
The Turkey And The Bull
A turkey was chatting with a bull, "I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree," sighed the turkey, "but I haven't got the energy." "Well, why don't you nibble on some of my droppings?" replied the bull. "They're packed with nutrients."
The turkey pecked at a lump of dung and found that it actually gave him enough strength to reach the first branch of the tree. The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch. Finally after a fortnight, there he was proudly perched at the top of the tree. Soon he was promptly spotted by a farmer, who shot the turkey out of the tree.
Moral of the story:
Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there.
The Crow And The Rabbit
The Lighter Side
A crow was sitting on a tree doing nothing all day. A small rabbit saw the crow and asked him, "Can I also sit like you and do nothing all day long?" The crow answered: "Sure, why not". So the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow and rested. All of a sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.
Moral of the story:
To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Interview Preparation
Initial preparation requires recent assesement of skills and interests, values, accomplishments and updating one's resume. Preparation also includes actual practice of typical and targeted interview questions.
Final preparation includes dress and appearence, location of the interview and what to expect.
General Preparation
Self assesement: "Do a lot of self assesement". Take time for reasseing current skills, talents, abilities, strengths, weakness and interests. Keep an accomplishment file: must contain all the articles, resumes, congratulatory letters, kudo's from boss, customers, etc.
Update Resume: The accomplishment file serves as a spring board for writing the resume.
Basic Questions:
" Why are you interested in this company ?"
" Why are you interested in this position ? "
Some tough questions:
" Your lack of experience ? "
" Your low grades ? "
" Your record of job hopping ?"
practice..... practice.... and .... practice
Review how you look and sound. Note your mannerisms, gestures, facial expressions, poise, energy, enthusiasm and body language.
Interviewing is a skill. You can only improve your style and accumen with practice.
Practice is important in reducing the fear and nervousness. Answering job interview questions correctly takes skill, practice and determination. All said, you must be lucky on that day to strike that particular job of your choice.