Luv Trivandrum

Things that make me feel I am back home

After moving out to Chennai, following things in Chennai makes me feel as if I am still in Trivandrum (My own back yard) and also causes Dejavu sometimes.

1. When I see a lot of KL-01 registration cars n bikes in Chennai Roads.
2. When I visit Kumarakom restaurant at least once in a month
3. When I see someone chatting in Malayalam
4. When it rains heavily in Chennai
5. While riding through Besant Avenue it makes me feel as if I am in Kowdiar Square in Trivandrum
6. When I go for a stroll in Thiruvanmiyur beach makes me feel as if I am in Shankhumugam beach.
7. The Chennai Ribbon building is like our Secretariat
8. AMM School at Kotturpuram resembles the Arya central school where I did my schooling. The uniform is the same. Steel Gray trousers and white shirt.
9. The CLRI housing colony at Adayar makes me feel as if I am in VSSC housing colony in Thumba.
10. The Aavin milk bar underneath the Adyar flyover makes me feel as if I am in Milma milk bar in Trivandrum Museum.


Still I do miss a lot at Trivandrum like

1. The Envestnet Gang (Chandru,Ram,Jegan,Sujith,JP….)
2. Puttu + Mutton from Buhari
3. Pazham pori(banana roast)
4. Fish Delicacies
5. Cool nights
6. My sweet home
7. Rain
8. Movie in Kripa theatre
9. Onam fest @ Kanaka kunnu palace
10. Weekend booze parties with Envestnet gang
11. Last but not least My Dad, my Mom and my Brother – luv them a lot.

I always see this when I am free at Office. Thanks to Google.



After all how can one forget the place where he lived more than 25 years? I am proud and lucky to live the most important part in my life at Trivandrum. I will soon spend the second important spell of my life in Trivandrum.

A memorable trip

This blog is about the trip we recently had to a place called Singarayakonda in A.P district in South India. It was basically a 1 day trip. The plan was to attend a wedding of our friend and return back to Chennai the next day morning. We started our journey in a gleeful way. We boarded the train (Pinakini Express) which heads up to the place we wanted to be. It was basically a 4 hour journey. We booked our tickets in an AC Chair car compartment and got ourselves settled in our seats. The compartment was comfier than other chair cars which I have traveled. See some snaps below.
Me and Bose

Aravind and Gnanakumar

Bose upset since I took his snack


We all reached the Singarayakonda station by 6:30 PM. We had a cab waiting for us in the railway station. The cab took us to a place where we could go and refresh ourselves. We all got dressed up and were ready to go to the wedding hall. The same cab took us to the wedding reception. The place of the wedding reception was a typical countryside and it was very crowded. Most of the people seemed to be very rustic. There was music and dance choir who were singing some Telugu (South Indian Language) songs blatantly. One of the member in the choir announced that the next song would be from Chiru’s (Andhra Superstar) movie. But a group of people opposed it. The reason was simple and obvious, the actor belongs to a different caste. I was very much astonished to witness the caste system in India. We could also see that the dinner was being served. I was bit hesitant to have it because it was served by a group of slobs. But somehow I managed to have a quick little grub which would cease my hunger.

Cheering the choir


Found a place to sit atlast


Now the climax of the story begins. We were told that the wedding would start only by 12:45 AM. Yes only in this part of the world weddings are conducted in early mornings. We had to catch our train back to Chennai by 5:30 AM. We thought that we will go back to the room where we could have a good nap. To reach the room the only option was to use the cab which dropped us here. We tried to spot the cab driver and looks like he absconded from the venue. The place was very remote god forsaken land and we did not even find a vehicle which would take us to the room. We thought we could stroll to the room. But the place was very dark and we were not able to see the road clearly. The road was very lonesome and we were afraid if some thugs could nab us for money. So we decided to head back to the place of wedding reception. By gods grace the groom of the wedding made a way for us to get hold of another cab which would drop us only at the railway station but not the room. Luckily we had our bags in our hands and we agreed for the deal and reached the railway station. By that time it was 1 AM morning. Most of us were dozy by hat time and we managed to find a platform in the railway station where we could doze. It was damn cold and the wind was blowing heavily which ripped through our body. To add more salt to the wound we were carked by the freaky mosquitoes. Some of the guys like Aravind and Gnanakumar were very much prepared for the trip. They had all the necessary bed spreads to protect them from mosquitoes and cold wind.

See the images below.
Aravinda

Not dossers. This is Aravinda and Bose.


The mosquitoes and rattling noise made by other trains made us fretting the whole night. This also made us to have only an intermittent sleep. Time passed by and we woke up before the dawn and we were frantic to hear that the train to Chennai was delayed by 1 hr. Finally time passed and we got the train and reached home by 10 AM.

After this incident any wedding invite to remote places like this makes me think twice :).. It was worth a trip to enjoy and remember througout my life.

My Cartoons

ajeeth4u	Poo compendium

How dress code matters for a Developer

Most of the IT companies in India have stringent policies for dress code. I have been asking many people in the IT community especially HR’s about the relevance of dress code in an organization. Most of the answers were prevaricating. Some responded that it may not look nice when people are in the casual attire during the client visits. I have seen HR’s who float circulars in the form of emails to all the employees to be in Formal dress (sometimes with a Tie) during client visits. I really do not understand what reward the attire is going to give to a developer during client visit. What really matters is how you primp yourself with good and neat clothing. I agree that for the Senior managers who closely interact with the customers it is important to be in proper attire. This is one woeful side of the story at offshore. On the other piteous side the developers who travel to Onsite (countries like US, UK) are given strict instructions to wear a business suit. I have seen guys who spend a whopping sum to purchase business suits. I myself had made this mistake by wearing a business suit on the very first day when I reported to work at the client’s office in US. I was surprised to see all the clients in the casual wear and I was told by the client not to be uncomfortable in work by wearing business suits. I only have following questions that pops out of my mind

1. The top IT product development companies in the word like Microsoft, Google. Do they have any dress code – No.? I once attended an interview with Thoughtworks, I was surprised to see that the HR specifically told me to wear something which is comfortable for me. Again they are one of the renowned companies in world. The successes of these companies were not due to the dress code.
2. Does what you wear change your logical thinking which is very much required for a developer.

If the company can relax on the dress codes I am sure that the employees will consider it at one of the things which improves the morale of a developer.

Pretending as an IT Expert

In India, in the field of Information Technology people pretend to be an expert or act as a geek. I am sorry but we have to swallow this untold or rather unrealized truth that this is the only profession where anyone who can communicate with little bit of common sense can win laurels and reach greater heights. The ontogenesis of the technical professionals lies on how they intelligently copy, paste and tweak the code snippets from various blogs and forums. I have seen this in many companies in India, the person who completes the task real fast by copying the source code is treated to be a guru and he will be rated as a top performer. There are people who pretend to be an egghead with a bunch of technical jargons. In conference calls with the onsite peers we pretend to be more wise and intelligent by asking some stupid questions. Most of the time we do not take the pain in understanding a code, requirement but bombard the client with irrelevant queries .In most of the outsourced projects to India the technical driver or an architect would not be an Indian brain. We pretend to follow lot of processes by maintaining documents, code reviews, and test cases. All these are done only to spoof the customer. I many times have had tiffs with my superiors when I had to pretend as if my team maintains good amount of documentation. Most of the IT companies who flaunt to be the CMM certified companies cook up the documents only during the auditing period. The CMM certification could win them million dollar assignments but this is not going to last forever.

We act many times as if we have understood everything in a subject. How often do we answer “I don’t know” to your boss or a colleague? Instead we simply blither. I have seen people who will give you answers for any technical queries you ask them. A typical Indian IT professional’s resume/CV would be like a five star hotel menu. It would have all kinds of technologies in it which can gratify an employer. It all depends on the market value tagged for each technology. If a Java programmer gets 10 Rs more than a C# programmer per hour, no wonder that the Java skill gets added to you CV. People are too greedy in the Indian IT industry. There are people who want to be a lead with 2 years of experience, a project manager with 5 years of experience, an architect with 4-6 years of experience. The growth of an IT professional in India is measured only by his designation not by his ability or consistency.

I guess all the above reasons vouch that we are not getting any job satisfaction in our daily chores. There are professionals like a doctor, teacher, scientist, truck driver, soldier, food vendor and many more who gets a job satisfaction at the end of each day. I am trying to quit from this Industry and move on to something else which I can do better with most satisfaction. I am a good cook thoughJ which makes me proud. Let me see if I can open a restaurant which can rejuvenate the taste buds of gourmets.

I promise that I will delete this post from by blog if an Indian Bill Gates is born.

Fast food interviews

Hiring a right kind of resource is always crucial in the IT industry. This blog is intended to slam the technical interview boards in the Indian IT industry. I have so far attended umpteen no of interviews and was not able to find many of them to be really valuable. I have also got a chance to attend interviews directly from some US and UK based software companies and I could really make out the difference in the standards at which the interviews are conducted in India and other countries like US and UK. I would like to highlight some of the points which make the Indian interviews hapless.

1. Most of the technical interview boards in India are totally incognizant about the actual requirement for which the candidate is recruited. They are not trained properly to pick the right resource. The interview panel starts with the most irritating question “Tell me something about you”, trust me this question will be repeated from technical to the HR round. What I really do not understand is after scanning through our resume why they ask this question. As a matter of fact only a few people in the technical interview panel take the pain to scan your resume. Before a candidate is being interviewed it is really important to scan his resume to identify his Core expertise, projects he has undertaken and his roles and responsibilities in each of them. It is really important to jot down an interview plan for each resource being interviewed.

2. I have often seen interviewers asking some text book questions. For instance I was once asked the funniest technical question on earth. “What are the new features of .NET 3.0 when compared to 2.0.”? There are umpteen no of questions like this which could be easily googled and found out in no time. This could be advantageous for most of the book worms who imbibes the text book answers and narrate them eloquently. In one of the interviews I was asked, what is the difference between Varchar and Varchar2 data types in Oracle? Remember such question will only help you to pick a bunch of coconuts for your team.

3. Most of the time the real coding skills are not tested. Coding is something one should never forget as long as he or she is the technical career path. In India the interviewers treat most experienced technical resources as someone equivalent to immortals. Let me quote this with an example, in certain companies they recruit coders after conducting written technical tests. My present company also does that and when I came for the interview I was not asked to take the written test. The test had a bunch of good technical questions pretty close to Brain bench standards. I asked the recruitment team why I can’t take the test. One of the recruiter said that it is because I was a more experienced guy and a test is not necessary for me. I was keen to take the test and clear it. According to me a written test where your coding are technical skills can be tested are really mandatory to hire the best technical resources. It is a good idea to make the candidate write some programs and also ask him to write the unit test cases for that.

4. I have seen people getting rejected just because of not knowing a particular skill within a language. I have seen some companies rejecting candidates who do not know Web services or Remoting. In such cases we tend to loose the real maverick candidates. A guy who knows the text book answers about the aforesaid technologies will sneak in to the company. Trust me such people are not going to shine in the organization. In IT industry technology is something that keeps changing every year. Hence it his highly important to choose candidates who have the aptitude to learn or master any technology. Any skill set a person brings to a company will be obsolete in couple of years.
5. HR managers also play an important role in recruiting candidates. The initial screening of resumes are done by the HR managers who are really not techies and find the profiles which will insatiate your requirement. Ideally it should be the Technical lead or an Architect who needs to scan and pick the candidates who can get the job done

These are some of the silly mistakes which every interviewer makes and finally finds the resource he hired to be delinquent. The eeriest thing which could happen is the candidate might join and report to the interviewer who hired him.

Important Questions every employee should ask the interviewer before joining a company.

At the fag end of every interview the interviewer expects the candidate to shoot any questions to him. This is a good opportunity for you to put them on a tight spot. Most of the candidates do not use this opportunity to know about their future workplace. Even I myself have made this mistake in the initial period of my work experience. I would like to share some of the vital questions

What will be my roles and responsibilities in the company of I am selected. – Pay attention to what the employer says and do memorize what he is conveying to you. Ensure that the roles align with your long term goals and career path. If not be bold enough to open up your mind and tell him what you expect. There is nothing wrong in this.
If it is an Indian company, do not forget to ask your designation. It varies from company to company. Do ask for the typical roles of the designation which is given to you. Ensure that you are not degrading one level below your current designation. Once you accept the offer it is pretty hard to convince and change the designation. The important thing is the designations are not standardized across the organizations.
Make sure that you are aware about your supervisor. Enquire about his designation and his roles. For most of us the role models will be the supervisors. If possible ask for an appointment with him to the HR executive. He would be clearly able to explain you about your work and what he has got in his mind for you. You can then decide how well he will mentor you.
Ask about the work timings. If you have any aversion to work in late night or early shifts, better clarify this. Make sure that you convey your aversion towards the shifts to the employer. At the end of the day it’s your life. No one will be held responsible if it is ruined.
Ask about the notice period in the company. You might feel this as a stupid question but be careful some companies do have 3 months notice period which you will known to you only after you join them. Anything above 1 month notice period is not advisable. It does not take more than 3 weeks to execute a KT plan. Now a days companies are very foxy, they will have lot of clauses to terminate you without prior notice in the employment order. I would like to stress that the same thing applies for us also.
This is the most important one – the trump card which all the company has which is nothing but the commitment bond. This will be revealed to you only after you join them. So make sure that there are no such worries which can trouble you later.
Be clear about the split of your remuneration. Be sure of how much percent of salary is under fixed income and how much fall under your variable pay. Do not get carried away by the CTC which the employer promises.
If you have heard about any buzz about the organization like lay offs, sacking under performers etc.. Put them diplomatically to the employer and watch out for his body language. If he is bit clumsy in his answer better think twice before you accept the offer.
If you are a tech savvy guy make sure that you will not work on the age old applications. Know the nature of work whether it would a production support, maintenance or pure development work.
Ask about the various policies like Medical reimbursements, medical insurance and other benefits.
Do ask about the attrition rate in the last 3 months. Anything above 15% is risky and clearly a stay away indicator.
Not but not least ask about your place of work in the city. Some companies will have their branches in the outskirts. You may be asked to move there after your honeymoon period in the company gets over. The workplace might be too far away from the city that it may take a few hours to reach office. There are people who travel close to 80 Kms a day to and fro. The impact may not be known now but later it is going to take a toll from you. You will definitely get back aches which can lead to spondylitis which is a painful deal only for you and not the company.

Most of the candidates do not ask these questions and start complaining about the company.

GOD rescued me. I did not see him but heard his voice.

This is one of the real incidents which happened recently and appalled me. I get dreaded whenever I think of it. Here is what happened. I got a chance to visit a place called Portsmouth in UK as part of my official trip. The place is approx 40 miles from London. The assignment was close to 3 months. Hence my company arranged for a duplex apartment in a place called Southsea for me instead of a typical B&B (Bed and breakfast). The apartment was too comfy for a single person. It had a Bedroom with attached bath and a Kitchen. The 2 rooms were separated. The serviced apartment had 4 such duplex apartments and I was the only person who was staying there. The apartment was opened to me by the property owner and he briefed me about the room heaters, cooking ranges etc. He said that he does not stay here and stays couple of streets away from the street where my apartment was located. He handed over the keys and wished me to have a pleasant stay there and left the place. I just had a look at the surroundings and could notice that there were very few houses nearby. I was so tired that day and had a very deep slumber.

I woke up so early 5 AM (BST) which is 9:30 IST. I had a cup of tea and completed my morning routines and got dressed up to start for the work. I had a hard copy of a map to reach my office and had all the bus routes printed. I pulled out the map which would take me to the nearest bus stop. I walked by following the instructions in the Map. I reached the bust stop and saw the time table which was fixed in the bus stop. There were no direct buses to Fareham(The place where my company is located). I had to get a bus to City centre and from City center to Fareham I had to catch another bus. There were frequent buses from Southsea to City centre. However the frequency of buses from City center to Fareham was less. The bus timings were so accurate that when the clock struck 8:16 AM the bus was in the bus stop. The people boarded into the bus in a Queue. I had to get a pass for the next 3 months for the route. It was around 60 pounds (4,800 INR). The journey was so pleasant which was topped up by the English weather. The max temperature was close to 14 deg cel and during the nights it would be close to 8-9 degrees. I reached office at 9:30 AM and started back to home by 5 PM. I reached city centre by 5:45 PM and it was getting dusk. I spotted a Tesco shop in the city centre and had a huge list of items to buy for cooking. I bought all the vegetables, milk, bread and poultry. I reached the apartment by 6:50 PM. The moment I came in front of the apartment the lights were on. It was something new to me. I was bit scared at that time. The entire place was too dark and calm and suddenly lights glow. I took 2 steps back the lights were off again 2 steps forward the lights were on. Oh my god I was horrified. Then I realized that it was an automatic light which has some sensing mechanism. Almost all the houses in that street had this mechanism. So the guys after reading this blog don’t be scared when you visit UK for the first time.

I opened the door and my god the entire house was too dark. No lights were illuminated and I managed to get some light from my mobile phone. I saw some switches and randomly switched on some switches and could see some lights were turned on. The light was enough to climb the stairs to reach my duplex apartment which was on the first floor. The stairs were made of wood and my own footsteps scared me. I opened my room and went inside and switched on the lights and got freshened up. I went to the dining room and Kitchen. I watched television for sometime and started to get myself prepared for cooking dinner. I was all alone in the apartment and I locked the Kitchen from inside and started to cook. It took 1 hr for me to cook some rice and vegetables. I had my dinner after some time and watched TV for quite sometime. I started to yawn and thought of going to bed. I switched off the TV and inserted the keys into the keyhole of the door which was locked and god you won’t believe the door was not opening. I was trying to twist the keys in all directions and its not opening. The horrendous situation any one could experience on the first day in a new country, place. I was all alone in the apartment no one has occupied the apartment so that I can give a shout. I tried to open the windows and could notice a house 100 mtrs away. Again I need to shout for help to catch someone’s attention. The moment I opened the windows it was freezing cold wind which was gushed inside. My god I closed the door again and unfortunately I did not even have my mobile phone with me. It was on the other room. I was filled with apprehension. Don’t know what to do. Thought for a while and my gut feeling said that the only way I would get out is someone who daily cleans the apartment should open the door for me. But don’t know when he comes daily. What will happen to me till then? What will happen if the room service operated twice in a week? All these questions made me frenzy.

With some hope again I started to open the doors with the key but no luck. Suddenly I heard some footsteps in the stairs. God I was so afraid thinking who it might me. I was trying to open the doors suddenly the footsteps stopped. My heartbeat was 100+ per minute. I heard a very soft and matured voice.. “May I help you.. Are you in some sort of trouble” I narrated the whole story and the man replied “Don’t worry? I will help you. I will go and get the property owner and send him here right away”. I said “Thanks a lot Gentleman”. I again heard the foot steps hopefully he was climbing down the stairs. I again sat on the sofa and started to think whether the gentlemen would take the pain to rescue me. I was so frightened. After 20 mins I again heard the footsteps. I ran towards the door and took my ears close to the door. I heard the voice of the property owner and he said that “Don’t worry gentleman, I will open the door for you.” He had brought the bunch of duplicate keys which, he was trying one by one. Finally the doors opened and I took a deep breath. I thanked him a lot and he also apologized to me since he did not tell me about this fault with the weird lock the previous day. He said that he would fix the issue the next day.

The strange thing was there were no traces of the man who helped me in calling the property owner. Who was that? Was that God? I closed my eyes and prayed god and thanked him. I guess everyone would have experienced such similar incidents. So the moral is don’t ever lock yourself in a room where you are alone. In that case always carry a mobile phone which is charged completely. :-)

I put down my papers, My Company takes the stick

I would dedicate this blog to be an eye-opener for most of the companies, Supervisors, HR managers who turn freaky when their most loyal or senior employees put down their papers.

It has been quite a while since I am in the IT industry and I have been experiencing this outlandish attitude of the IT companies when their key employees resign. I recently joined an MNC and I had an opportunity to debate on this topic and most of the guys agreed with my title of the blog. Here goes what we discussed, how your previous companies behaved with you after you resigned. The entire guys were scratchy when they expressed their experiences with their previous companies. One guy lamented his story that his immediate supervisor went demented and had a weird behavior with him during his notice period. I often wonder why the supervisors set bad examples to their team. In my entire career I had met only a single manager who was trying to retain me in the company. However, when he realized that the new job would give me plenty of growth and opportunities which lacked in the present company he did not want to see himself as a road block for my success. He was also keen to embrace me if I would like to join the company back in the future. There are only a very few professional guys who are like this. I guess the reason why the supervisors get paranoiac is only because they are so covetous about the growth his subordinate gets which he his deprived off. An IT law should be enforced to demote or sack such supervisors who harass the employees who are serving their notice period. Such supervisors are definitely going to bring a disgrace to the entire company. However certain times things go the other way also the guy serving the notice period will be cheeky and tries to do something stupid which would make his boss wild.

Another gentleman had to share his deplorable story about his experience in one of the companies who boasts to be the best work place. The company made him to walk the doorsteps to the HR office thrice and finally gave him the work experience certificates. Each time they had some goofy excuses like no ink/cartridge in the printer, the HR VP is out office etc. Guys our laws are so sapless that we cannot sue such companies for causing mental distress to the employee.

Only the companies who really have a bad name in the industry, who are in lack of good resources and cannot retain its employees will have nefarious schemes like 1 Year commitment bonds, 6 month commitment bond before they fly to onsite, non issuance of relieving letters etc... All this stupid schemes are going to keep good resources stay away from them. Only the dead weights would settle in such companies. There are very few companies who do not bother about the relieving letters from previous organizations and recruits the real techies.

Those who have read this article kindly share your experiences and comments.

Be a Roman in Rome..

This is a famous proverb which many of us follow outside our country. But we forget the proverb in our own country. Recently I was roaming through one of the malls in Chennai along with my friends. We were fagged up and thought of getting freshened up by having some food or beverages in one of the shops in the food court. As usual my friend started to pull my wallet out for the refreshment. I walked towards a juice counter and was having a look at the menu of juices. I could notice that an old man was enquiring about the ingredients of a juice to the vendor. The vendor was very much a local guy from Chennai. I could notice it easily by seeing some of his characteristics. However he pretended to be an English man. The scornful shopkeeper replied back to the old man in English which was so pathetic. He himself made lot of grammatical mistakes. He was pretending to be smart in front of a group of lassies who were in the queue. I was sure that the old man did not understand the shopkeeper and quietly walked away with his juice. I was perturbed after seeing that. Immediately I rushed towards him and tried to speak in Malayalam (Another popular south Indian Language). The shopkeeper had no clues of what I was saying and he spoke to me in Tamil. I said I know only the language I spoke. I repeated the same conversations for a while and I had a good time teasing him. Finally I spoke in Tamil to him and could teach him a lesson. I said to him to speak only the language which the customer speaks. The same thing happens in most of the places in Metropolitan cities. It is fine to converse in English to those who are new to a city or place in India who don’t know the regional language.

This also happens with most of the guys who returns from US or UK after 2 or 3 months. They try to imitate the British or US accent which would be too pathetic to listen or follow. A guy who is settled in US or UK for 5-6 years will definitely get an American or Brit accent which is obvious. But the former would look too insane. Some people like this make a mockery out of themselves by doing such things to the society.

Those who have read this blog kindly speak in your mother tongue or regional language. We are not going to loose anything out of this. Communication is something which needs to be clear and effective at the end of the day.

Welcome

Hi All,

I am dedicating my blog to the whole IT community. I would like to share my experiences through various organizations I have worked so far. I will also post some technical articles especially on .NET. I will also put some of the people whom I have and am working with in the spotlight. Wait and watch out for loads of articles..

Thanks..