Remains of Pains …

Everything is computerized … No more hassles … No more pains … But the reality is different though …

The worst nightmare I usually have is booking train tickets. I don’t remember a single instance where the queue was small in the booking office … And sometimes I go through agents who bring with them a new set of pains and each time I just vow that next time I would not use agents …

Well… So I was a happy person when online reservation was introduced … It was convenient in the beginning … But now it looks like it has brought a new set of pains with it …

I wanted to book two tickets today. It took almost fifteen minutes just to enter the station names … After half-an-hour hassle, I managed to reach the payment page … Now ICICI entices me with a new security feature that my credit cared could be linked to the internet banking password and I opt for it … That’s it … The connection got cut and it took another half-an-hour to go through the entire process again … Now the credit card page asks for the password , and I, a happy secure subscriber, type the password and alas… It says my password is wrong …

It took me another ten minutes to figure out that the password was correct and there is something else wrong … Now another half-an-hour and I book through my direct bank account … Then again another half-an-hour to book the next ticket … I vaguely remember that booking ticket directly didn’t take more than half-an-hour for me …

This is not the only case … Infact I have taken a presentation in my MBA class on my tussle with ebay (bazee.com) regarding one wrong shipment … So, it looks like everything has some pain associated with it …

MBAs Hate Technology

Yes. MBAs do hate technology. I remember, in my project management class, when the Professor asked how many want that class to have a technology tint, three hands went up out of 80 students (Of course, one was mine). When he asked how many are afraid that this class would have technical tint, half of the class showed their apprehension by raising their trembling hands.

If a company wants to get the least number of applications during the campus interviews, all they have to do is to announce that they need a candidate with some technology focus. It explains why less than 50 applied for Microsoft whereas more than 100 applied for a company that couldn’t even come to campus as all students were placed before that, and that too at half of MS salary (very big sentence, eh?).

There will be focus groups of students gunning for Business Development roles / Finance / Consulting roles but I have never seen a focus group for core technology companies such as Amazon, Google and MS. Well… Most of them think that the come for MBA to escape from technology, even those who proudly called them hardcore techies till they got their admit at IIM/ISB.

A product manager (or even program manager) role could be more challenging and more exciting than any business development role … It requires a lot of MBA concepts to be deployed … MBAs… Think before discarding this area … FYI … Salary is also higher than Industry standards in these hardcore technology companies …

Eagerly waiting for Web OS ??

April 26, 2010

Today Google launched its web OS and I subscribed to it immediately. Ooph! Gone are the days of fat clients … Everything is in the server safe and secure …

I started with typing a word document … What no instant spell checkup with red wave lines? … Its okay … I can check it after typing … I typed one full page and selected the text to change the font … Oops! I pressed some key accidentally and all gone!! CTRL Z doesn’t work … Its okay … from the next time, I will type in a desktop notepad client and then copy to the web interface …

I started the spreadsheet … mmm… I type the formula and each time the page is refreshed to get the result (page is submitted each time)… Frustrated I decided to play some games … What,, only network games …. Atleast let me watch some movie … What, only streaming movies?

But atleast the connection is fast … oops! The connection is cut … Again my dog Tommy has dug the internet cable out … Now I have to wait till the connection is replaced even for starting my computer …

Do I care having a fat desktop as I (s)care about having a fat wife??

CTRL + ALT + DELETE

Well… I have heard more than many times (pardon my grammar) that the worst Software are Microsoft products. I have met a lot of open source enthusiasts (you can spot them easily – they will be wearing a tee-shirt with a penguin in the back) with intelligent remarks such as IBM has open-sourced its computers. They neither know exactly the economics of open source nor the difference between open source and open systems. But they have been very successful in propagating that Microsoft is the worst software to work with.

Result? Most of them don’t find any alternatives but still stick with Microsoft but keep complaining that Windows is designed solely for the purpose of hanging. Sometimes you can’t control yourself when they complain Windows after accidentally switching off the power button. What would you do when someone complains Microsoft for UPS problem or DVD drive getting struck? Most of them are not that naïve but they do complain Microsoft for some third party software hanging. Well… There was a time when Microsoft was debugging even third party software to avoid these complaints but now they don’t have the band-width or a marketing reason to do so.

What am I driving here? Open source could seem more reliable due to variety of reasons but all I am saying is Microsoft, recruiting the top talent in the world, is not aiming at providing the worst software. May be, the parameters you use in judging Microsoft are not the parameters Microsoft is trying to satisfy. Remember … Microsoft is not developing products for programmers but it develops for common men. Now judge Microsoft with such parameters like user friendliness, marketing etc … You will understand what they are trying to achieve …

Having said that … Microsoft does have some handicaps and is really a bad guy in some situations, which I will write about on some other day… Till then … Hail Microsoft …

Oops! We use Distributed systems ...

Well... I am not a master in distributed computing ... But somehow from the day I heard the concept I have been skeptical about this ... May be because I have been a mainframe guy till I joined Amazon ...

mmm... I could shoot a mail to Bezos asking him to shift the Amazon data to a centralized system ... The first response would be “Dude ... who is going to pay the money?” ... I can show him the cheaper versions of Mainframe and some white papers , read only by their authors, which discuss how mainframe is cheaper than the distributed counterparts ... Again we will go deep to the amount of data stored by Amazon and I have to agree that distributed systems ARE cheaper ...

But I won't stop there ... I will question the reliability of the distributed systems and he will show the example of Google running successfully with distributed systems ... Wait wait ... How is Google related to reliability? ... Do I care if five sites are missing due to the outage of one box from the result consisting of some millions of sites ? But if Amazon loses the customer payment data due to cremation of one box, won't we care? Yeah... You will have replication ... then I will question the synchronization ( One box says I bought for $25 and the other says I bought for $5) and we will talk about the mechanisms for synch and I will give the extreme test cases ...

Then we will talk about flexibility ... I will laugh at them for having the same data in six boxes , each partitioned by a different key, just to handle 6 WHERE clauses ... And they will laugh that the hardware is so cheap that adding a box is having a cup of coffee ...

Ooph! This can go on but I am sure that everyone except me here believes in distributed systems than their own religion ... I am sure that I will move from my side to their side ... It will be interesting to know what is going to attract me to the distributed world ?

Star Office and Superglue

Amazon is a strong supporter of open source projects and so a Microsoft fan like me has to struggle a bit getting used to Firefox and Staroffice (Think about the looks I get when I ask Windows instead of Linux). Now, as a Manager, all I need is a speardsheet ( can't live without), a text editor and a presentation tool. So I would be delighted as a six year old getting a Chocolate Icecream if MS office is given to me. Somehow it looks like I have to adjust with star office atleast for sometime due to some reason, which I have to find out.

Well... I made up my mind and started using star office spreadsheet. Not that bad ... I had almost all the functions that Excel gave me (though I am yet to try the advanced functions). So happy that I need not go for MS office, I started using the star office text editor. Man...Hatred at first sight ... I hated the damn thing as soon as I opened it just I don't know why. Then again I consoled myself and started typing despite the protest from my fingers. I press Shift+F3 to change the case, CTRL + ] to increase the font, CTRL+SHFT+C to copy the format - Nothing works... Do I need to unlearn all the shortcuts I learned in Word to get used to this damn editor.

When star office has taken care to provide an option of saving the doc in the Word format to prevent the customers from lock-in syndrome ... Wait .. Wait ... What is this lock-in syndrome? Well... Lock-in is how you apply the glue to the customer's back and stick him to your campany's tools ... Its a good way to avoid customers from switching to competitors (in MBA lingo, increasing the switching cost) ... Now the customer knows this and if he sees you running to him with the superglue in your hand, he is going to run away from you ... Get what I mean? If I see that I can save the staroffice documents only in staroffice format, I know that I will be locked in staroffice to edit the documents and I would smell the superglue. So staroffice entices me saying that I can use staroffice but still save in word format ...

Coming back to the point ... What was I saying ... yeah ... staroffice shows as if it is not locking me by giving options to save in word ... but it is indeed locking me by making me unlearn the Word shortcuts and learn their shortcuts ... Now if I have to switch back, again I have to learn and unlearn ... Man ... Sun has to implement the shortcuts atleast to get the poor souls like me ... There may be some options to get the word shortcuts in staroffice but I don't have time to search for that (read the previous post that I am in office only till 6:30 PM) ... So ... Sun... Please save me ... I don't like your superglue ...

The Coffee Breaks and Late Nights ...

Here, at Amazon, I usually come to Office by 9:45 AM and leave for home at 6:30 PM. In the initial days, when I didn't have much work, I followed this schedule and after practicing it for a week, I like this and plan to continue this. Well, at iNautix, my previous workplace, I come at 10 AM and sit in office usually till 8:30 PM. But I feel more productive now than before. Why? Well ... At iNautix I usually spend an hour for coffee breaks and another hour for Lunch (sometimes another half-an-hour for snacks) ... As you techies know, once we get out of our programming loop and come back, we need some set-up time to get into that mode (or mood !!) again. At Amazon, I get coffee to my desk and I don't spend more than 15 minutes on Lunch.

Thats why may be I feel more productive. Now the issue is am I really more productive or am I just feeling like that. Of course, sitting in office continuously without coffee breaks makes you feel productive and it seems very reasonable to spend some time browsing and checking mails (and of course answering them)... But at iNautix, I was always with a guilty feeling that I waste too much time on breaks and so I limit my browsing time ...

Now again, here as a manager, I am not in any programming loop and so we can discount the setup time ... And the reason for my staying late at iNautix is that the calm evenings wakes up my brain and gets it going in a race-horse pace ( Now you get more examples like this as Amazon is near race course and we have a good view of the course from the office) ... Here at Amazon, even the mornings are calm and there's no incentive for me to stay late ...

So atleast let me assume that I am more productive here even by leaving at 6:30 PM ... Ooph! Now my conscience won't prick ... Earlier it was complaining that I leave early just not to miss the BTM evenings with a lot of Beautiful girls ...

Worshipping the Silicon Gods

Baptizing this blog was a difficult process. I know I was going to write about software but was not sure what the hell in software will I be writing about. Definitely I am not going to discuss the working of malloc or complain how Java is turning developers lazy. Anything about software, anything that might interest these crazy tribes ranging from Longhorn to the new cafe in Bangalore.

Thats fine but there should be a central theme. I have decided that its going to be the taboos in worshiping the silicon gods and the orthodox rites & rituals that would make Silicon Gods happy so that they bless our team for coming up with timely deliverables and quality bytes of machine code.

So today a little bit about me ... I am an MBA from the Indian School of Business... Joined Amazon India development center as TPPM (Technical Product Program Manager) just a week ago. Before taking up ISB, I was working with iNautix (yes, N capital) Technologies, a software subsidiary of Bank of NewYork Securities. Am new to Bangalore, still exploring BTM to find a new girl friend and roaming around the city with Eicher city map in hand. Am staying with a bunch of Oraclites (Any idea how this Oracle guys call themselves?) and thats it.