The Silicon Gods

Did you see the Unsubscribe link?

2006-02-02T19:55:00.000+05:30

I am fed up of being a member of social networking websites with all the reminders and matching mails they keep sending to my mail Id. So I decided to go and unsubscribe to all these websites but boy, that wasn't an easy task ...

In no website was I able to find the unsubscribe link. So I decided to delete all the information but even that wasn't easy. Some websites didn't allow me to delete my own information. I tried to modify those info by replacing them with junk characters but in vain. The website informed me that the modifed content will be approved only after review. Who will approve the junk characters?

I know I can unsubscribe by calling their customer care number (which will be a US number) but I hate calling any customer care, after some bitter experiences.

Related to my previous post, My roomie Krishna pointed to some applications built on Ajax that do the work of WORD and Excel as I mentioned in my post. -> http://ajaxian.com/by/topic/office/

AJAX effect

2006-01-23T10:26:00.000+05:30

Now that we have released the alpha version of our product, I will have some free time to blog ( till the beta release demands me) ...

The technology that has got my vote in the recent days is AJAX ... I am nowadays using meebo.com to chat and it is built out of AJAX ( just by three people, you know ...) Earlier I had aversion towards browser based chatting but AJAX gives a feeling of an App even when I am inside the browser ... This paves way to a lot of promising new ventures - Think of word or excel inside a browser with drag and drop, macros etc ... Take it even further and think of an entire desktop inside a browser ( a feel of Google OS, huh ...)

Yahoo Mail Beta is going to give a feel of outlook to its web based mail ( Does anyone know how can I can be one of these Beta users?) ... and yes, its possible only cos of AJAX ...

Things look good

2005-12-25T22:42:00.000+05:30

I have managed to get things under my control. All that was needed was a little bit of clarity, time management and process among the chaos. Some exciting things have happenned on the work front. Still life is hectic but I made this choice.

Our first client who used our beta product has gone live and have become a huge hit. This has tremendously increased our confidence in the product and everyone is looking forth for its release.

I would love to share about our product and the client stories but only in the latter part of next year. Till then its confidential ... SShhh...

And Lord God made my life hectic …

2005-11-27T20:57:00.000+05:30

I almost decided to close this blog. My life has been very hectic for the past few weeks. I work non-stop from morning to night and still I have more than 40 items in my follow-up list. More than 6 books are waiting in my book shelf to be read. I gave got mails enquiring why I am not blogging. People who mail me seeking advice have been frustrated waiting for my reply. I feel very tired at the end of the day and it’s almost impossible for me to blog or reply for mails.

But the interesting fact is though I work so hard, at the end of the day, I see that I have not accomplished much. Whatever Time management I do, things do go awry and I can’t stop mails that ask why their tasks take so much time to finish. The interesting fact is that I am still an average employee and even if I manage to do all the work I get, I will still be an average employee. Because I can never become a superstar if I just do the work given to me and do nothing beyond that. But I am struggling even to get my daily jobs done. When I don’t even have time to mail or blog, how can I think of things beyond my duties?

At the end of the day, it looks like I am doing something wrong. Let me try to figure that out and will keep you updated on what I find. I can’t promise frequent blogging but will try to put some discipline in my blogging.

The ipod phone story ...

2005-10-03T15:24:00.000+05:30

So it has been a year since Motorola announced ipod phone and till now even Google earth has not yet got a glimpse of it. People could be accusing Apple for going to Motorola even after the bad experience it had in its early relationship. But I read somewhere altogether a different perspective.

Jobs knows that his designer Jonathan Ive could have come up with a better ipod phone than giving the deal to Motorola. But all Jobs wanted was a news that some phone company is creating an ipod phone. Think deep and there’s no downside for Apple in it. Even if the phone fails, blame is on Motorola.

If Apple created the phone and if it succeeds, there’s a problem for Apple. The cellular network providers would ask Apple to send the songs using their network and would take the bulk of the fee in their already hefty pocket. Apple doesn’t have any power to negotiate as it has no presence in cellular industry.

Now the puzzle solves itself. Now that Motorola is creating an ipod phone (though Jobs is the one who persuaded Motorola to do it), Jobs can strike a good deal with the network providers. All he has to do is threaten that their customers are just going to complain against the providers if the ipod button in the phone is not supported by the providers. Jobs didn’t really need to have the phone but just a news that the phone is underway.

Jobs played the game beautifully and stroke a great deal with Cingular, the network provider. Now Cingular and Motorola are marketing the phone and the bulk of fee would go to Jobs. I wonder how this great strategist lost to gates.

The Russian Pencil

2005-09-23T14:54:00.000+05:30

For long time, I was under the impression that asking the user to type the text given in the form of a garbled gif while registering for an email account is effective. I was sure that there is no way to automate this till I heard this piece of news.

There was a Porn website that wanted to create a lot of email accounts but was unable to automate it due this garbled text procedure. There were a lot of hackers working to automate this procedure but in vain. The owner was frustrated about this but he did come up with a solution to tackle it. He just asked the viewers to type the text shown in garbled form to get access to the porn content.

This news is from our MD, who was earlier heading the Yahoo India division. It reminds me of America which struggled to find a pen that could write in Space where there is no gravity. Russians just solved the problem by using pencil.

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Why did you make her dumb?

2005-09-22T09:26:00.000+05:30

Some techie gals have expressed concerns that I am portraying gals as dumb. But they need not feel so bad about it. Everything has a reason in this Universe. I remember something related that I read long back …

Adam was so mad about Eve. Whenever he visited GOD, the conversation was mostly about Eve.

“My father! Why did you make Eve so beautiful?”

“So that you love her”

“Why did you give her so sweet voice?”

“So that you love her”

“Why did you give her so soft hands?”

“So that you love her”

“But why did you make her so Dumb?”

“So that she loves you”

Search without blogs …

2005-09-19T12:33:00.000+05:30

Google has unleashed the blog search … http://blogsearch.google.com/

Though there are already a lot of blog search engines such as Technorati and Blogdigger, Google’s foray does create a wave. Interestingly, Google unveiled the information about its blogsearch through a blog. Cool, uh!

Already web is messed up with every Tom, Dick and Harry creating his own web pages. The problem shifted from information seeking to information digging. The keywords churning out billions of page makes it simply impossible to get to the web page we want clearing out all the messy pages scattered everywhere. Agreed … Google did a good job in getting the most relevant info but still there’s a lot of crap that has degraded the search experience considerably. People have already started going to Library rather than search in the web.

Blogs made things worse. Blogs reduced the barriers to entry so that anyone can write anything … Even Lalu Prasad Yadav can write about Indian Economy and that bullshit might be read by great economists digging for some information… Blogs have increased the mess that we have to clear before getting to the right place.

But on the other side, Blogs also give information that other websites can’t provide. They are the voice of real customers. They are unedited logs of information. They come directly from mind.

Ok without boring much, let me complete this …My 2 cents is that blogs need a separate way of handling in search. They cannot be treated as other web pages. The search should identify whether the requested information needs blogs and act accordingly. Since Google has already identified the blogs, it can also come up with a search engine that searches only non-blog pages. This way Users can decide whether to include blogs or not in their search.

Wooing in the McKinsey Way …

2005-09-14T12:42:00.000+05:30

My blogging frequency is taking a hit … Hope every reader is having his/her own blog reading software so that they are not checking my blog daily just to see that there is no new post.

Yesterday I was reading McKinsey Way and thought of sharing some insights with you guys.

Let’s take a simple case. I go to McKinsey and ask them how to woo a girl next door.

They first go around gathering facts. They collect details such as she leaves for work at 8 AM, sits with her colleague Sachin in the company bus, returns at 8 PM, has North Indian food at the restaurant opposite to her flat, likes North Indians than South Indians, never comes out before 8 AM / after 8 PM and goes for movie or shopping with Sachin in the weekends.

Then they structure the data.

How can Sujayath woo the girl?

- Go to her house, get introduced and somehow replace Sachin on weekends

- Get her mobile number somehow, make blank calls and gradually progress to a date

- Get her email Id / messenger Id, chat with her and gradually progress to a date

- Join her company and replace Sachin in the bus and in the weekends

- Meet her in the restaurant, get introduced and make it a habit to eat with her. Then gradually move to a date.

- Change the hair-style and dressing to look like a North Indian

- Remove moustache

- Read Kushwant Singh Joke books so that some jokes could be sprinkled while talking to her

Now this is not a rigid structure. In McKinsey language, this is not MECE (pronounced me-see), which stands for Mutually Exclusive but Collectively Exhaustive. I remember vaguely that I have heard this term during my B school days. Let make the list MECE …

- Get introduced to her by the following ways and gradually progress to date

o Go to her house

o Get her mobile number somehow and make blank calls

o Get her email Id / messenger Id and Chat with her

o Join her company

o Meet her in the restaurant

- After introduced, attract her by changing the hair-style and dressing to look like a North Indian. It is important to remove moustache.

- Read Kushwant Singh Joke books that could be sprinkled while talking to her

If someone is overaggressive and combines the third point with the second point to make it more MECE, they are breaking the McKinsey rule of magic 3. McKinsey claims that 3 is a magical number and whenever you do a MECE, you end up with a list that contains three elements. So see to that your list is with 3 elements.

After that, they formulate initial Hypothesis which is the gut feel of the result (aka the initial impression based on the facts). It’s basically a problem solving map. Our MECE list itself could act as initial hypothesis. Then they test it and see whether the hypothesis is true based on the facts gathered.

Failed cases:

- Go to her house

o She usually greets visitors after 8 AM without make-up and Sujayath is too tender to receive such a shock

- Get her mobile number somehow and make blank calls

o She has the history of complaining blank calls to police

- Get her email Id / messenger Id and Chat with her

o She is still learning to use messenger and till now all she has learned is to login and logout … Still a long way to chat …

- Join her company

o Her manager doesn’t hire anyone whom he thinks could be potentially intelligent than him

- Look like a North Indian

o Whatever Sujayath does, he cannot hide his south Indian origin, which is visible in every part of his body

So finally they come up with the solution – I meet her in the restaurant and talk with some humor (courtesy: Kushwant Singh). I pay their huge fee and wait in the restaurant just to see that she enters the restaurant with Sachin, the data deliberately omitted by the consultants.

Freedom - not a freeware

2005-09-01T18:01:00.000+05:30

In Tamilnadu, cell phones are banned in the colleges. They are not allowed to dance for film songs in the cultural festivals. Not sure whether they will be allowed to sing film songs. A lot of ladies colleges have brought rules that the students should not come in jeans or skirt. Already our colleges are backward compared to other parts of the world and now new rules are pulling us backward. Most of the colleges still think that strictness and discipline are the only ways to mould a student. The path of creativity and freedom is looked like a forbidden fruit.

When I was doing my undergrad, I marketed a software idea called e-wife in some technical competition. I felt it was a great idea and thought that I did a good job in marketing that. I bagged the first prize in the previous years for not-so-good products such as magnetic computers. So I was confident of appreciation and prize that year. But it turned out that my entry was black-listed and was thrown out of the competition. I was said that it was a vulgar presentation.

No … No … I didn’t tell anything about how my software would replace real wife in satisfying the sexual desires of husbands. Actually it’s a lady who questioned me during the presentation who is to be blamed. She asked me whether it is necessary that e-wife should be used by only one person. I don’t remember the exact reply I gave but my entry was thrown out of competition.

Leaving that part, e-wife was a well designed product. It was a combination of entertainment software (though most of the married guys disagree, wives do provide some entertainment in addition to the obvious one) and Jini technology, which was hot at that time. So e-wife will wash clothes (talk to chip enabled washing machine), wash dishes (yes, chip-enabled dish washer) and do almost everything a wife can do.

There were also feminists in the class who protested to the name e-wife and asked me to change the product name as e-servant. I explained to them that e-servant is obliged to do work but my e-wife doesn’t. So when you ask for a coffee, you might not get that day just because your e-wife is mood-out. When you switch on your comp in a hot mood, she might disable access to all porn sites as you didn’t get her the favorite antivirus she asked.

My college professors were not willing to let go the little vulgar part which was there for humor and appreciate the concept. I can’t help comparing it to the skit I did at My MBA School - ISB. The skit was criticizing the school for exorbitant fee and making fun of the Dean and Asst. deans for their meaningless rules. Asst. dean was the judge and she gave us the first prize. When Tamilnadu colleges are banning film songs, ISB is thinking of opening a bar inside the campus.

Messenger, the Messiah …

2005-08-30T13:50:00.000+05:30

It looks like the Messenger arena is getting hot and competition is getting intense. Google has launched its Messenger service “Google Talk” and poses a direct threat to MSN Messenger, AOL and Yahoo IM.

Google cannot help it. It’s a logical extension. Messenger has more network effects than Mail. It’s like our Indian Marriages. If you love a girl from other religion, either you have to convert to her religion or she has to come to your religion. From my experience, I know of other case where the pair just splits instead of going thru the hassles of this religion conversion. Anyway, this case and the arguments that nobody cares about religion nowadays (Proof: ‘sex’ is searched more than ‘religion’ in any search engine :) ) are unrelated to the topic.

Companies such as MSN and Yahoo do the same and have kept their Messenger communities closed cautiously. If you want to date a girl with MSN Id, boy, give up your Yahoo and register with MSN. (If you have girl friends in both, just open both the chats simultaneously. Fortunately, one friend will not know that you are chatting with another friend. I don’t want to get into arguments that some girls have mystical powers to find out this) If Messenger service was open, Google would have had a great advantage now in competing against established players. Yahoo and MSN knew it and shut their door.

Think what would have happened if Hotmail kept its mail closed. There’s a lengthy argument which finally concludes that that wouldn’t have been a wise idea but the Messenger arena is different. Yahoo had a clear first big (free) mover advantage and MSN had the clear MS advantage. It looks like Google might become open but we have to wait to see the impact.

Messenger may even replace the mail services in the future. Even now there are a lot of friends who send me offline messages but who have never written a mail. Mails may become a formal medium and become what snail mails are today. You would use mail to write to your neighbor that his loud speaker is disturbing you and later submit that mail as a proof in the court. Or your boss might think offline messages are insult to him and would like to send only mails.

The feature that is lacking today is a better interface to manage offline messages. Think of a situation when I receive hundred offline messages!! Or a utility to connect Messenger to the mail clients to organize the offline messages that we want to maintain. I don’t know whether these are already available but if not, my guess is they would soon be available.

I am back …

2005-08-26T09:21:00.000+05:30

Blogging after a long time … I was down with Typhoid fever for the past few weeks and returned to work only this week.

I had pretty new experiences as this is the first time I am admitted to a hospital. It was boring to be in bed rest but now I am so used to rest that it is boring to come to office. I was under constant vigil by nurses that I feel unattended now. (have to say that not all are competent enough … One nurse made many punctures in my hand without knowing how to get the correct nerve for connecting the drip. She even ran away once she saw the blood)

The only solace is that I need not see the daily hospital bill which was doubling each day like the prize money of KBC. I had insurance thankfully but still I can’t digest the high fee charged by hospitals.

So now I am back. I have been given some new responsibilities. Lot of things have happened such as Google’s talk and Alipay from Alibaba. Interestingly, Yahoo has got a stake in Alibaba. There would be lot to blog .. Cool …

Boy Zone

2005-07-28T11:50:00.000+05:30

I am referring to my team when I said “Boy Zone”. It has been just three months and I have started feeling that may be we should have some girls in our team. A9 group has managed to get a couple or three gals but our team stays firmly as Boy zone …

I can’t think why high standard hiring means fewer girls. Are girls not smart enough to enter such firms? Or may be they are not that career oriented as guys who take significant amount of preparation before interviewing for geeky firms. May be, girls don’t want to work in such hectic schedules … Or they are not that much technology oriented …

Whatever may be the reason … the reality is that we don’t have even a single girl in our team. I miss the heroic feeling that guys in firms such as Infy or TCS get when they bail out gals from bugs …

( Infy Gal : Hey ! My machine is not starting … Can you look at the problem?

Infy Guy: Sure! Oh, you have to switch on the power for starting any machine…

Gal: You are so brilliant … I never knew that …)

In our team, there are no girls and so no blunders … (Gal: I accidentally deleted the accounts info DB in Prod. Hope it shouldn’t be a big problem). So in short …it’s very boring. Even if someone makes any blunder, he is smart enough to bail himself out … So sad …

I really miss those expressions on the Gal’s face when they come to us after committing blunders … Its worth much more than getting bash from clients … So I don’t mind facing client’s fury for seeing those sweet expressions ….

Female programmers are a great thing in Indian software industry. Oh God, we miss it …

PS: I wrote this blog in a weird mood after seeing a couple of Infosys buses carrying pretty programming angels … So I plead female readers not to bash me with furious mails blaming me as a male chauvinist …

Be Frank, Brutally

2005-07-26T14:23:00.000+05:30

I am tired of the hectic schedules and tense meetings. I think this is the price I should pay for being a Manager. But in retrospection, I believe I could have done some tasks differently that could have eased my tension.

The mistakes I did were trying to please the clients and not being frank. These two could get as deadly as we could ever imagine. I saw the face of this costly mistake as close as I will ever be. Both these mistakes are correlated. I was not frank so that I could please the clients.

I hid some bugs found at a very later stage. In the process of fixing it, we stepped on to plethora of other bugs and I was answerless when clients started asking me when they can start integrating. My blood pressure was jumping like tsunami waves as it will when I encounter pretty girls at Forum. I know this tension could have been avoided just by being Frank.

Being Frank is relatively easy when compared to being brutally frank. You should have guts to say to the clients on the production day that you have some serious bugs. You should be as gutsy as Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction if you have to say ‘we just have 75 bugs to be resolved and I am pretty confident that our boys won’t be able to do it by the D-day’. You could be ultra cool by patting your client’s shoulder – “Be cool Dude! This is how production works!!”

I have seen some projects that have been managed pretty well. Their status reports are brutally frank and they follow the principle that any bad news could only become worse by not informing.

So, don’t try to please the clients … Don’t ever do that by hiding your mistakes …

Proud to be in Prod

2005-07-21T12:24:00.000+05:30

Finally, we pushed our project to production. The last two weeks have been very hectic and there were days when we worked 24 hours continuously. Developers are really energy drained and worn-out. Now everyone can take break and refresh themselves before starting the next release. I am also feeling relieved and happy.

I was reading a Tamil book “Ponniyin Selvan”. When I was going thru the difficult phases in the project, the hero of the novel was also going thru turmoil and difficulties. So Today I felt a need to finish the novel and see that all the chaos is settled and the hero is happy. I finished it in the cab. When I came to office, it looked like a bright day with my mind singing the happy tunes. Finally, I feel like that hero who brought the chaos into order.

MD called me and said that I should be proud for achieving this. He should have said that for a formality.

The reality might be different … I might not be a critical piece in the project … But the project has taken me thru a lot of difficulties teaching me valuable lessons … At least, I would be a critical piece, an able leader in my next venture …

Happy Anniversary, Amazon.com

2005-07-13T11:41:00.000+05:30

Amazon.com is currently in celebration spree for its tenth anniversary. It’s special for India team as we are entering into our first anniversary. It’s again special for me as I am releasing my first project. So a lot of celebration to go …

You can check out Amazon.com celebration plans at

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/14104251/102-1949963-4145765

The interesting one is Special delivery with celebrities taking the deliveries. From actor Rob Schneider delivering the 50 First Dates DVD, to Anna Kournikova delivering a pair of Adidas tennis shoes, it’s a fun to watch those clips.

In India, we were planning to have a big concert in the lines of our parent, but it looks like most of the Amazonians are in favor of going out for trek / resort instead of the concert. So, I might be soon in Goa or Kerala or atleast in some resort in Karnataka enjoying the party, naturally!!

Take lessons … Your hassle lessens …

2005-07-12T12:31:00.000+05:30

Still I am struggling with the sales people. These guys are born to lie. My car has arrived on Friday. Still the loan amount has not gone to the dealer and that is preventing me from taking the delivery. I applied exactly a week before and was promised that the money will go to the dealer last Friday itself. Still the money has not gone and I am getting a ton of reasons portraying their creative talent.

Friday: Money has to come from Bombay and we are waiting … (As if money is arriving by flight)

Saturday: Money has not come back from the previous Maruti dealer (Couldn’t they check it before itself?)

Sunday: It’s Sunday (What a great Trivia!!)

Monday: It will reach in another 10 minutes (It was the status throughout the day)

Today: No-one is picking up their mobile (Who, the hell, invented the Caller ID?)

Even after learning this valuable lesson of how frustrating the customer experience is with improper replies, I repeated the same mistake when I was on the other side. Friday was our Alpha release and our clients were waiting for our release.

We were still getting some bugs in the regression testing and there was a conference call every hour to sync-up on the status. I was doing the same mistake – “We are running the regression test suite and it should be ready in an hour”. Now I understand how frustrating it would have been for the clients to hear the same status in every call. Luckily we were able to fix the bugs and push the code to alpha but the mismanagement remains as a scar in my mind. I think I was a bit tense and nervous that I was not ready to declare that we have bugs.

Who knows, the sales person could be in the same shoes with some obstacles in the loan processing, or , he could have his TV remote in one hand and his mobile in another replying that “ I am still waiting in the bank, Sir”

Thus I booked a car …

2005-07-06T11:27:00.000+05:30

It’s simple news that I have – I booked a car. But this exercise has revealed a lot about sales people and the sales pitch that even my ISB MBA failed to teach.

I booked Maruti Swift exactly one month back. As usual, I went through a lot of test drives and was impressed with Swift. Then started the search for car loans. I met a lot of honest people with loads of lies (aka sales people). HDFC got my papers and gave a quote around 2040 EMI per Lakh. I thought they were joking. ICICI came to 2030 and said that nothing below is possible. HDFC came down to 1999 and suddenly ICICI gave quote for 1992. I didn’t know how impossible things became possible.

Finally, I went for HDFC and at the time of giving cheques, he asked for Insurance amount. He didn’t inform me prior that I have to take insurance with them but the trained guys convinced me to take insurance with them (Just that brain doesn’t work some times)

I waited patiently for one month (that was the waiting time given by the dealer) and I was informed that it will take two more months due to spike in demand and production problems. I was frustrated and just cancelled the booking.

Then the same cycle started again when I decided to look for C segment cars. After meeting the icons of Ikon, going thru the indigo of Indigo, hearing the accents of Accent and taking the course of Corsa, I finally settled for Accent. I am again going thru the loan process, negotiating with the Maruti dealer to give the loan cancellation charges, pursuing the Hyundai dealer to keep the promise of delivering by weekend … Boy, things are not that easy …

Its not just Car … I have paid the full amount for Tata Indicom broadband connection last month and am still waiting for the connection …

Post-script: It sucks to see that I didn’t blog for a week but my company that is gracious enough to employ me is intelligent enough to keep me struck in a hectic schedule. Hope I should have ample time after our release on July 15^th. I can blog regularly then.

Am "not in the" way

2005-06-27T13:35:00.000+05:30

There was a guy who kept pestering me for long to attend some meeting which will give me new business opportunities for creating passive income. I was evading him but finally I thought of attending the meeting yesterday.

Before going, my roommate swami warned me that this will be the Amway one but I still wanted to give it a shot. I have read case studies about Amway and how it has revolutionized the retail supply chain. I was prepared not to be brainwashed by whatever they say, but just wanted to see how it goes.

The meeting was in a house and there were old members and some new scape goats like me. It looked more like a “Jesus Calls” meeting (Not to offend any religious mind, please take in lighter sense). One person used the fake smile and all marketing gimmicks to explain what Amway is and how it can make us Millionaires (“Next to Bill Gates, Amway has created most millionaires!!”). Then they showed some products and demonstrated how it is better than the current ones. I don’t have anything against Amway products as I too think they are of good quality.

Then they sat down and started hooting and shouting and boy, this time I really felt I am in a “Christ calls” meeting. They said that they do that to maintain enthusiasm and energy. Then they asked me to say what I felt about the product. How can I say something bad when a group of united brethren are staring at you to hear some holy praising? I said that I have read case studies and Amway way has worked for many.

Then each member read out what he sold that week (two shampoos and one soap!! I thought he could consume more than what he sells) Later, they marketed some cassettes and books which could improve your Amway way. I was given a cassette and I silently dismissed myself from the holy crowd. Amway way works, but am not in the Amway way.

Postscript: Swami asked me to add this -> If you hear back from a married ex-girlfriend, don’t be puzzled - chances are that she is canvassing you to join the Amway way. Just his 2 cents.

A poor creature called manager

2005-06-23T18:27:00.000+05:30

What would you do when you get a very complex bug on the day of your production release? This was one of the questions I faced in my Amazon interview and I never even imagined in my wildest dream (well… I don’t waste my dreams thinking about work ;)), that I might have to fact the same situation … And that too in the very first project.(Well... Not really production release but code freeze)

Since I was not involved in the technical and design part, all I could do is get status updates, watch developers running around here and there and pray for some miracle to happen. In the remaining time, I think of the good old days when I was a developer and when my manager was getting status updates, watching me running here and there …

I know that theoretically I should have added buffer for all such unwanted situations but practically it just doesn’t work that way ( What … Four days for an exit button ???) Atleast as of now I am having plans for a relaxed schedule for the next release and am also pretty sure it’s not going to work that way. Well… Program management seemed easy when I read the mythical man days and joel on software !!

Form the next release, I am planning to get hands on and take part in development also. In this release, the only technical thing I did was to write some perl scripts for an intranet page … Should go some steps deeper …

This release has increased my BP and worsened my neck pain. Apart from that, I have learnt a lot about Amazon internals, but it was not worth for the pain. Does anyone has suggestion how to keep cool when your boss is yelling at you?

Google in the Paypal way ...

2005-06-20T16:29:00.000+05:30

Today I read about Google’s plan to foray into the payments market and compete with Paypal. It’s an anticipated move. Payments platform is very lucrative and my feel is that one day Paypal may surpass ebay. Now Google’s foray is certainly a setback for paypal. But we can look this in another way. Though paypal has a good presence in the online payments market, still there are a lot of avenues that are yet to be explored in online payments. There is a need for creativity to create new payment avenues. So Google can as well complement paypal rather than collide head-on with it.

Though Paypal has gone international, it is still focusing only on few countries. Take India … I struggled a lot to explain about paypal to a landmark (bookstore) employee for getting a book on paypal. It shouldn’t take that much time to explain Google wallet. And paypal alone cannot satisfy all the growing avenues in payments and they cannot take the responsibility of educating customers about each and every payment avenue. Paypal desperately needs competition and Google should fit right there.

All in the name …

2005-06-14T17:01:00.000+05:30

I went on a vacation last week. Work has piled up but thought of blogging a bit before diving into the work…

Today I tried registering to some yahoo groups and wanted to create a separate profile for that … I tried all the weird names for the profile but nothing worked out … I tried common names like wind, magnate, cyclone, superpower etc which I know would have already been used.

I tried computer terminologies like ascii, digit, digiterati, gigabyte, terabyte and even QWERTY, SPACE BAR, LATITUDE etc but netizens have already taken these names. The real surprise was when I tried su, su_j, s_uj, suj and everything was already taken. Frustrated, I tried cube_12 (my cubicle number) and to my surprise even that name was not available. I was really clueless and after a lot of iterations, I settled with a shitty ID “su_988688”!!

Then I noticed that all the profile IDs in the forums are as shitty as this. I think in the future, we will just have our mobile numbers as the email IDs to avoid this frustration. But that will have privacy problems. How about SSNs? But that’s not applicable outside US. mmm…I am planning to reserve email IDs for my son/daughter for future :)

Intraview

2005-06-02T16:19:00.000+05:30

After a long time, I have got some time to blog … Things have been hectic here and its really difficult to find time to blog …

I have been interviewing a lot this week … Most of the candidates are not aware of the stringent interview process of Amazon and are completely taken by surprise once they get into the interview … I have got a variety of interesting responses ….

"What is the spelling for Amazon?"

“Usually they will ask about my experience… Why didn’t you ask?”

“How did you come up with this question?”

“Interesting question! But I don’t know the answer”

“Don’t say that you are going to ask puzzles”

“Did you go through my resume?”

“I can’t solve this. I don’t have paper and pen”

“I will have a TV in the room (when asked to design a room for a blind person …)”

“How to know more about Technology?”

I will keep updating this post as and when I get some interesting responses …

Amazon is smarter than Google

2005-05-31T10:24:00.000+05:30

An Interesting article from Yeald.com ...

The principle to sales and support success on the Internet is easy; the more relevant a company’s offer is to the receiver, the higher is the acceptance of the offer.

It’s that easy, in principle.

In practice, things look a lot different. Only a handful of companies have managed to create a successful personalization of their engagement with customers. Amazon personal recommendations and individual composition of the ecommerce site remain the classic example.

Not many other personalization efforts are touted.

Take a look at Google web search personalization effort, and you‘ll likely be disappointed. Event though Google is full of mathematical brains and technical resources, the current status of its personalized search function is way below my expectations.

How come it’s so difficult to build a decent personalized user treatment?

Why does Amazon succeed where Google fails so far?

One of the main reasons is the fact that Amazon understands a user better than Google does. Both companies track user behavior and would be able to track even more behavior than they do today. The user behavior is tracked as very basic, raw data.

What do these basic user behavior data mean?

This is where Amazon is smarter than Google. Amazon has managed to create a layer of meaning to lay over the basic user behavior data. Amazon knows that a purchase relates to a book, a DVD or a CD. Amazon knows that certain CDs have the same sort of music style. Amazon can combine user behavior across product categories and see if there are correlations.

Fundamentally, Google should be able to build a lot more understanding of a user.

In practice, this would require that Google would create a layer of meaning over all user behavior data. But since Google is dealing with a huge and extremely diverse knowledge universe, how could it build a framework that can structure the meaning of 8 billion web pages.

A possible solution is the semantic web. However, so far there are hardly any results known that can live up to a promise of even a basic understanding of the information universe.

The potential of Google’s knowledge is enormous. The company is an advertising machine. And if Google can manage to understand its users, it would certainly find a way to turn this understanding into advertising money.

But this will only work once Google understands the Internet's information universe.

Until then, Amazon remains smarter than Google.

The bad old days …

2005-05-26T10:00:00.000+05:30

It was like visiting the remains of old civilizations … like walking midst the debris of Harappa … like kneeling down before the grave of your favorite person … like watching a sad classic … like thinking about your past love in one rainy evening … Well… I was browsing about the dotcoms that failed during the dotcom bust …

The reason I did that was a selfish one – to hunt for a good idea that was poorly executed … But I gradually got into the mood of visiting a lost civilization … I could visualize the energy, enthusiasm and dreams with which the entrepreneurs started their dotcom … The pain they went through when the reality struck straight in their spine …

I was reading articles that described in detail about the day when the decision to dissolve the company was made … Even visionaries like Paul Allen didn’t escape … Almost everyone said that their dreams collapsed just because of their inability to raise capital …

mmm… Its no different from a woman going through abortion … I should keep this in mind while executing my dreams, either for Amazon or for myself …

Note: Guys … If anyone of you is writing blog, send the link to me … I am looking for blogs and I would list the link in my blog …

Phone is a Phone is a Phone

2005-05-23T13:54:00.000+05:30

Mobile phone is seen as the most attractive platform for the next generation utilities. Camera, FM radio, Movie players, Maps, Games, Dating utilities, Personal diary and what not … Mobiles are becoming more and more sophisticated and don’t be surprised if you see coaching classes for using mobile ( Nokia certified coaching centers !!)

Its not just the number of utilities but also the quality of them. Just now we have started with cameras and there is a long path till it replaces digital cameras and camcorders and offering the same quality they can offer. Mobile games is a very attractive field today and still there is a long path till it replaces XBOX and Sony play stations.

But between these hi-tech advancements, there are poor guys like me who want to use the phone just for speaking. I never play games in my phone and I have never used the personal diary or calculator in my mobile. I am not against mobiles having all the utilities in it. Infact I support mobile phone becoming all-in-one device. My point is there are users who want a no-frills mobile, not necessarily cheap mobiles. I am talking about no-frill high quality phones with very good battery, signal booters etc. I want to pay money for a high-quality phone and not necessarily for the extra utilities I get. And to add more salt, the extra utilities also make the UI very complex and most of the time these utilities are like JDK installed in my Mom’s computer.

Just now read that Vodafone has initiated this by coming up with a no-frills model. Way to Go!!

Have U heard of googlezon?

2005-05-17T16:15:00.000+05:30

I am busy this week with a lot of work and so this post is going to be short.

I came across an interesting link http://epic.chalksidewalk.com/. It envisages that Google and Amazon will merge to challenge Microsoft. It’s interesting to watch and so I recommend it.

Apart from Amazon, there are three companies that I admire – Microsoft, Apple and Google. Usually Microsoft would be missing in the wish list but I am a great fan of William Henry Gates III. Apple, Amazon and Google attract me with their innovation rate. Lets leave Apple and Amazon. Is google really a threat for Microsoft? Why is Google a threat? Why not Amazon or ebay?

There are other related question too. Why did Microsoft come up with IE? What is it getting out of that free product? Answer lies in the jargon “Core Competency”. Microsoft didn’t mind Amazon becoming the world’s largest etailer as that noway is going to affect the core business of Microsoft – Operating System. But think about Late Netscape (sorry netscape lovers) or Google’s vision – Web OS and thin clients. Obviously if that works out, there is no business for MS. Now MS has the responsibility of preventing the clients from going to Google gym (for reducing fat). IE took care of crushing Netscape ( and firefox has come from the ashes). But what’s out there to take care of Google? I am ignorant in this area and will update once I get some information. But am sure, MS will have some deadly plans.

Coming to the point – If google gets access to the wealth of customer information Amazon has, I am sure Googlezon will be the don of internet. But I am still skeptic if that would affect Microsoft.

Mood-out? Reboot!!

2005-05-12T13:08:00.000+05:30

Nowadays I am forming an opinion that girlfriends, especially the techies, are becoming more and more adamant and controlling than ever. When I climbed down the stairs today, I could hear the first floor girl shouting in the cell phone. I think my guess that her boyfriend should be on the other side is not that unreasonable. I have seen girls going out of café in the middle of a coffee and their boyfriends literally chasing them, pleading them and taking them back to the coffee. I know girls shouting at their boyfriends for commending some others girl’s work or for even saying that Paris Hilton’s shape is good.

I am from a town in Tamilnadu, India and have seen women not being given enough freedom to voice their opinion. I have seen in my childhood that women are treated like slaves. Maybe its time for them to take revenge on the chauvinistic male society.

I am also wondering whether the same story is repeated in the case of computers. You know once upon a time, it was just a slave doing the work ordered. Then we added complex contingency mechanisms, intelligent error tracking monitors, wizards to guide novice users and dynamic user interfaces. Now, computers are no longer listening to what we say.

I don’t see much difference between my girlfriend refusing to sit on my bike and the program throwing the sad face “Operation cannot be performed”. What’s the difference between your ladylove refusing to accompany you for the movie just because you are two minutes late and a stupid web service yelling “Operation Timed out”? And nothing pacifies them – neither my girl friend care when I plead “Sweetheart, please don’t go” nor the laptop listen “Oh my Dell darling… please don’t hang”

mmm… Time for them to take revenge … Thanks, God! Atleast I have the option of rebooting when computers are mood-out, but what about our girlfriends??

PS: I just read that the computers with the ability to reproduce are out there!!

Deep inside the shallow consumer …

2005-05-10T15:32:00.000+05:30

I would attribute most of the popularity of internet to the fact that the contents are free. But there have been a lot of efforts to start charging for contents. Today there are a good number of web magazines charging subscription fee. In theory this makes sense, as there are customers who want a good browsing experience free from the irritating ads and pop-ups.

Even I was in the notion that no one would pay money for watching a TV program without ads. Infact some ads are even fun to watch. But this opinion changed as time passed and now I hate watching movies in TV just because of the ads. The same could be applied to internet also.

But there is a subtle difference between internet and TV. Internet lives by linking – Hypertext is the one that forms the core of the internet. Lets say, I start charging for my blog … mmm… moderate fee of $1 per month… Now people linking to my blog will rethink their decision as not all of their visitors can visit my blog as mine is a paid service. Then obviously my referral visitors would be reduced and there would be a anti-network effect ( “Hey … Did you read that interesting article that a mummy has been found with golden panties ?” “Oh interesting. Can you forward it?” “mmm… It’s a subscription service … May be I will tell about it in nutshell …”)

So going for a subscription model has its own handicaps … Think about subscribing for a magazine just to read a single article! (This problem could be solved by micropayments, which I will write about as a separate column later). Not just subscription … Even micro payments may not be perfect … My mom browses peacefully now but still speaks hastily in the telephone though the telephone charge is very minimal… Same would happen with metered browsing even if we are charging in cents… (I ignore broadband charges, which is more like a cable TV rent)

So whats the solution? We want to go for ad-free browsing but we don’t want to pay even a cent for the ad-free content… Well… If I know the solution, I can be the next Sabeer Bhatiya(hotmail), Pierre Omidyar (ebay) or Jeff Bezos(amazon).

Cupid Online ...

2005-05-06T10:33:00.000+05:30

After my roommate swami’s recommendation to visit orkut, I decided to give it a try yesterday. As usual I wound up my work at 5:00 PM as I don’t want to work when my brain stages a dharna … (Swami says that even government officials put more hours …) and got into orkut … It required an invite to log in but it was not difficult to find one, especially when I am from ISB …

Orkut is a social networking site. There are lots of these types of sites out there ( I am already member of Linked in, HI5, Plaxo) and orkut slightly differentiates itself by including dating facilities apart from professional networking … ( I recommend Linkedin for professional networking) … I was just going through the site and browsing through the pictures of beautiful girls out there … (especially I am a fan of Pakistani girls ) …

I could realize the power of such sites and why google has bought this one … Though orkut didn’t pickup as much as one who understands the power of networking sites would have expected, it is surely a successful venture … I could see most of the entries were more related to personal relationships rather than professional networking, this indeed becomes a USP and differentiates it from Linkedin. I would say Google does a good job in choosing the future markets such as blogs, networking etc.

Social networking has huge potential just because of the network effects that comes alone with it. For those who don’t know network effect (aka network externalities), just think about telephones … As more and more users get telephone connection, more beneficial it is for the customers … So the telephone company might struggle in the beginning, but once it reaches a critical mass (MBA jargon: Tipping point), the subscription explodes .. Now think why social networking is a good area for companies to concentrate …

Apart from network effects, these sites collect a lot of information about its members and this data itself is a pot of gold for data warehousing, e-marketing etc. In addition, Google doesn’t have customer info as yahoo, ebay or Amazon and this site could perfectly complement it …

PS: Well… I am thinking about these marketing concepts only when I am writing this blog … My thought process was more about fashion when I was browsing orkut … There were questions on whether I have strategically placed tattoo, pierced tongue, visible tattoo, other piercing, pierced ears, navel ring etc .. :)

Between Love and Marriage …

2005-05-04T17:55:00.000+05:30

I think there could be three accidents that happen between a man and a woman – infatuation, love and marriage. Out of these, Love must be the most overused word.

Infatuation is defined as a foolish and extravagant love, according to wordweb (how long will you keep referring to Webster and oxford). So, I see a girl and blindly fall in love and that becomes infatuation (well…then…why do they say “Love is Blind”). Why does it become infatuation and why can’t it be love? Mmm… Love requires some more brainy work … Lets define Infatuation as 0% Brain and 100% Heart

Love happens when I like a girl and this doesn’t necessarily relate to my intention to marry. “Liking” is making it look very simple but infact … there could be a lot of stages in love … such as admiration, affection, and it could go till devotion … So love -> x% brain and y% heart and x,y > 0

No need to explain marriage … I think guys hate to read about that…simply said 100% brain and 0% heart (one married team mate corrected it to: 0% brain and 0% heart)

So lets come to the topic… What is love? Lets say I want to do a love marriage and ask my parents to find a girl for me and inform me without intimating the girl. Then I will go behind her and make her accept my love and marry without any opposition from parents. Will this become love?

Or whatever is happening in these IT service companies … You get a new girl to your team … She knows what you earn and you know that there won’t be any another easier way to get a girl friend … You both meet at coffee and decide to love after two meetings … Is this love?

I would say these are more closer to marriage than love … May be there is a lack of word for these, but I wouldn’t call these “Love”

PS: I am still looking for a girlfriend and this article has nothing to do with my own experiences

Remains of Pains …

2005-04-29T13:54:00.000+05:30

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

2005-04-27T14:11:00.000+05:30

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 ??

2005-04-26T16:28:00.000+05:30

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

2005-04-25T18:18:00.000+05:30

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 ...

2005-04-20T17:06:00.000+05:30

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

2005-04-19T13:53:00.000+05:30

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 ...

2005-04-18T12:56:00.000+05:30

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

2005-04-15T14:15:00.000+05:30

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.