Party Research

Shyam was wondering on what to do. He was about to leave the city for good and may never meet some of his friends/ colleagues again. He wished to meet all of them one final time before bidding adieu. Coincidentally his birthday was also falling on that final weekend. "Why not organize a party?” he thought
Among the wonderful thoughts, the glitches started making their appearances. Parties generally meant booze, smoking and non-vegetarian food. But Shyam was a straight no-no to all of these. Even in the few parties that he attended, he used to be a silent spectator. So, what to do now?

As a true MBA, Shyam went on with a market study to determine the customer's perceptions.

Prospect 1: "You don't call it a party if it doesn't have booze"
Shyam (in his mind): "Should I name it something else?"

P2: "You have a good name among your friends. Why do you want to spoil it in the last minute?"
S: "How can hosting a party spoil my image? May be if people don't turn-up and I end-up calling everyone the next day and shouting at them"

P3: "Outside the city? Puleez"
S: "Now they expect me to shift my house"

P4: "Have we ever implemented our plans on organising parties? We do not have competency in implementation"

Shyam, already out of enthusiasm, decides not to waste any more effort. But the sight of prospect-5 gives him enough stimulation to interview one more person.

P5: "I'm busy this weekend. Can we have your birthday next week?"
There was a thud sound followed by P5’s cry, “Someone get some water. Shyam has fainted”

Shyam closed the research with the result:
Market research successful; project aborted

Mass Recruitment

There was a forward yesterday that said that stated that some 990 people joined Infy on a single day in its Mysore campus. The forward also carried a nice photo with everyone in the huge crowd wearing neat formals.
This news started off an argument over a spate of mails between a friend and me. The base of the argument was, "Should we be happy that IT companies are recruiting so many people?" I, being the optimist that I am , argued that recruitment of any sort only projects the positive outlook of the future and more work coming to the companies. Afterall companies don't hire people to decorate their premises or publish articles on how they are managing with so many people.
My friend on the other hand feels that news on 990 people joining at the same time is only a reminder of bulk intake of labourers. He explained that he sees software engineers nowadays as nothing labourers wearing suit and tie, and nothing else.

Whatever be the actual reason, there are few things I notice nowadays
a) The prestige of working for a company like Infy has certainly come down. There are ofcourse so many others doing the same.
b) Quite a handsome number of people seem to be on bench
c) There ARE some highly qualified people who are recruited to decorate the company's CV (as against what I argued yesterday)
d) Most of the software work in our country is related to application development and maintenance work. Not much R&D or design is involved.

P.S. I’m still trying to get my blog template back to normality, though in vain.

Blogeratti

I don't know what made me remember this, but after so many weeks I remembered that I had sent my entries to "Blogeratti", a blogging contest. A quick check at http://levelhead.rediffblogs.com/ revealed that my blogs have made it to the final nominations in the categories of poetry and image. Not bad, 2 out of the 6 categories where I had sent my blogs for. The blog that made it to the finale of the poetry category is my intro poem, the one that you'll get to see if you click on the "About Me" link. The one that has qualified in the image category is a set of 2 photos from my collection of sun-set photos at IIM Indore. I wonder why the judges chose those 2 photos specifically. My collection consists of a sequence of photos showing the change of colours of the sky from yellow to while the sun sets. Seems the judges like yellow more than red ;)
Anyways do checkout all the entries at http://levelhead.rediffblogs.com/, and more specifically the poetry and image entries at http://thebloggeratti-poetry.blogspot.com/ and http://thebloggeratti-image.blogspot.com/
If you feel that my blogs are worth it, do vote for me.

(B)rain Waves

The rains are back. I was of the opinion that I had witnessed and experienced all that I had to with the Mumbai rains. But as fate had it, it was not to be. This time around I had a very different experience. Day-before-yesterday, while I was travelling back from office it started raining heavily. I wore my rain-coat before alighting from the bus (how shrewd?), but forgot to wear my bag inside the raincoat (how dumb?) - Mistake #1. The thought having a book inside my bag made me remove the raincoat to wear it over the bag again. What a move? Rains pouring like hell and removing the raincoat just like that - Mistake #2. Another brilliant stroke of mind made me do the 3rd mistake of the day. I started running towards the nearby shade to stand underneath and wear my raincoat in peace. The mistake was not the running part; it was failing to remember that the pavement had a layer of fungus over it. So I was forced to do what one of the villains did in "Home Alone II - Lost in New York". I was doing a skiing kind of action (in the same place) trying to balance myself in the slippery pavement. After few seconds I eventually fell down, my head narrowly missing the side of the pavement. After managing to get back on my feet I was about to do the biggest mistake of all when a friend shouted that I was heading for an open manhole. So the story missed the climax, probably because I was required to essay it on my computer rather than spending days at the nearby hospital.

In the morning I found that I was not the only person to have been affected by the rains. The roads have been affected so much that the bus ride is proving to be a cheap substitute for a roller coaster ride. Seems I can forget for sometime about reading novels during bus rides.

Pondering over.... Even after many replays of the incident in my mind I'm yet to figure out how I managed to get injuries in my right forearm and left knee at the same time.

Life after...

Everyone around is into his/her normal routine, the daily coding/managing job that these people have been doing for years now. But things look quite strange to me. There are no more the mails in my inbox asking for an answer or some job to be done. I don't know which work to do now and which ones to do later. I'm not even sure if I want to work now. Or should I just plug in my ear-phones and listen to some comforting music? May be I should read my old mails and see which ones I might require in the future. What can I do when I'm not even sure of how much more time I have in this cubicle? Well, that's life after putting-in the paper.

FMCG Ethics

In the first year of college I had a discussion with a friend as to whether a person, who believes in cigarette smoking being an evil, may or may not work for a company like ITC. My friend argued that ITC is not into cigarettes and that even the paper that we use to study comes from ITC's paper division. At that time I was somehow not convinced with his argument. But looking at this company's progress now, I am not ashamed to admit that I was wrong. ITC's concentration on the rural India is only going to help the country develop. ITC's e-choupal, the "Mera Gaon Mera Desh" contest for b-schools are all aimed at rural development. I am quite proud to see the company winning the Development Gateway Award for 2005, previously known as the Peterzberg Award. The award has recognised ITC's e-Choupal as "the most exemplary contribution in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT) during the last 10 years" (Source:Hindu Business line)
The topic of ethics in FMCG also takes me to another discussion. I was previously of the opinion that I should buy things made by Indian companies only. For example, I used to buy Parachute because it was manufactured by Marico (Though the name sounds western, it is actually just a derivative of the name of the founder - Mariawala. The company was formerly called "Bombay Oil Industries Ltd"), which is an Indian company. Now I see that the foreign firms not only employ locals in their plants, but also re-employ the profits earned back into the firm. So why not go for the products of these companies? Just because their major share holding is abroad? To my knowledge even we can invest in foreign financial markets. When the world is becoming a global town, entities like companies don't seem to belong to any single country.

While in school I was confused to read in a subject that Dr.S.Chandrasekhar is one of the few Indians to have won the Nobel prize, and to read Dr.Chandrasekhar's nationality to be American in a list of Nobel laureates. I'm still confused on the nationalities of quite a few including Kalpana Chawla, the Amrithraj cousins and Sunitha Rao.

My understanding was that, in cases like that of Dr.Chandrasekhar, their nationality is American as they switched to American citizenship, but India kept showing its linkage with them to gain some respect out of it. But I was surprised to see the US news channels broadcasting the loss of an Indian in the Columbia space shuttle.

The case of the sports people is even more confusing to me. Why should the guys born and brought-up in the U.S. play for India? Is it because of their attachment to India, or is it because of reasons similar to Rohan Gavaskar representing West Bengal in Ranji trophy?

If people are to represent their ancestral countries, then why do we see Indians in the cricket teams of all the newly playing countries?

All these thoughts resurfaced as I saw Sunitha Rao in the news regarding the Sunfeast open. Anyways, here is wishing Sania a wonderful Sunfeast open.

Every newspaper carries advertisements on them, and every shop has a hoarding mentioning them. I'm not sure if that is still the case, but "Monsoon Sale" used to be the most favourite topic around last month. With some crazy discounts going on, most of my friends spent their time at shopping malls. The reduced activity in the past few days could be due to the re-entry of the rain Gods, or maybe the sale itself is over.

 

The monsoon sale in the shops might have stopped, but the sale of firms is moving hot nowadays. After acquiring 41% stake in i-Flex a month back, Oracle is now buying-out Siebel Systems. And then, there is eBay planning to buy Skype Technologies. Not just these, most companies are giving statements that they are looking for takeover targets and have acquisitions in the pipeline. Seems everyone is having lots of idle cash in hand.

 

With these expansions, mergers, acquisitions etc going on, every one should be happy, right? May be not. Some of the IT majors have made open their plans to down-size (that would be "right-size" for the HR fellas) in their costly locations. HP is performing global restructuring by laying-off 5900 from its man power strength (http://www.hindu.com/2005/09/13/stories/2005091315971400.htm). According to ET (http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1227765.cms), Siemens might cut 10,000 jobs. On the other hand, MNCs are recruiting heavily in India. Effects of offshoring? May be. But I wouldn’t blame them as it is only in the nature of business to move towards better profitability. Considering the cost of operations in the west, man-power in India is available at “Monsoon Sale” ;)

I met a group of my batch-mates yesterday. The expectation was for the place to be filled with discussions about people's jobs. I was not entirely wrong, but was surely wrong to some extent.

In a group of 15 people seated by joining many tables together, I happened to get the center seat. Well, ok I didn't "get" the seat, but was pushed to it when the veg/non-veg split took place. But more importantly that gave me the opportunity to listen to the discussions on both sides of the table - left and right. It was quite a contrast. The guys to my right were discussing only about stocks and the share market. May be the fact that they were all finance majors working for equity research companies and banks tilted the scales too much into stocks. The friends to my left were chatting just like college students - about funny incidents and popular faces. This group was a good mix of IT professionals, bankers and consultants. The guy sitting opposite to me, also in the center, was a spectacle. A core marketing major who had not taken any finance subjects, he was trying hard to listen to the finance geeks to my right. In about 20 minutes he became the person from his firm with the highest financial knowledge.

Which side did I participate in? Actually, a bad throat made me a spectator for most of the time, but whenever I did speak, it was directed at the fun-based group. All-in-all it was pretty nice to meet quite a number of my friends. But as always the devil was at work in the idle mind and worked out the following stats

 

The finance group consisted of

a) 100% vegetarians

b) Mostly people doing equity research. Even the banker in the group was into ER.

c) People who didn't show any signs of changing jobs in the near future

 

The fun group consisted of

a) 62.5% non-vegetarians

b) 37.5% vegetarians all of whom happened to have taken finance major in college.

c) People from various backgrounds

d) Quite a few who were looking for better opportunities

 

So what do these stats indicate? Nothing except that there was an idle mind at work!!! But I sure wonder what is with vegetarians and finance.

 

The sad moment for me was when I got to know the bill amount paid by the birthday boy. After all, I'm next in line.

Elephant in the Dragon's Shadow

It's been a long time, isn't it? Yep, now that I know that I can live without blogging, let me live with it.
In the past week I've read quite a few news clips on Indian IT firms planning their entry into China. As China is expected to a major player in the IT scheme of things for the future, our companies are setting-up their development centers in China. Except for their English skills, the Chinese are as good as the Indians. I'm just wondering which of the countries would be cheaper, given that the main reason behind western companies sending their projects to the east is to save on costs.
Now that raises another doubt. If Indian IT majors see gains in setting their centers in China, then wouldn't the Chinese manufacturing firms also gain by setting their manufacturing plants in India? Or is China too cheap compared to India?
I know of one China-based MNC in India - Huawei. That's a telecom major that used to absorb lots of employees from the French telecom MNC that I used to work for. They used to pay twice the salary for the people shifting. I recently heard that they charge at one-half to one-third of their western counterparts. That should mean that the western companies are used to making a huge margin, isn't it?
Now what made me think about Huawei all of a sudden? This did http://www.business-standard.com/bsonline/storypage.php?&autono=199184
When the telecom ministry can run behind Intel to get it set-up its plant in India, then why not just accept Huawei's plans of investing $100 Million in the country? There is more to it than what meets the eye. So it seems from the Financial Times report http://news.ft.com/cms/s/417c28aa-17f4-11da-a14b-00000e2511c8.html that claims the India's security agencies' "reservations regarding [Huawei's] links with the Chinese military, their clandestine operations in Iraq, and close ties with the Pakistani army"
Going back to the topic I started with, will dragon and the elephant be direct friends, or will they only be common friends to the kangaroo and the 50 states?