Dadsee ... you were indeed a religious man ...

It been about 3 months since my dear father - in - law Jerome Rodrigues passed away. He was really not well for the last year or so and had suffered a lot. I am so sure he is now in a happier place perhaps sitting on a beach (he loved Goa) in his shorts sipping a nice chilled beer (he loved his little drink) solving his sudoku or doing his crossword puzzle. We miss him..

Anyway the real point of this thought entry was his attitude towards religion. He was a devout Catholic, went to Church & attended Mass very regularly , prayed regularly and literally knew every word of the Bible but not once in my entire association with him did I ever hear him 'spout' or 'preach' religion.

I am a Zoroastrian who has married into a Catholic family but being of a different religion never came up in a discussion with him at any point of time. It was not only the spoken word but also in his actions towards me.

He spoke about values, honesty, family, not to encourage corruption but never really initiated a discussion about one's religion, Christianity or Zoroastrianism, their differences and whether one was better than the other. Sure we could discuss particulars about a certain religion but his general outlook never included the differentiation of people based on religion.

This I think defines being religious.. here was a man so deeply into his religion, have so much faith in his religion, living by the principals as defined by his religion but never imposing it on anyone else. He considered it his own personal belief and it did not go beyond that. Live and let live always seemed to be his advice.

We don't see this too often do we ... ? Someone so orthodox & conservative yet restricting the views & beliefs to oneself and not forcefully imposing it on others.... I think he truly understood what religion stands for and I wish there were more like him. The world would be such a peaceful place.

Dadsee, if I had a glass in my hand I would say "I miss you but Cheers to you ! & let the good times rock."

Is it recession or correction ?

This is based on my experience and knowledge of the field of Information Technology and Outsourcing and so my comments are based around that set of companies.

The economic meltdown is here, the nightmare has just started, tons of companies are shutting down left right & center, thousands are being laid off and many many more expected. The year 2009 does not look good for anyone & "global recession" is the latest buzz word. All of us have to 'hunker' down and try to survive.

But let us take a re look at a couple of issues that are taking place and that are defining the term 'economic melt down'

- The Banks are not lending money, there is a cash crunch
This means that companies will have to use their own money to run their routine business and not use credit for that. Well isn't this way a business is supposed to be run ? You get loans & credit for upcoming projects, you don't usually use loans to run a supposedly sustainable business do you ? Is this recession or correction ?

- The Banks / Investors will be tight fisted and it will require proper project projections and serious due diligence for money to be invested.

Strange, so what was the criteria thus so far ?...wasn't proper project projections & serious due diligence basic criteria to get funding anyway ? Is this recession or correction ?

- Salary raise will probably be a mere 5-10% as compared to 30-40% in 2008 ?

7-10% is a well tried and tested norm for business for so many years. Everyone in the industry knew long ago that 30-40% increase yearly for salary for never be sustainable... so why the outcry now ?

- There will be continuous lay offs
It was common knowledge that most large IT companies in India are over staffed. They have so many workers on bench all the time and projects have been overestimated just so that more engineers could be billed for. The clients were paying so no one was asking. Now the clients are cutting project sizes to realistic levels and hence realistic levels of man - power. The rest will get laid off. Once why the noise ? It was all well known.. and it just catching up.

- Salaries will be restructured
Now I am surprised this is even being attributed to the recession. Anyone who has anything to do with the IT field knew the salaries were sky high and many a time just ridiculous. Even if a person did not have the experience, nor the skill and really did not deserve it , they still got mammoth salaries just to retain them... do you really think this would be sustainable over the long run ??. Salaries are going to come down to what they were supposed to be !

So would this be termed as recession or a correction. ?

I think we are just coming back to reality, we are being forced to accept one of the very basics of money... "Cut your coat according to your cloth ". Companies will now downsize to what they realistically are, their valuations will be more realistic, they wont have bloated reserves and yet use money from the bank, team sizes and project estimates will be what they are really supposed to be, salaries will be based on expertise and experience and finally we will back to "living, working & conducting business within our means."

So who is accountable ?

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Disclaimer: This post does not target any specific parent, any specific child, any specific teacher and any specific school. We as parents and our teachers try thier best but we all know it happens !
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Today we hear so much "blah blah" about accountability and corporate governance in India. We hear so much about accountability or lack of it in our public services & utilities.

Oh how we love to talk about it so lets talk about 'accountability' and lets see how accountable we hold ourselves towards something that is closer to home..."our children"

When a child does well in school, all love to take responsibility and credit for it , the parents, the teachers ...... oh how proud we all are. (we should be !!)

Ok, now lets change the equation a little bit...'the child does not do well in school', ' the child is having trouble coping with school', ' the child is getting in trouble in school'................ what are the conventional reasons you will generally hear ?

If you ask the parents... it would possibly be
"Oh the teacher is horrible", "there is so much work to do", "they just keeping having tests", "they don't correct the work or bother to do anything for the child" & so on.

If you ask the teacher... it would possibly be
"the child is not up to the mark", "the parents don't bother & expect us to do everything". "there are so many children, I cant take care of everyone", "we don't control the syllabus and have to complete it in time", " how much more do you expect us to" & so on

I am not disputing the above reasons given my both us parents and the teachers, I am just stating them, I am no judge as to whether they are wrong or right.

So let me get this straight , if the child is facing trouble in school both the parents and teachers seem to have perfectly good reasons for it and they themselves never seem to be part of it in most cases........ so my question is who takes final responsibility for it, who takes final responsibility to set it right........the child ? Are we seriously expecting the child to set it right ? Is there no one else who should be held accountable ? (oops I used the word accountable ..!!)

Reasons, excuses, you can call it what you like, but the child is in trouble, you have brought up this child, you have educated this child, shouldn't we as parents & teachers hold oursleves accountable for that child ?

I was under the impression that when we decided to have a child , it was one of our obligations to be accountable for the child's well being in heart , mind and soul . !!

I was under the impression that when one chooses the vocation of a teacher, it is one's obligation to be accountable for the child's welfare in heart , mind and soul while in school !!

Parents & Teachers together are responsbile for the child. Accountability does not mean blaming someone else and then leaving it.....

We talk about accountability in governance of the country but are we holding ourselves accountable as parents and teachers ? Perhaps lets start from there first before pointing our fingers at others.

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Disclaimer: (Before I get into trouble). This post does not target any specific parent, any specific child, any specific teacher and any specific school. But we all know it happens !
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Mamma Mia!

I know this post really has nothing to do with computer security and being a managing director of a software development firm but what the hell.. this is a personal blog and hence this entry.

After quite some time I went for a movie in a theater and it was called Mamma Mia! It was directed by Phyllide Lloyd and had a cast which included Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth , Christine Baranski and several other very talented people. It is a musical about a girl who is trying to find out who her real dad is and and the all sound tracks are based on some of the greatest ABBA songs like "I had a dream", "Mamma Mia", "Dancing Queen" , " Money Money Money" and all those wonderful yester year songs.

I LOVED the movie ! Not only was it because the sound track was so so familiar but it was a refreshing change. It was worth paying for the tickets, worth getting out on a Sunday and even worth the popcorn.

I am not the kind who really enjoys movies that might have 'gooey' & ' mushy' elements but seeing this movie gave you a HAPPY FEELING about life. Not a great movie goer or movie critic but I think the cast & crew of the movie had a great time making the movie and that it turn reflects on the audience as well which had a great time seeing the movie. The audience including me were lapping up all the movie was giving, absorbing all the emotions happily. We laughed, we clicked our fingers and swayed with the music, we felt sentimental .... everyting all together.

The story line, the cast , the music , the settings everything was just right and after a very very long time I would take the trouble of seeing this movie again !

Pune IT engineers need rain to work ....need good mud too..

It is Thursday today.. lights usually go off, but we have battery backups to last us the day so not really anything out of the blue for us. I walk into office I see one of our ex-employees sitting at one of our workstations. It is strange to see her in our office during work hours.

Is everything OK ? I enquire ?... Yes Boss .. she says .. we were given the day off as we do not have lights & we were asked to go home.

So let me get this straight .. over 100 engineers of this specific company being asked to stop work today as there is no power, no battery back up power and no diesel to run the backup gensets either. On further query I find out to my surprise that several divisions of several other IT companies have also shut down today, resulting in 1000s of man hours of loss of work due to no diesel in their gensets... whats up with these IT companies ??? Huh ?? !! hello ?? is this happening in the IT super hub of Pune ? Large Buildings ... huge jobs, great salaries.. exponential growth, ISO / CMM certifications and ......... no lights, no fuel ..no work.. go home with full pay...... is this some sort of joke ??!! We are supposed to be an IT super - power ..

Aha !!, I think to myself, I thought agriculture depended on rains.. but it looks we need rains for our IT engineers too... ! ... and why do they need the rain ? .. well there is a shortage of diesel, apparently caused due to the excessive use of backup generators by our IT companies & malls...& why is there this excessive use of backup gensets ? .. well, there have been no lights.. & why have there been no lights..well, there have been no rains.

Hence conclusion IT engineers need rain to work ....& our emails to our clients will go something like this...

Dear So & So.
This is with regards to the work we are hoping to do for you tommorrow. As soon as we get into office tommorrow, we will look out of window, check the chances of rain and of course our value added services division will include a rain dance for free..should it happen to rain, we will complete your work..
Thanking you ....
CC. NASSCOM

I had to lay off some of my most loyal staff...

Well, our company is under going some serious corporate level restructuring and focus re-evaluation. In some cases this has involved cutting down of staff.

In this process, the most difficult part of the job (and it never gets easier) is giving staff their notice and asking them to leave. This becomes even more gut wrenching when it involves staff who have been loyal, good to the company and a great asset to the focus which unfortunately does not have any relevance now.

Yes, this is business and I have to make decisions so that it continues to run but times like this just do not seem to be fair for these employees.. they have been good for the company and they are being asked to leave for no fault of theirs. It is the company and the management who are responsible finally. Sure this is the "nature of business" but is it right to do this under the guise of "This is business and it is all about bottom line". ?

Just because they don't contribute to the bottom line currently, are they to be cast off as redundant.? We wouldn't have dared to lay them off when they were contributing to the bottom line earlier but we do it just the same today as such is "the nature of business". But is that correct or am I just getting emotional unnecessarily. ?

I know we have taken care of them as they have taken care of us. They have worked for us and we have paid them for the effort but we all know it is not as simple as that. As the years go by , you tend to treat them more as friends than as employees, you tend to bank on them more, you tend to take their advice more often, you involve them more and make them feel more than just employees and then suddenly one day you decide its time to "lay them off" as such is the "nature of business". I wonder "Is that right , it that correct ? "

People often say that you don't come to office to make friends or enemies , to trust people or not to trust people. You come to office to get your work done and go home leaving it all behind in the evening. Surely its not simple as that if you are with a organization for a couple of years. You make friends, your loyalty increases for the company, you not only work for the money but also for the company. You might even take on more work and extra duties with the belief that the company requires it and yet due to the demands of the so called "bottom line" and "corporate re-structuring" one day suddenly you are to be laid of. Is that correct ?

I am not saying that when I employed people , I guaranteed them employment for a life - time. They all know what they were getting into. They all signed a agreement which clearly stated that they would be given "1 months notice" in case of termination and sure I have given extra re numeration to several of them when I asked them to leave so that they can find another job without too much financial strain but my question still remains the same...

"I did what I had to do for the company bottom line and such is the nature of business but was it correct to do so ?"

The privalege not to make payments on time...

It has been about 15 years in the business of software development for me and yet I am still not able to fathom this basic question..

Why do most clients have the privilege not to pay in time while supplier/vendors are expected to deliver on time. ??

Now those in business will always say you must to a client audit and ensure that you do work only for clients who pay on time..ask for a 100% advance... C'mon give me a break, I am sure all of us have clients who still don't pay on time and we continue to service them in fear of loosing business.

Of course the excuses they give for not paying on time is even better like

"I made the payment but I don't know why the bank has not processed it"
"I will make the payment within 24 hours"
"My Accountant is out of station and the payment could not be processed"
"It will sent by the beginning of next week"

One of my best ones being 'silence' and no correspondence from the client at all, suddenly out of the blue his email has gone kaput or he is out of town. Oh, of course the much used excuse in recent times.. "I have not been paid so I cant pay you ..." ...... hey who gives a sh#@# whether you have been paid or not , we need to be paid, we also have a business to run.

As the grey hair increase on my head I look at these clients with disdain and a certain amount of disgust but have enough of a sense of humour to laugh at their pathetic excuses. They just use the vendors / suppliers money either to increase their cash flow or fund their so called business initiative. It is the vendor / supplier who should take credit for running his business. These "late payment as a strategy" clients just have no shame.. yes I know this is business but business is based on 'respect for money and who it is owed to & owned by'.

Of course to be fair we have also had clients who hired us for our programming services and have paid on time every time but they have been to few & far between. God Bless them :-). They ensure some credibility of this industry.

Compared to the state of payments for our programming services, I love it when customers buy our software product USB CopyNotify! instead, they have to pay in FULL for it before they can use the full version. What a feeling it is..being paid up front , on time for good work done. It makes all the effort worth it.