Nothing Special

Some people just do it. Wall Street Journal's prestigious Technology Innovations Awards are worth a glance - if you are anything like me, I bet you will not be able to resist excitement. From "Low Cost Gene Sequencing" to "Tool that helps software developers find and fix bugs when writing new programs", it is a hallmark of innovation: http://online.wsj.com/documents/TE-EINNOVATION1005.pdf

Guys, I've just moved and i'm still living off my bags at Vasa's place. Have a lot of very interesting stuff to write about - the old company, the moving experience, the first day, the group and ofcourse, Vasa. But suddenly I dont find enough time to write so much. Weekend is probably when I will get to it...

Wish there was a 'Find and Replace...' command that worked on actual people. Such a command would have a complicated implementation though. Would it be O(N)? Errr... maybe.

Anyway, as you already know, currently I am switching employers. I am going from one great company (www.uvp.com) to another (www.ebay.com). [What makes UVP great? That's the topic of next post...] .

At UVP, I have sort of a jack-of-all-trades role. Depending on who you ask, I'm a different person at UVP:
-some people know me as a rookie pair of hands who helps test our software,
-some people know me as someone who answers questions about our software,
-some people know me as someone who recommends and installs computers for sales people,
-some people know me as someone who tries to introduce new relevant technologies in our software,
-some people know me as someone who writes 200 page manuals,
-some people know me as someone who takes the final build to production,
-some people know me as someone who is a meeting-monger and keeps arguing on what is better and what is not,
-some people know me as someone who worked late-night and weekends doing strange things and
-some other people know me as a "program/product/project manager" who is responsible for overall success of the package.

Whatever it is that they know, now they will have to replace me. That makes me think how different it is to replace a project-management role than replacing a hard-core technical role. It's not any more easy or hard, it is just different.

In a project-management role, you are actually replacing a "personality", as opposed to someone who knows C++,Java. From within the group or even from outside, it's hard to refer to a project-manager as "someone who does project management", the way it is easier to say "the developer or coder".

Maybe it is only my conceited opinion, but I atleast know that is the approach of upper-management. A person who is answerable (project-manager) is associated with a "personality", rather than someone who tools and tinkers (developers). So in this case they would say "we need to replace Soham" - not just the name, but someone who will do what Soham did and more. Had I been a developer, they would say "Let's find someone who knows how to code". This is especially true for smaller setups where there is more visibility than usual. Looking at the other way, they would say "I want someone who can answer questions the way Soham did (or did not)", but would rarely say "I want someone who codes the same way as Soham did (or did not)"

Why? This is because the role of a general project-manager is not as well-defined as the role of a developer/coder. It's hard to see the bounds of that role and responsibility. More you do, the better it is. You then become an interface to Management for overall details. And management is concerned more about their interface with code than the code itself. Hence, they are dealing with a "person" all the time, rather than "code".

So when you interview candidates for positions such as these, it is far more important to figure out how they will gel with the group, instead of how well they can code. A few things I've found are :
-An energetic person with consummate communication skills will fare much better than someone who knows just the technical details.
-Someone who has the guts to cover up for the team and even for the boss sometimes, and take responsibilities is the type of person you need.
-Someone who understands the application space and believes in the power of technology to solve problems is the type of person you want.
-Someone who doesn't shy away from looking into gory details is the type of person that is required.
-Someone who understands that there is no authority he has over anybody or anything, and the only way he can get work done is by the power of facts and presentation of facts, is a best fit for the position.
-Someone who has the patience of repeating the obvious over and over again, is what you are looking for.

I can go on and on and I am sure you can too. It's a constraint satisfaction problem with a twist - different constraints have to be satisfied at different times. So anybody up for desiging an O(N) algorithm for this? :)

--
PS: I'm not undermining the coding/developing positions. I'm just highlighting the difference the way I see it from my limited experience and a hindsight that is 20/20.

I seem to have a lot of time on my hands, don't I ? Well, having "so much" time goes quite handy with doing SCSN. And what exactly is that ? Here goes the story:

Once upon a time in a beautiful place known as Ellendale, a group of friends got fed up with somebody's habits. This somebody had a habit of over-analysing things, asking too many questions, evaluating things when not asked for, poking into uncomfortable matters, and in general slowing others down by bringing up unnecessary complexity not called for. It took the friends a while to realize what was going on, more because it was actually hard to justify him doing such things (hard as they are) and even more because he was a friend after all - one among them.

So they finally decided to give this form of habit a formal name -sort of a middle way out, using which they could point out such behavior, jokingly serious if you will, as and when needed. Spontaneously one day, was born the phrase "Shu Che, Shu Nahi" (SCSN), which in Gujarati literally means "What is and What is not", a cool way of summarizing the traits I described earlier.

Slowly and surely enough, it did make me realize what I was up to. And I will always be thankful to them for that. Probably they didn't think I would, but I did try to change my behavior. Better late than never. It has not been easy, habits as they are. But surely it has been for better. And it has taken more than 2 years to feel the difference. (How I went about doing it is altogether a separate discussion, maybe sometime later).

I am not totally cured of it yet, but yes I am at a point I will never want to go back to what I was. And I like that.

Hence the name of this blog. It's a "sorry" to all who have "suffered" and "thanks" to all who wished I change. Maybe I am too late and I can't ctrl-z (sorry, Unix folks) what is already done, but (again) better late than never and I can probably change some of myself, which I have tried and will keep trying.

So keep such things coming. I may have some other traits which are not too useful and would love to hear about them. Doesn't mean I will start dancing to hip-hop any time soon, but you know what I mean... :)

I was at my cousin's last night and we were having dinner. From across the table, she asked me to pass yogurt to her. I took the can and handed it over. Immediately then I went back and buried my face in my plate.

A third pair of curious eyes on the table, sitting on my left, was watching all this. They noticed that I had forgotten something in this apparently tiny insignificant transaction. After just a few moments, this creature got up, took a spooon and passed it over to my cousin, to be used with the yogurt.

Nothing too unusual about this, except that this observant creature is hardly 2 years old. Her name is Ruhi and is my cousin's daughter.

They say it's all in the genes. And never becomes more evident than when watching a child grow up. It's not that I did not intend for my cousin to have a spoon, nor that I didn't know that a spoon is needed to take yogurt - just that I didn't care about it spontaneously enough. Some things come very naturally to some people and other things have to be learnt. What comes naturally and what has to be learnt seems less a matter of efforts, more a matter of how you are hardwired. Ruhi was never trained to hand out spoons to people. Never was she told to keep observing people and give things they need. (If it was anybody who was trained to do such things, it was me.) It all came to her - naturally.

This year, my sis worked with a class of birds called New Caledonian crows at Oxford. These crows are supposed to be more intelligent than other species of crows. They know how to use tools. They can take right sized twigs, and twist, turn and break them to retrieve things. They can do so even with totally unfamiliar material and even in captivity.

At Oxford labs, they did an experiment where they raised these crows totally indepndent of their parents - the researchers got the eggs from the nests in the jungle (or wherever) and artificially incubated them. Hence since birth, these crows have only been inside a couple of rooms, never having met their parents and never having seen what a natural habitat is. However, that has not had any impact on their tools-usage skills - they are as skillfull as their natural-habitat-grown counterparts. And that is stunning. Check out some amazing movie-clips at (http://users.ox.ac.uk/~kgroup/tools/tools_main.shtml.

There are many more examples we come across in our day to day life. But sometimes we still fight against things that don't come to us naturally, waste our time and energy and in the end produce sub-standard results. So much for the sake of pride, vanity and socializing.

So you know that I am looking for a room in Bay Area.

I've been looking at ads on Sulekha since past few days. And it's been a funny experience. I'd want to site some of the ads here which have impressed me for their ingenuity.

As you know, the way it works on Sulekha is that the main classifieds page only carries the title of the ad. Then you can click on the title to read the description. Title space is typically limited (about 200 chars), so you need to write something that is concise and inviting. While I fully appreciate the intense efforts by the posters, following are some of the funniest ones which I can't help sharing with you guys:


1) "Need A Indian Male/Female"

Sorry? Did I stumble upon a matrimonial site or what? :-)

2) "WaNT A COO PERSON FOR A COO PAD !"

Now that's a lot of COOing... If you look into the description, she wants someone under 30 :-)

3) "South Indian PG at Walnutcreek"

So do you need a PG or do you want a PG? or are you one yourself? Or is it some grand proclamation to the world I do not understand?

4) "S.J. Female roomie wants"

That's it - this is all the title says... er... may I ask what is it that she wants ? :-)


And the two of my favorites

1) "Looking for an INDIAN FEMALE ROOM"
2) "Female Accomodation needed"

Since when did rooms take on a gender personality? (Wo)Man, I should be careful!

With all due respect, did you notice that most of these ads are by/for females? :-)

Well, the poor me is still looking for a room. If you know of a decent guy who is wondering what to do with one empty room in a 2b/2b apartment, do send him my way!

Cheers...

What is a "roundabout"? First of all, how do you pronounce this word? American English, British English and Indian English - all have interesting variations, which get highlighted with this word. Try it out if you can... it's fun.

Anyway, a roundabout is the British version of a road intersection with traffic lights. A detailed description, with picture, is given here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout . Something like the 'Nehrunagar circle' or the 'Commerce cha-rasta', or 'darpan cha-rasta' for folks from Ahmedabad.

I encountered a LOT of those when I drove thru UK. We had rented a Ford Ghia van (sort of) and drove for about 600+ miles, all on left side of the road. Initially, I hated the idea of having so many roundabouts. They were very confusing. But as I got more "experienced" in driving around, I actually started to realize why they make more sense than having a regular intersection with traffic lights. This will probably not be very relevant to many of you who have not driven around them, but just in case you are curious, here is why I think they are a really good idea:

1) It is hard to create and maintain traffic lights for intersections where more than 4 roads meet. A roundabout is not restricted to that - you can have many more roads meet. That gives much better interconnectivity of roads in the city.

2) If you arrive at a roundabout and don't know where you want to go next, you can keep driving around the roundabout and read all the posted signs thoroughly before taking a decision on where to go. This is a boon when you are cluless about roads (like I was in UK without a GPS). On an intersection with traffic lights, you must decide immediately and go with the chosen road.

3) At a traffic light, you must stop when you see the light turning red, regardless of the volume of traffic in either direction. On a roundabout however, you do not need to stop if there is no traffic coming from your right side. No waiting is good.

4) You save a bunch of money on electricity for traffic lights, you don't need a traffic-policeman and you can plant some trees and create fountains inside the circlular area!

Anyway, so much for the roundabouts... I havn't seen any in Los Angeles. Have you seen them around elsewhere in US? They say there are just too many roundabouts in Netherlands...

And what exactly does that mean to you?

Ever heard the phrase "Please walk your bike"? Well, this is UK equivalent to that. It's really funny. Cracked me up the first time I read it outside the Zoology department in Oxford last week.

The trip to UK was fantastic. It's a very charming place. Spent 6 odd days there. Just back yesterday.

Got a glimpse of some deep-rooted traits of the culture. Just like the example above. It might as well have said "By order of the Queen the petty cyclicst is hereby ordered to dismount from her/his bike!". Makes no difference.

It's a part socialist, part capitalist mindset. "Properiety" seems to be the keyword. Cars in a lane keep driving in a lane with minimum criss-cross unlike in California. Formal attires abound. People speak complete sentences whenever they ask a question or give an answer. They are proud of their history and like to think of UK as a "big place". Really different it is.

Stuti graduated with Masters in Integrative Biosciences. We (me, mom and dad) witnessed her graduation ceremony at Oxford. It was a great experience and very interesting to say the least.

They say it is not a degree ceremony, but it's a process of getting admitted to the elite club of members of the Oxford graduates. For the past 800 odd years, they have been doing the ceremony at a single place, called the Sheldonian Theatre. (http://www.sheldon.ox.ac.uk/). And they have tried the very best to uphold the historical legacy of the process and the events. The entire ceremony is in Latin. It starts with convocation of candidates with Degree in "Divinity", followed by Doctors of Law, Doctors of Medicine, Doctors of Philosophy, Masters and Bachelors in that order. Deans of various colleges come forward and advocate the inclusion of the candidates to the club, to the Vice Chancellor, who then asks the proctors to take a vote (symbolically) and then asks the candidate to swear that he/she will uphold the rules, sanctity and legacy of the club. Entire dialogue is in Latin. "Do Fidem" ("I swear") is the only thing the candidate has/gets to say. Then the candidates go out of the theatre, dawn the robes, and come back to a loud applause.

The ceremony happens almost every weekend in this Trimester (yes, it's neither a semester, nor a quarter). You just pick the date most convenient to you. There were 150 students in the one we attended.

And what about the degree certificate? Well, Oxford believes that Degree certificate is just a formality. So you can get as many of them as you like just the way you get your transcripts. It gets reduced to just a piece of paper after you have gone thru the arduous coursework of so many years.

Also got my H1B visa stamped at London. It was actually easier than doing it at Bombay. It was more organized, staff was more friendly, papers were being checked more thoroughly and people in general were being given more time to explain things. The thing that sucked was they did not let you have your passport the same day - they would want to courier it, without exception to anyone. Wastes time and resources.

Visited Cambridge as well. My current employer (www.uvp.com) has offices in Cambridge. Talked about our software and met some very interesting Dutch folks. Did you know that average height in Netherlands is 6.3 ft? Bizaare.

For what was left, we packed Stuti's stuff. She had amassed about 120Kg of things in just one year! She carried about 40 with her (from UK, you are only allowed 20 in the main luggage. Carry-on extra. The person at check-in counter allowed her some more...). Mom and Dad carried some 65 KG with them. For the rest, we literally had to buy one more bag, which I got with me here. Now it will remain with me until she comes to US! :-)

All in all, I really liked the place. Have any of you beek to Europe before for an appreciable period of time? What do you think about it? I really want to backpack thru it for a few weeks. Anybody up for it?

Well, that's a lot said for the first blog. I should now go to bed - I'm still on UK time. The land of -shires and -hams and -tons will haunt me in my dreams for a few more hours. I also got a book "Notes from a small island" by Bill Bryson, who talks about his life in UK in a really funny way. Looking forward to flipping pages while the fan in my room pulls the cool breeze from outside in....

So I thought I should blog too. (relatd to this, there's a great Gujarati Haiku I recall at the moment, but don't have the patiene to fiddle with gujju fonts for now... sometime later maybe).

So here is my first post. I hope someone reads it and maybe comments on it, which will probably keep me interested more.