Category: Technology

Narayana Murthy, an ex-confused-Leftist

In a pre-commencement lecture at New York University, Narayanamurthy, Chairman of Infosys, gave a speech. In the beginning of his speech, he said this:

“After some thought, I have decided to share with you some of my life lessons. I learned these lessons in the context of my early career struggles, a life lived under the influence of sometimes unplanned events which were the crucibles that tempered my character and reshaped my future.”

Then he continues to tell the real story of how an iron-clad Communist country treated him in prison without food or water for over 72 hours over a mere speculation and how he was released because he is an Indian. Ah! So we are not surprised at a dictatorial Communist country treating him that way, but then he goes on to tell, “I always thank the Bulgarian guards for transforming me from a confused Leftist into a determined, compassionate capitalist! Inevitably, this sequence of events led to the eventual founding of Infosys in 1981.”

A “confused Leftist” to a “compassionate Capitalist”. Read the quoted words. This speech of Murthy makes me think about my state of politics. For my “compassionate” politics which I would classify “Leftist” does not include Communists but Humanists. Or far away from the humanism that Communists talk about. And I wonder how the dictatorial Communist government of Bulgaria made this Leftist a Capitalist. And I wonder if he’s ever been a Leftist at all.

All my friends and acquaintances who work in Infosys tells me one thing. That their pay is not good enough to compare even to the start-up IT companies and their work schedule is hectic. Their work-life balance is terrible. Most of them work in Infosys for a brand name in their CVs and then bargain to get good positions in other companies so that they can keep a work-life balance and earn more than what they earn in Infy (Infy is now working to get the old Infians back in their fold). Infy – the company founded by this “ex-Leftist” and “now-compassionate-Capitalist” Mr. Narayana Murthy.

So what exactly did he mean by the term “Compassionate Capitalist”? That he found out the fruits of outsourcing business much earlier than other companies and built up a business empire? And obviously this hotshot market would create a lot of jobs so that he could bask in the glory of providing employment? That he was compassionate to build a brand name and get people to work for cheap because the out-of-the-campus freshers would like a brand name in their CVs, so they would sweat their blood out for a company founded by a “compassionate capitalist”?

You know what? I like the way this whole story was told by Narayana Murthy. He crafted that train journey story in a way that people would find it easy to connect with that of Mahatma Gandhi in his early days. No wonder how Murthy places himself as an icon of the youth of India – until they work in Infosys.

Crowdsourcing – The loot side

Happened to read this article titled “Why Designers Hate Crowdsourcing” in Forbes.com when a friend gave me the link and asked for the thoughts on the subject. I could totally relate to everything said in the article as I have worked in these online market places for a long time.

I think this is the bad side of Crowdsourcing. People take up someone else’s work and leave them empty handed. The problem is with both buyers and sellers in these online market places. And these online market places are more buyer friendly.

Very often, almost all buyers demand to see a mock-up of the design that you propose BEFORE awarding you the project. Okay, perhaps one mock-up is fine to showcase what you are capable of but many of them wants to see two or more mock-ups from each seller (consider the fact that there are thousands of online sellers – freelancers / companies – waiting to get a project in these websites). Then they request revisions to these mock-ups (you can’t resist the revisions when you see a message from the buyer saying, “I like what you have done in the initial version. You are in my top 2 shortlist and we are almost getting there.“). Even after all these are done, you would see that your work proposal was rejected. Sometimes the project is awarded to someone else, sometimes it is awarded to none and the buyer gets away with it. Even if the project IS awarded to someone, you would see that his/her bidding amount was less than your proposed amount. And your hours of work would be gone without any reward.

What would have happened is this – the buyer asks for mock-up from all those who have placed a bid on the project. Here he gets a lot of options – from people of all skill levels. He combines the best and takes it to someone who can do a copy of the design he chose for a much cheaper price. The way I realized this is when a buyer asked me if I could design something like a mock-up he had shown that some other seller had designed for him (I rejected the offer by the way, as this very act was well enough to question the business ethics of that man and there is a fair chance of me not getting paid for my work. Plus, it insults my capability of doing a design myself).

The websites which act as the middle men can do so much to change this. They could set a minimal price for mock-up. Or say, you could see the portfolio of the sellers first to see what they are capable of (verifying that the showcased projects are indeed done by that individual/company is not too much of a task – just some Google searches or a couple of emailing would do) and award the project only if you like their work portfolio. And then you can ask for mock-ups after you set the milestones of a project. That way you can stop at any milestone point of the work and your money for the project is not wasted even if something goes wrong. But these websites do not do any of that.

Some websites do have a dispute option (but that is NOT applicable to such mock-up games but only for the time after awarding a project), but when you initiate a dispute between you and the buyer, both accounts would freeze until the dispute is over! If you are a freelancer and depends on it for a living, this is something you wouldn’t prefer and you would ignore your loss and begin hunting for the new work. And even if you proceed with the dispute,  most likely the buyer’s account would be set free in a few days. Yours, locked up for a long time.

But many new comers who want to get started with their career in freelancing falls for providing mock-ups in the hope of bagging a project. And some are even ready to do the entire project for NO MONEY at all! Some bid for a cheap price that not even an individual who lives upon his work can’t even think of. And as far as India is concerned, all western buyers know the Rupee-Dollar difference and that they can always get quality work for a lot more cheaper price. So even if you convince a buyer of your skill set, and then ask for a rise in the pay, the chances are high of him discarding you and finding someone else with the same caliber for a much cheaper hourly rate or for the same hourly rate. You know this too, so you wouldn’t take the risk unless you find someone else who is ready to pay you a higher hourly rate until that buyer finds out someone who works for a lesser hourly rate. 🙂 This applies not only to the online market places, but to individual clients we meet over the Internet as well. So your aim should be to find newer clients or an alternate client in the backup so that even if you lose one client, you have another to survive.

All of these projects in these online market places are of small businesses (though there are projects worth thousands of dollars posted everyday in these websites – I hope someone would someday come up with a statistical data of the money that flows in these websites everyday and the money that these websites earn everyday in terms of commission) and big companies like Apple or Microsoft or even the 2,3,4 tier professional companies would not use these sites for projects for various professional reasons. So this looting goes unnoticed by the mainstream media.

When we read the story of “contest” in 99designs, we could end up saying, “but hey, some of those people knew that their designs might not be making to the list“, but it is still looting. Looting your creativity, your time and your skills.

Meet Masarat Daud

I have a thing against the Burqa. I think that thing represents a system of oppression designed by religion and men. Burqa, in my mind, has always remained to be a symbol of oppression, no matter how much those religious folks try to justify it by calling it a way of “protection”. So I was slightly amused when this Burqa-clad woman followed me on Twitter and had a look at her profile and there she is – A Burqa-clad woman who is fighting the very same thing that I think Burqas represent – Oppression.

Meet Masarat Daud, who is working to set girls of our rural areas free from oppression using education as a tool and bringing an event like TEDx to India’s villages, even with fighting the religious orthodoxy. Masrat runs an educational program called 8 Day Academy. She is changing the face of education in rural India through her work and is responsible for hundreds of girls getting the opportunity to attend schools. Since February 2009, Masarat has held three sessions of 8-Day Academy in her hometown Fatehpur, Rajasthan, training teachers and students from a local school in Computers and in Public Speaking & Communication skills. After eight days of Computers training, the team was able to use MS Word, MS Paint and know the theory of computing. All this by people who had never seen a computer before!

And then she brought TEDx to Shekhavati and you can read/listen more about her exciting and inspiring stories here and here . Also see her TEDx Shekhavati speech below:

Friendship 2.0

1

[Email Alert] Hi, add me as your friend.

[Message] Do I know you?

[Reply] No! Who are you and how did you get my email ID?!

[Message] You just added me as a friend in Orkut.

[Reply] That must be by mistake. But what the hell, let us be friends!

[Message] But we don’t know each other.

[Reply] So what? Let us be friends and get to know each other.

[Message] But I would want to know you first before making friendship!

[Reply] Okay, bye then.

2

[Email Alert] Hi, add me as your friend.

[Message] Do I know you?

[Reply] No, do you know me?!

[Message] No.

[Reply] Let us be friends then.

[Message] But we don’t know each other!

[Reply] You’re so rude! Why don’t you just accept my friendship?

………..

Wolfram Alpa – Redefining Search

wolfram-alpha

A new search engine, which they call Computational Knowledge Engine, is going to be launched tomorrow evening. Wolfram Alpha, built by mathematician Stephen Wolfram, will give you a single definitive answer for your queries instead of pointing you to a page of results with links which may or may not give you what you were looking for. Their demo looks very promising and I feel that it could give Google a challenge to re-define their search to include such a cool way of searching things. Although the Internet has talks about it that it will be a threat to Google, Mr. Wolfram doesn’t want to encourage such hype.

“I am not keen on the hype,” said Mr. Wolfram, a well-known scientist and entrepreneur and the founder of Wolfram Research, a company in Champaign, Ill., that has been quietly developing WolframAlpha.

Mr. Wolfram’s service does not search through Web pages, and it will not help with movie times or camera shopping. Instead it computes the answers to queries using enormous collections of data the company has amassed. It can quickly spit out facts like the average body mass index of a 40-year-old male, whether the Eiffel Tower is taller than Seattle’s Space Needle, and whether it is high tide in Miami right now. [Newyork Times: New Search Tool Aims at Answering Tough Queries, but Not at Taking on Google ]

Go ahead, check out their demo, blog and wait for the grand release which will be broadcasted live.

(Thanks to KK for the info)

Freelancing – A tip

Freelancing Tips and TricksWhen the recession hits you badly, outsourcing/freelancing is one way to rescue yourself. Recession can hit freelancing too, but there is no better time for small-scale freelancing as there are more projects being outsourced to India during this time. Even though there are projects being pumped this way, the pay has become too low because of the cheap bidding by service providers. This low-standard way of bidding has made it almost impossible for quality service providers to survive in the business.

The websites like Scriptlance or Elance offer projects on a bidding basis. It is not an easy task to learn the effective bidding tips and tricks, but once you get hold of it, it is a good way to make money. But never leave the place after you build a good reputation and earn some good feedback, even if you get jobs/clients outside these websites which would need your full time attention. Say for example, you get a client who pays you some good money but needs you during your whole available time. It is very likely that you will accept the offer and stop working at the websites from where you used to get freelance projects. But after a certain period of time, your contract with your private client ends and you have to get back to the freelancing websites. The time line of your absence of activity in the website could be long. Say, two or three years. During this time, there could be new service providers in these websites who have more feedback than you. You comes back, only to realize that you have been pushed to the backseat.

Worse, when you bid on new projects, the clients would suspect that you have either been disputed at the website, or you are not capable as much that you did not receive any projects during this time frame. You may try explaining to them, but most of them are not going to believe it until someone else awards you a latest project. So it becomes a nightmare for your freelance ambitions.

So what I would suggest for those online service providers is that you should not stop continuing your business activity in freelance websites even after you get a good private client. You should keep working out there so that it will help you during the troubled times. i.e. when you suddenly run out of clients. I learned it the hard way. 🙂

(Image source: Internet)

Fog Creek’s Office

If you had thought Google’s is the best work place ever, check out the office space of Fog Creek (yes, the photo given above shows their coffee bar). It will make you drool. Joel Spolsky, the founder of Fog Creek says this in his blog: “Fog Creek Software, a New York company that proves that you can treat programmers well and still be highly profitable. Programmers get private offices, free lunch, and work 40 hours a week. Customers only pay for software if they’re delighted.”

Sounds cool? Now check out Joel’s blog to read about the features of his new office space and to see some pictures. You can also check out their Picasa photo stream here.

(Thanks to Nikhil for the link)

BarCamp Kerala 3


BarCamp Kerala‘s 3rd chapter is to happen on December 7, 2008 at CUSAT Campus, Kochi (Exact location and maps will be up in the website soon). The organizers say that the exact time will be announced later. Go to their website to register and check out the list of attendees and sessions. A colleague of mine, Praseed Pai, will be taking a session on Programming Paradigms.

(Image courtesy: BarCampKerala.org)