jerrin elanjikal

The story of how Adam Smith created Bing

2014-01-16T15:24:00.000-08:00

Re-posting from Quora where this got a bit of attention.

Jerrin Elanjikal's answer to: Why is Microsoft hell-bent on spending so many resources on Bing?

To save the world. Yes, really! Let me explain.

Imagine a world with only one newspaper, only one TV news channel, only one brand of toothpaste, etc. Is that ok?

Now imagine a world with just one search engine for all your information? No alternatives, no second opinion. Is that ok? (hint Can Google Influence an Election?)

That's not the kind of world we want to live in. That's not the kind of world Microsoft wants to live in. So Microsoft decided to do something about it.

Sure, Microsoft is motivated by self-interest, because of something called the 'Supplier Hold-up problem' in economics.

Microsoft needs search/ML capabilities in Windows, Office, Xbox etc. If they had to buy it from Google, and there was no alternative, Google could charge whatever they liked and Microsoft would be forced to pay. (Remember the Apple-Google Maps showdown.)

So Microsoft has no choice but to build its own search engine.

That forces Google to keep getting better, which is good for all of us consumers.

More importantly it keeps Google honest, thus saving democracy and the free world and all that.

So there you have it - the Invisible hand in action.

Confrontation

2013-02-23T14:56:00.000-08:00

1996 was one of those years that changed the way I see the world. My cousin met with a serious car accident, regained consciousness after two months in intensive care and spent another year in rehab. I spent most of my summer with him in the rehab ward. And that’s where I met Khalid (name changed). He and two others shared the room with my cousin. Khalid was in his early twenties. A car accident had left him quadriplegic. For someone who had suffered such huge loss, Khalid was incredibly composed and pragmatic. One day we talked about his accident.

He used to work as a telecom support engineer. The job involved a lot of travel on the desert highway that connects Doha to the surrounding satellite townships. His colleague doubled up as the driver. Khalid noticed that the driver would occasionally doze off at the wheel during the long drive, usually just for a few seconds. He raised the issue with his colleague, but the problem continued. Khalid chose not to escalate the issue with their manager because that would have caused his colleague to lose his job. His colleague was killed in the accident. There was no bitterness or anger in his voice as he narrated the story. Khalid’s only regret was that if only he had escalated the issue, his colleague would still be alive.

There are times when being nice is not good. When there is a gap between what we expect should happen and what actually happens, a healthy confrontation is necessary to resolve the issue. The consequences of avoiding it can be serious. Unfortunately, most of us have never had the opportunity to acquire the skills required to effectively confront such difficult situations. Often we remain silent, or react in a way that does nothing to resolve the issue. This is why I am really excited about a new training program at work called Crucial Confrontations developed by Kerry Patterson and others. Here’s a brief summary of their approach to effective confrontation.

Before entering a confrontation, you first need to work on yourself. Ask yourself WHAT is the issue. Is it a ‘Content’ issue, something to do with what the other person did (or did not do)? Is it a ‘Pattern’ issue, something that repeatedly does (or does not do)? Or is it a ‘Relationship’ issue, where the pattern of behavior has become a threat to your relationship with the other person? Think of it as three levels – if this is the first time it’s a content issue, if it is a repeat issue it’s a pattern, if the other person is not willing to address the pattern it become a relationship issue. When you have a pattern or relationship issue, focusing on the content alone, as most of us often do, will not help. Then, you also need to ‘unbundle’ the issue. Often we confuse consequences with intention. It is necessary to identify if your issue is with the intention of what the other person did or with the consequence of what was done. And then you need to prioritize. Interpersonal issues are often complex. You need to identify which issue is most important for you to address.

Now that you have a clear idea of what the issue is, you need to decide IF you actually want to go ahead and have this confrontation with the other person. We often downplay the consequences of remaining silent or exaggerate the consequence of speaking up. We may fear retaliation, or be afraid that the other person will be hurt, or that the relationship will suffer if we speak up. In such situations it helps to consider the consequences of silence. What harm would remaining silent cause me, am I setting up the other person for greater failure by not speaking up now, will somebody else be harmed if I remain silent, will the relationship go from bad to worse if I remain silent, etc. Sure there are some rare situations where avoiding confrontation may be the best option. But in most scenarios, the best outcome can be reached only through constructive confrontation. Another mistake that we often make is to assume that we are helpless, to think that there is nothing I can do to change things. Or to unfairly put the entire blame on the other side (eg: It all started when he hit me back). And finally it is necessary to choose your battles. Some things can be ignored.

After having figured out WHAT the issue is and IF it should be confronted, you need to master your STORIES. This is where the concept of ‘Fundamental Attribution Error’ comes in. When we see a person do something, we tend to be biased towards believing that she is doing it because of some inherent quality in her, and discount environmental factors that may be causing the behavior. (Eg: He took two days to fix the bug because he is lazy.) As Patterson et al. put it – “The stories we tell help justify our worst behavior.” Tell the rest of the story. Why would a reasonable, rational, decent person do that? (Eg: He took two days to fix the bug because he was working on another higher priority bug.) Consider alternate explanations for what happened and do not jump to conclusions.

Now you are ready to move on to the actual confrontation. Relax. Focus on the process of having a constructive confrontation, nothing personal. First you need to find an appropriate private place where you can raise the issue. It’s usually not helpful to have a confrontation in public. Start by asking permission to raise the issue (Eg: There is something that is bothering me. Can we talk about it?) Then describe the gap – what the other person did vs. what you expected. Tentatively share your story – say what you think, but make it clear that it’s just your point of view. End with an honest question. The idea is to create a feeling of safety by establishing mutual respect and mutual purpose.

Iterate over this process of sharing your respective points of view and asking honest questions till you both understand and agree on what is causing the issue and how to resolve it. Use the ‘Six Sources of Influence’ model to understand the reason for the issue and also to find a way to resolve it. Patterson et al. classify the factors that influence behavior along two axes, Motivation/Ability and Individual/Social/Structural. In analyzing the issue, use this model to keep things objective and avoid cognitive biases like the Fundamental Attribution Error. In trying to find a solution to the issue, resist the temptation to use your power or charisma (if you have any) or provide rewards as a means to motivate the desired behavior. Instead, explain the natural consequences of the behavior that is at issue and you are more likely to have a genuine buy-in for change. Examine the barriers preventing the person from doing what he should be doing and figure out how they can be removed.

Stay focused and flexible. If a new problem emerges during the confrontation, you need to recurse. Ask yourself WHAT exactly the new issue is and IF you need to confront it now. If you do need to confront the new issue now, bookmark the current issue, address the new issue, then return to where you left off. If you do not wish to confront the new issue now, acknowledge it and reassure the other person that we will address it later.

If a sense of safety is at risk use a ‘contrasting statement’ to clarify your intent. (Eg: I DON’T mean to question your decision, I DO want to understand the thought process behind it.) Anger and silence are the main indicators that the other person does not feel safe. If necessary, step out of the conversation about the issue, rebuild mutual respect and mutual purpose to create a sense of safety, and then return to the issue once the other person feels safe.

And don’t let anything the other person does affect your emotional state. (Eg: Whatever the other person says, don’t get angry.) Focus on the process. At the end of it you should both understand and agree on what is causing the issue and how to resolve it. Create a plan – ‘Who’ will do ‘What’ by ‘When’. Decide of a schedule for follow-up to review if the issue is resolved.

Knowing the consequence of Khalid’s silence has not prevented me from remaining silent on more than one occasion when I should have spoken up. Confrontation is emotionally draining and often ineffective without the right skills. The ‘Crucial Confrontations’ process gives you a tool to effectively handle confrontation and achieve a constructive outcome. It is not going to make confrontation easy or fun, but it does make possible what might otherwise seem impossible to many of us. Being effective at it requires effort and practice. And as someone once said, you can’t learn to swim by reading a book about it.

The Tragic Gap

2012-06-18T01:18:00.000-07:00

After watching Inglorious Bastards the other day, it occurred to me that the movie was really about Landa. And that felt kind of disturbing. Because Landa did not hate, he didn't care much for the propaganda or the party or the race. He just did what it took to be successful in the system, to climb up the ladder, and eventually, to save his own ass.

And then I was watching Satyamev Jayate on YouTube. Its really encouraging to see Aamir tackle issues that we as a society would rather not talk about. Because the first step to fixing our problems is to acknowledge that they exist, to break the silence. And then strive for a better alternative that we know to be possible.

Which brings me to something I read recently, by the philosopher Parker Palmer, on what he calls the Tragic Gap:

By “the tragic gap” I mean the gap between what is and what could and should be, the gap between the reality of a given situation and an alternative reality we know to be possible because we have experienced it.

When I collapse into the reality of what is, I am likely to sink into corrosive cynicism: “Community is impossible, so I’m going to focus on getting my piece of the action and let the devil take the hindmost.”

When I collapse into pure possibility, I am likely to float off into irrelevant idealism: “Oh, how lovely it would be if….”

Corrosive cynicism and irrelevant idealism may sound as if they are poles apart, but they take us to the same place: out of the gap and out of the action, out of those places we might make a life-giving contribution if we knew how to hold the tension.

We don’t learn to hold tension in ways that open the heart by reading essays but by being around others who keep learning how to do it and invite us to try it for ourselves.

And that last part is especially important, as I've learned from some of the wonderful people I've known over the years.

Introducing Paloma Verde - the Green Dove

2012-06-12T00:25:00.000-07:00

60ml Silver Tequila

60ml Concentrated Green Tea Infusion (steep five green tea bags in 70 ml of hot water and let cool)

120ml Unsweetened White Grapefruit Juice

120ml Club Soda

Stirred well and served in a highball glass.

Paloma - tequila mixed with white grapefruit juice and club soda - is a more subtle cousin of the margarita. Paloma is Spanish for dove. And like Margarita, Paloma is also a female first name.

Add concentrated green tea infusion to a Paloma, and you get the 'green dove' - Paloma Verde - the world's healthiest cocktail!

And tastiest too, even I say so myself. The bitter-sweet citrus of grapefruit, astringency of green tea, the full-bodied flavor of silver (blanco) tequila, and just a subtle hint of fizz. A character that can at best be described as all-grown-up, for lack of a better word. Light, strong and deep. One really has to spend time with it her to understand.

Oh, and did I mention the looks! Translucent milky green, like absinthe with a tan. And hence the surname.

But beyond the looks, and the taste, what really matters is what's inside.

Grapefruit contains flavonoids that promote weight loss and improve insulin sensitivity.

Green tea is packed with a range of antioxidants. EGCG from green tea is shown to have numerous health benefits including weight loss. And it contains caffeine, which burns fat by increasing the metabolic rate.

As for tequila, studies have shown that moderate consumption of alcohol helps prevent type 2diabetes and heart disease.

All three key ingredients contribute to a healthy carbohydrate metabolism, which in turn translates to flat abs. She's good for you.

But a word of warning: One does find it hard to return to the old diet soda or sugary cocktail after a taste of this bitter-sweet beauty.

What's one thing you wish you had learned in school?

2011-11-30T12:31:00.000-08:00

Takeaways from What's one thing you wish you had learned in school?, in no particular order:

To think critically and independently, Philosophy.
Lateral Thinking
Practical experience in solving real life problems
Sex Ed - biological, social, moral aspects of sexuality; McCary's book, alternate sexuality.
The power of Symbol, to open the heart to wonder, compassion, and contemplation
Outdoor and Survival Skills
Human relations for everyday living,
To deal with one’s negative feelings - fear, envy and loneliness etc.
Emotional intelligence and people skills
Communication
Office Politics
Personal finance, Accounting
How to have difficult conversations. Productive conflict management.
Assertiveness
Influence & persuasion - Caldini
The attitude for learning, attitude towards failure - value of failure, learning thru failure.
Emotional robustness, resilience & coping skills , learning to fail
How different disciplines are intertwined and interconnected
How to cook
How to evaluate research
Dance, drama, music, arts
Speed reading
Lucid dreaming
How to apply and go through university
Understanding careers
Sports, games, and sportsmanship
Health, Fitness
How to network properly
Languages - Arabic, Spanish, whatever.
Active listening
Public speaking
Respect
Relaxing
A truer account of history - teach the script not the cast
Nonverbal and paraverbal communication
Exchange program, travel, broaden perspectives.
Learning to learn – effortful study.

Book Summary: Enchantment

2011-07-12T08:49:00.010-07:00

Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions is the latest book form marketing guru Guy Kawasaki. The book is dedicated to his family and opens with a quote from J.S. Bryan – ‘Many men can make a fortune but few can build a family.’ Enchantment enough to get me to read the book cover to cover in one go. And I’ll highly recommend it to anyone who wants a simple readable guide to better interpersonal relationships.

My favorite part of the book is chapter 11 – ‘How to Enchant Your Boss’ – something I’m sure many of us will find interesting. Your boss has a huge impact on your work life so it’s super important to get this relationship right. Guy’s boss enchantment how-to is about as pragmatic and direct as it can get:

1. Do whatever it takes to make your boss look good. Just make sure it’s legal and moral. Everything else is secondary. We all like people who make us look good.

2. When your boss asks you to do something, drop everything else and do it immediately. I think it’s sort of like with user interface design – responsiveness is the key to being perceived as efficient & effective.

3. Underpromise, Overdeliver. This was the first piece of career advice I ever got, back when I was an intern at Motorola.

4. Prototype. Creating a quick prototype and asking for feedback ensures that you actually deliver what your boss wanted. And it makes you look proactive.

5. Show and broadcast progress. Make sure your boss and everybody else knows what you are doing. This one is particularly hard for the less extrovert amongst us and it does take some effort to cross that psycological self-promotion hurdle. And of course, don’t antagonize others by overdoing it.

6. Make friends. Friendship has network effects. The more you have the more you get. It makes you more efficient because your friends will be happy to help you. It makes you look good. It makes your boss look good.

7. Ask for mentoring. Mentors and sponsors are not optional. If your boss can also be your mentor that would be great. Asking for mentorship shows you have ambition and that you respect the person you’re asking.

8. Deliver bad news early. But don’t stop there. Come up with ideas to fix the problem or mitigate the risk. Makes you look proactive and capable.

The way I see it, it’s like you are an entrepreneur marketing yourself and your boss is your customer. Aim for customer delight. Enchantment.

PS: If anyone knows who J. S. Bryan is, pls let me know. Google didn’t turn up much.

Click-n-Drag comics and the Art of Saying No

2011-03-15T07:23:00.002-07:00

Ever considered using comic strips to express your thoughts? That would be great, wouldn’t it? If only it wasn’t so hard. Well, it’s not hard anymore. Guess what, there’s this website called pixton.com that lets you create comic strips by dragging characters and props on to a canvass, sort of like a WYSIWYG designer for comics. Cool, isn’t it! For those of us who are artistically challenged, Pixton is like getting a pair of wings. (Forgive the Red Bull analogy. I’m too lazy to think of anything better now.) It feels amazingly empowering to be able to so easily do something that, until now, was beyond ones reach.

When I first heard about Pixton from some of my friends, I was a bit skeptical. You know, if it sounds too good to be true, and all that. But none the less, it seemed so neat an idea that I had to give it a try. I did. And then I became a fan. Here’s one of my first creations. This comic strip is inspired by something I heard over dinner some time back and based on a true story. Of course, I’ve taken some artistic liberties, couldn’t help it.

Beyond just the fun factor, I think Pixton has the potential to be a great business. One can imagine all sorts of uses – from designing posters to posting an interesting status update on Facebook. It’s amazingly easy to learn to use and so much fun that it’s not hard to imagine Pixton going viral. Wonder why it hasn’t already? Perhaps it might help if Facebook integration was more seamless. And once people get hooked to it, they’ll want to use it at work, say to storyboard a user experience scenario for a product design. And that’s how Pixton makes money, by charging for the commercial version.

Give it a try at pixton.com and find some interesting ways to say some interesting things. Post comic strips to Facebook. Take a printout and stick it at your desk. Make a witty greeting card. Make a point. Whatever.

Book Summary: Tearing Down The Myths of Innovation

2011-02-12T00:07:00.007-08:00

Since childhood, we’ve been force fed with false propaganda about creativity and innovation – Edison and his light bulb, Newton and the apple that fell on his head, Archimedes running naked through the streets of ancient Greece shouting Eureka. Now, imagine Pink Floyd playing in the background as Scott Berkun takes a sledgehammer at all that nonsense, starting with the myth of epiphany – the idea that innovation happens out of the blue if you just sit under an apple tree. That’s what The Myths of Innovation is all about.

The best part of the book, however, starts with the epilogue which ends with a brief description of the ‘simple plan’ for innovation – stop thinking/dreaming/reading and start doing something, focus on solving the problem instead of trying to innovate for its own sake, build trust and be willing to stick your neck out for the team, keep the team small, celebrate interesting mistakes and keep going. And then there are the ‘creative thinking hacks’ starting with the mantra that ‘an idea is a combination of other ideas’ and the need to loose inhibitions, find the right environment and stay committed. This is followed up with a crash course on how to pitch your idea. And finally a list of things to help you stay motivated – anger, desperation, pride, death, fun or a crazy friend.

Feels like God

2011-02-05T03:50:00.001-08:00

You know that feeling you get when you get a phone call from a close friend or relative that you haven’t talked to in a long time and they call to ask you for a favor. Sure you care about this person. You would gladly do the favor and more. But you just wish at the back of your mind that they would call up more often. Like when they don’t have a favor to ask. Just to check on how you are doing. Just because they thought about you and felt like taking. Just to let you know that they care.

And then you realize how often you have done the same thing. How often you don’t have the time or energy for your friends and family. Just to check on how they are doing. Just because you thought about them and felt like taking. Just to let them know that you care.

And then you realize that's what it must feel like to be God, to be Almighty and yet thirst.

Well, profound isn't it, the thoughts that a telephone can evoke. God certainly has a sense of humor!

Intimidating Awesomeness

2011-01-13T12:37:00.017-08:00

A few days back in the office, at about 9pm, the conversation goes something like this:

A: Hey, try to solve this. My friend was asked this in an interview. You have a stream of words coming in. How will you check, in constant time, if you have already received a particular word or an anagram of it?

Now, if you are wondering what’s with the title of this post, I suggest you stop here and try to solve this problem before reading further.

(Don’t look below.)

B: Hmm. (pause) Well. You could maintain a hash table. Hmm. So that reduces your question to what the hash function should be.
C: We could assign a numeric value to each character and add it up.
D: Yeah, but we’ll get a collision when letters repeat in a word.
C: (pause) Wait a minute. Why only add? Why not some other operation?
B: Like Multiply?
D: Prime numbers.
C: Yep, map each letter to one of the first 26 prime numbers and multiply them.
D: That should always give a unique number.
A: Correct answer!
E: (walks by) Dinner?

All in under a few minutes.

If this were a real tech interview, a successful candidate for a high-end product development job would be expected to solve (or come reasonably close to solving) this in around 20 minutes. Ok, granted we ganged up on the poor problem. But I can’t give you a real work example here, so this is all we have. And, more importantly, that fact that we ganged up on the problem does not explain everything. Yes, the folks I work with are smart, some of the best that money can hire. But then, from experience, I know that most other groups of equally smart people can not pull off something like this. I’d say that what you just saw there was more than the sum of our individual abilities.

Collective Intelligence, the measure of a small group’s problem solving ability, depends on more than the intellectual abilities of individual members. A recent study by Woolley et al. published in Science and appropriately titled “Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups” shows there is such a thing as a measurable collective intelligence. That it is not strongly correlated with the average or maximum individual intelligence of group members or the traditional soft factors like group cohesion, motivation, and satisfaction. And that it is correlated with the average social sensitivity of group members, the equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking, and the proportion of females in the group.

Social sensitivity was measured using the ‘reading the mind in the eyes’ test, where you are shown photos of the eye region and asked to choose which of two given words best describes what the person in the photo is thinking or feeling. It essentially tests your ability tune in to the other person’s mental state in order to understand or predict their behavior. What is otherwise called empathy, ‘social intelligence’ or ‘theory of mind’. Needless to say, groups of people with higher sores on this test did better when working as a team.

The proportion of females in the group was another factor. While Woolley et al. suggest that this could simply be because women in general score better on the social sensitivity scale; I’ll make a wild assed guess (WAG) and speculate that it has something to do with our neurobiological response to the opposite sex – something perhaps to do with oxytocin in the brain – that causes a gender diverse group to be more socially sensitive.

And not surprisingly, groups where a few people dominated the conversation were less collectively intelligent than those with a more equal distribution of conversational turn-taking. If you look at our sample above, the conversational turn-taking is striking with folks completing each other’s sentences towards the end. Sort of like what Hasson et al. describe as neural coupling, where communication is a single act resulting from brain wave synchronization across participants.

A smart team that scores high on social sensitivity will beat a team of individualistic superstars hands down any day. So, what can you do if your team is not exactly overflowing with social sensitivity? Fortunately, there are workarounds, like the improv technique for brainstorming that Scott Berkun describes in his classic project management reference Making Things Happen. Based on the principles of improvisational theater, this technique forces equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking in a constructive way and thus compensates for lack of natural social sensitivity. In fact, I’ll take another WAG and say that practicing improv could possibly improve social sensitivity skills.

How to cook the perfect microwave Maggi (instant ramen)

2010-10-26T07:30:00.001-07:00

If you love Maggi (or any other kind of instant ramen noodles) but hate cooking and cleaning, here is a simple method to cook instant ramen using a microwave oven with just one plate and no mess.

You’ll need a large ceramic dinner plate, a fork, a microwave oven, 2 cups of water and of course Maggi (or any other brand of instant noodles). Note: Using a plate instead of a bowl keeps the liquid from boiling over.
Break the Maggi cake along the fold, then break each piece into two.
Position the four pieces in the plate in a checkered pattern, an empty square region in the center flanked by one of the four pieces on each side. It is very important that you position the Maggi in this manner. It has to do with microwave physics. The penetration depth of microwaves into food is usually less than an inch.
Pour the taste maker into the empty square region in the middle of your plate.
Gently pour one cup of water over the taste-maker.
Microwave on full power for 3 minutes (I use a basic 800W model).
Remove the plate from the microwave. Turn the noodles over and spread it as thin as you can while maintaining the empty space in the middle.
Pour the second cup of water along the edge of the plate. The idea is the push the taste-maker away from the edge.
Now microwave for another 3 minutes. (Adjust the amount of water and the cooking time to suite your taste and microwave model.)
Remove from the microwave. Be careful, the plate will be hot. Use your fork to toss the noodles. Let cool for a minute.

That’s all there is to it. You now have perfect hassle free microwave Maggi.

Book Summary: Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose & Johnny Bunko

2010-09-08T12:06:00.003-07:00

Daniel Pink has pretty much won me over as a card carrying fan with all his talk about how we right-brained folks are going to rule the world. I’ve just finished reading his latest book called Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us and thought of writing a summary of the Autonomy-Mastery-Purpose model for future reference. But then, Pink’s talks on TED and RCA pretty much take care of that. So I’ll focus here on some of the little details that struck a chord with me.

In the section on Mastery, Pink talks about what he calls ‘the oxygen of the soul’- flow, that deep sense of engagement in a certain activity. In the early 70s, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi conducted a study where he asked participants to list down all the activities they do, not because they have to for some particular reason but, simply because they enjoy them. The things that lead to flow. And then he asked them to stop doing those things. Participants soon reported “an increased sluggishness about their behaviour” followed by headaches and difficulty concentrating. Some felt sleepy while others could not sleep at all. The study was stopped after just two days because it would have been dangerous to continue.

Csikszentmihalyi also found that people are much more likely to reach a state of flow in work than in leisure. The implication being that if a person’s work does not offer opportunities to do the things he enjoys, if he is deprived of flow, the consequences can be devastating. On the positive side, work that is enjoyable for its own sake can enrich a person’s life and lead to a sense of wellbeing. Such flow giving work is characterized by clear goals, immediate feedback and most importantly, the right level of challenge – not boringly easy, not frustratingly difficult. This kind of work is intrinsically motivating because flow leads to mastery.

This resonates with Pink’s career advice, to choose a job for fundamental reasons rather than for instrumental reasons. Fundamental reasons are those that are related to intrinsic motivation, to the desire for Autonomy, Mastery & Purpose. Does it give you the right level of autonomy that you feel comfortable with? Does it provide the right level of challenge - not boringly easy, not frustratingly difficult? Does it give you a sense of purpose – something larger than yourself or the organization? Instrumental reasons are those that are relate to extrinsic motivators. Does the job, for example, position you for a better opportunity at some later point? To be successful at work, it is necessary to choose a job or role for fundamental reasons and not for instrumental reasons.

And that brings us to Pink’s graphic novel called The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need, which I haven’t read yet. But from what I could gather from reviews, the key themes are:
1. There is no plan – It doesn’t help to plan your career based on instrumental reasons because that is bound to lead to mediocrity and discontent. Instead, when you do what you enjoy and feel passionate about, the resulting flow leads to mastery and achievement.
2. Think strengths, not weaknesses – Play to your strengths.
3. It's not about you – Don’t take things too personally.
4. Persistence trumps talent – It’s all about practice and hard work. Talent alone is never enough.
5. Make excellent mistakes – Something along the lines of fail early, fail often.
6. Leave an imprint – Impact!

The common thread throughout all this and what resonates most with me is how absolutely important it is to career sucess to seek out a role that lets you do what you enjoy and feel passionate about.

The Zen of Debugging

2010-06-02T12:08:00.008-07:00

There was this senior engineer who once used to sit in the cubicle next to mine. He had an anecdote pasted on the wall of his cubicle. His purpose in putting it there was to educate newbies like me. Thought I’d share the wisdom. Story goes like this.

General Motors once received a complaint from a customer who claimed that his new Pontiac was allergic to vanilla ice-cream. The customer wrote, “This is the second time I have written you, and I don't blame you for not answering me, because I kind of sounded crazy, but it is a fact that we have a tradition in our family of ice cream for dessert after dinner each night. But the kind of ice cream varies so, every night, after we've eaten the whole family votes on which kind of ice cream we should have and I drive down to the store to get it. It's also a fact that I recently purchased a new Pontiac and since then my trips to the store have created a problem. You see, every time I buy vanilla ice cream, when I start back from the store my car won't start. If I get any other kind of ice cream, the car starts just fine.” So GM sent an engineer from the product team to check it out.

The engineer was surprised to be greeted by a successful, obviously well-educated man in a fine neighbourhood. He had arranged to meet the man just after dinner time, so the two hopped into the car and drove to the ice cream store. It was vanilla ice cream that night and, sure enough, after they came back to the car, it wouldn't start. The engineer returned for three more nights. The first night, the man got chocolate. The car started. The second night, he got strawberry. The car started. The third night he ordered vanilla. The car again failed to start.

All the while the engineer was taking down all sorts of data - time of day, type of gas used, time spent at the store before restarting etc. He noticed a correlation - on the days when the customer bought vanilla ice-cream and the car failed to start, the time spent at the store was much less. So the engineer rephrased the problem – why is it that the car will not restarted within a short period of time after the engine is turned off?

Once the problem was defined in terms of restart interval, and not ice cream flavour, the experienced engineer immediately realized vapour lock was causing the issue. (The engineer later learned that Vanilla, being the most popular flavour, was in a separate case at the front of the store for quick pick up. All the other flavours were kept in the back of the store at a different counter where it took considerably longer to find the flavour and get checked out.)

So how did this engineer analyse the root cause of a seemingly impossible bug? To start with, he did not dismiss the issue as being impossible or the customer as being a jerk. He diligently took data without jumping to conclusions or offering a quick fix work around. He knew what parameters to look for. He saw a pattern in the data. Finally he defined the problem – restart interval. The rest was trivial.

Defining the problem, asking the right question, that is the key to problem solving, the Zen of Debugging.

PS: In my first year at work, I remember being in the office at about 3am trying to debug a particularly tricky issue that had been around for a week and was threatening to kill my maiden feature. That’s when I first noticed this anecdote pasted in my neighbours cubicle. It helped me to step back, relax, see the facts and rephrase the problem. The issue was fixed before sunrise. Hope others find this useful too.

Five years on

2009-07-11T09:01:00.006-07:00

Five years ago, on a rainy Friday afternoon, I was just coming out of an internet café in Thiruvella when the mobile rang. There had been no new mail in my inbox, so I wasn’t really expecting a phone call from Bangalore. The interesting thing about a CUSAT M.Tech is that you get to spend one full year doing research, either in academia or in industry. The dot-com gloom had lifted and after five years of classrooms, I couldn’t wait to get into a cubicle. So I answer the phone, wishing that it would be an interview invite.

The lady on the other end introduced herself as a HR person from Motorola. Asked if I could be in Bangalore by Monday. Motorola office, C.V. Raman Nagar. At nine in the morning. To join.

Wait…What! Join! No interview? I was confused, not sure if this was for real. Even after I got an email a few hours later with joining instructions, I wasn’t really convinced.

Sunday evening, I packed my trusty old travel bag and took a bus to Bangalore. Monday morning, Motorola office. Few of my classmates were already in the lobby. Sometime later, we got our joining letters. There was a collective sigh of relief. We were now officially in the corporate world. By lunch time, we were introduced to the hiring manager, who bought us lunch. And then we spent the rest of the day exploring the coffee machine.

That was my first day at work. It was a strange feeling. The thought of earning a salary. Of free coffee and urinals that flushed automatically. A feeling of having arrived and yet not having reached.

As I look back at the last five years, I can’t help but be grateful, for the opportunity to touch a million lives, for the excitement of a product release, for friendships that will last a lifetime, for hope and despair, for success and failure alike, for every single day of this exciting journey. Hallelujah!

The Brown Swan

2009-02-01T09:52:00.011-08:00

An Indian film wins 4 awards at the Golden Globe and then goes on to bag 10 Oscar nominations. It is not really an Indian production, such a thing has never happened before and most people out here hadn’t even heard of the film. Now that is what I call a perfect The Black Swan. No one saw it coming.

But then, how could it not be a hit. A R Rahman, Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy, Fox Searchlight, a feel-good film and the worst economic crisis in most people’s living memory. With the world going through such difficult economic times, a feel good film about money, about how it’s only the means and never an end in itself, that is just the kind of movie everyone so desperately wants to watch right now. So seemingly obvious in retrospect.

Slumdog Millionaire is about fate, attitude and human nature. It’s not really about India or its slums. It’s a lot like my other favorite feel-good movie – The Pursuit of Happyness starring Will Smith and based on the true story of Chris Gardner.

Slumdog is about the startling success of the underdog, a kid who never went to school winning millions on a Quiz Show where doctors, engineers and professors have failed. Now consider this. An independent production, a director whose last movie didn’t exactly do too well, a cast that is virtually unknown to international audiences goes on to win so many awards where major Indian cinema houses and superstars have failed. Notice the parallel.

In the movie, instead of admiring Jamal’s success at the quiz, the game show host suspects him of cheating. In real life, instead of admiring the success of the film as one would expect, many Indians criticized the film for supposedly maligning the image of an otherwise shining India by showing the slums. As a wise man once said, “As is the microcosm so is the macrocosm.” The same pattern repeats infinitely at every level of observation and as you look deeper you see infinite complexity, the picture of a fractal and chaos in all its ethereal beauty. Finally, enlightenment emerges from the fluttering wings of a butterfly. Or maybe not.

History in the making

2008-06-27T12:04:00.007-07:00

What would I do if a friend from school asked me to drop my career and join his startup? What would I do if I had a vision that I really believed in? Not just a great idea, but a vision of how the world would be 20 years from now. And the opportunity to be in the driver’s seat and make it happen. Do I leave everything and go after it? Or do I sigh and get back to my life and let somebody else grab the opportunity? I doubt if I’d have the courage to leave everything and follow a dream. But this man, and his friends, had the courage and conviction to act on a vision so far out that, at the time, even they could not imagine the enormity of it.

Yes, I’m talking about Bill Gates. Today is his last day as a full time employee of the company he founded. In an employee town hall a couple of hours back, he and Steve Ballmer talked about how they met and became friends. About the time the two of them went out to watch 'A Clockwork Orange'. How Bill convinced Steve to drop out of his MBA to join Microsoft. About how in spite of its size, Microsoft is a lean and agile company; and how they expect things to be down the road. And the foundation and the work it’s doing. But the most memorable moment would be the time when, towards the end of the brief talk, Steve became overwhelmed with emotion as he talked about his gratitude to Bill; and Bill who had managed to remain composed until then was seen wiping away tears.

The Monsoons

2008-06-24T09:00:00.007-07:00

For all it was hyped up to be, the Y2K bug turned out to be a damp squib. The world didn’t come to an end, computer everywhere didn’t crash and IT was going full steam ahead. But the turn of the millennium was jinxed anyway. Within a year, the dotcom bubble burst washing away billions in tech stocks and thousands of jobs. It was my 3rd year in college. That year, freshers wouldn’t touch a Computer Science degree with a flagpole. Students opted out of Comp Sc departments for of civil engineering, something unthinkable only a year back. Seats in the best Comp Sc programs were available to almost anyone with a decent score. Such opportunities come very rarely, and often at great cost. A lot of tech companies had put job offers on hold. Some withdrew offers and cut headcount. Some gain, some loose, nobody gets credit. By the time I graduated, the industry was beginning to show signs of improvement but I decided to play it safe and stay in university. Oddly enough, the competition for Masters Programs in CS was at an all time high because of all the people leaving, or not entering, the workforce. A year later, by 2004, the clouds had passed and hiring was again in full swing.

Everybody didn’t live happily ever after though, because that happens only in fairy tales. Early 2006, Motorola stocks started sliding down as earnings failed expectations. This week it is down to a five year low and I’m left with a few costly lesson in finance. Lesson one, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Try not to invest in the company you work for, infact avoid the sector entirely unless you know exactly what you are doing. Lesson two, don’t overlook brokerages and expenses because they can take away a good part of your investment. Three, learn from experience, particularly other peoples experience (Y2K anyone?). Four, low returns do not imply low risk. In 2005, MOT shares were expected to grow at 12% which is not much compared to the Sensex at that time. Instead, MOT share have since fallen by over 60%. Five, have a stop loss mechanism in place. Irrational optimism doesn’t pay any bills.

Meanwhile, we are somewhat back to where we started. It seems the US economic crisis might extend into 2009 dragging the rest of the world with it. Housing prices in the US have fallen 15% over the last one year. It is not entirely inconceivable that something similar might happen in India. On the employment front, it is the finance sector taking most of the cuts so far. Tech seems to be in fair weather. Except for MOT. And Symbian, because news has it that Nokia plans to buy the whole of Symbian and set it free. UIQ, which is now half owned by MOT, will also be joining Symbian at the Symbian Foundation. Not as romantic as it sounds. Free doesn’t pay any bills either.

The Monsoons are here. Its fun to watch the rain. Getting drenched may also be fun. Even catching a cold may not be so bad. But soon I'll miss the mangoes.

Church 2.0

2008-05-19T10:29:00.003-07:00

One afternoon some 7 years ago, I was casually going over the notice boards in the main building at MA College of Engg in Kothamangalam. It must have been my third year at MACE. My attention was drawn to a small notice about a mailing list on yahoogroups. So out of curiosity and a desire to know what going on in the community, I subscribed to IndianOrthodox@yahoogroups.com from the college internet centre. Over the years ICON, as it later came to be known, has grown to over 6000 members from around the world (including a few bishops and many priests) and matured into a forum for serious discussion.

In grad school (yes, at CUSAT we call them schools), I started playing around with social networks. The following year I got an invite to Orkut from one of my fellow trainees at Motorola, where I was doing a rather long internship. Someone had just started an Indian Orthodox community in Orkut and I too joined in, though I rarely went through any of the posts. Recently, somewhat to my surprise, the community crossed the 10,000 member mark to be one of the largest communities of its kind on any social networking site. Although there is no way to know for sure, the vast majority of members must be in their teens or twenties.

A couple of months back I moved to Hyderabad and it was the week before Pasha. The move happened a few weeks earlier than I had planned and in the rush of things I didn’t get the chance to ask anyone for the address of an Orthodox church in Hyderabad. So now I was in a city that I barely knew, I need to find a church and I didn’t have the faintest clue whom to ask. So I turned to the internet, which had over the years gone from mailing lists to Web 2.0 - clouds, SNS, wikis et al. I started with a search on Live which gave me a rough idea of what I was looking for. I grabbed whatever info I could find and switched over to Orkut where I found three Orthodox churches with full addresses and alternate names of localities, but unfortunately there was no data on service timings. So now I had the address of 3 churches in Hyderabad, I had to figure out which was nearest and how to get there. So I go to Wikimapia, zoom in to Hyderabad, and search for the street or locality of each of the three churches. A few minutes of zooming and panning later, I locate the nearest church on a map of Hyderabad superimposed on a composite high resolution satellite image of the city. Someone I will probably never know had taken the time and effort to locate and mark the small church on the outskirts if the city. I then do my bit by adding some more details to the wiki tag. I then take a print out of the map, mark the location with an X and hand it over to my cab driver. Next morning, I reach St. Mary’s Orthodox Church at Ramachandrapuram just in time for the Hosanna service.

Dark Brew

2008-04-11T09:06:00.004-07:00

The other day I was having breakfast with a colleague in the office cafeteria. The conversation went something like this:
Hey! What’s that you have there? (Pointing at my coffee)
Coffee. With chocolate. LOTS of chocolate.
Coffee and chocolate??? (Coffee and chocolate don't mix too well in the resident Indian psyche)
Really! It’s a great combination. (With that - you gotta try it - look)
Could you make me some of that? (Politically correct what!)
Yeah! Sure. Come on, I'll show you how it’s done.

So we walk over to the coffee machine and I go like:
3 sachets chocolate powder (150g)
2 sachets Bru instant 70-30 coffee-chicory mix (Pure instant coffee isn't as good)
2 sachets sugar substitute (Have to stay within the calorie quota - Sedentary Male, South Asian)
200ml hot milk
Mix well. There you go.

We return to breakfast. I half-jokingly tell him that I moved to Microsoft for the complimentary chocolate. But seriously, you can always judge an office by its cafeteria. I guess it was Napoleon who said that an army marches on its stomach. Things haven't changed all that much in the last 300 years.

Chicken soup for the job-hunter's soul

2008-03-28T07:23:00.019-07:00

Another long silence ends. Whoever said that silence speaks louder than words knew what he was talking about. Yes, I was busy. Busy attending interviews and making a career change.

As with most things that would keep one busy, this too was a learning experience. After close to four years of working on code that runs the most heavily used applications on hundreds of millions of handsets around world, I didn't expect to have much trouble answering a few technical interview questions. My first interview changed all that. It is a sad story so I’d rather not go into the details now. Maybe later.

It is said that a wise man is he who learns from the mistakes of others. So, for those who would be wise and learn from my mistakes, here is distilled wisdom.

1. First get your basics right. Read Programming Interviews Exposed.

2. I'm a big fan of CareerCup founder Gayle Laakmann. So I'll strongly recommend both her books - Cracking the Coding Interview and The Google Resume.

3. Read the C FAQ at http://c-faq.com/questions.html. And the C++ FAQs at http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite

4. Read the Gang of Four, or better still Head First Design Patterns for Design Patterns.

5. And some more advanced stuff on Operating System Concepts and Data Structures and Algorithms

6. Check out resources on the internet. Examples follow:

techinterview.org
cslibrary.stanford.edu
blog.mattgoyer.com/technical-interview-at-amazon-sde-and-microsoft-program-manager
ualberta.ca/CNS/RESEARCH/LinuxClusters/mem.html
www.datastructures.info
brpreiss.com/books/opus4/html/book.html
steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html
vishwacsena.blogspot.com/2008/03/program-manager-interviews-at-microsoft.html

7. Research pay scales at payscale.com or glassdoor.com so that you know what to expect if all goes well.

8. Research each company you plan to interview with. Get the big picture from Wikipedia. Then Google News for latest happenings; Google Finance, to see if they have the money to pay you. Visit the company website. Search careercup.com and glassdoor.com for previous interview questions asked at that company.

Do some introspection. Why are you doing this? First, is there a way to achieve the same goal without changing jobs? Which companies and roles can offer you want you want? Is what you want actually good for you in the long run or is it just a passing fancy? Talk to people - friends, mentors, family. Be clear about what all you want. No company or role can give you all that you wish for. Being clear about your priorities goes a long way in taking the right decision under pressure, when you have to decide between three good offers.

Invest some serious effort into your interview preparation. It is better to prepare 14x7 for a few weeks to get a job that you enjoy doing and pays well, than to work 14x7 for the next few years at something less satisfying.

Research shows that most interviewers take a decision in the first 30 seconds after they meet a candidate. And the deciding factors in those 30 seconds are speaking clearly and smiling, part of the PRESS technique (Posture straight, Relax, Eye contact, Speak clearly & Smile). The idea is to present yourself as confident and warm, the kind of person almost everyone wants to hire. Happy hunting!

A new penguin in the coffee bar

2007-12-01T05:33:00.000-08:00

The mobile devices grapevine has been abuzz with rumors about the Google phone for more than a few months now. And Google’s has shown serious interests in the mobile space over the last one year. So it wasn’t exactly a surprise when the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium that includes Google and Motorola, announced the Linux based Android platform for mobile devices a few weeks back. (Motorola is a pioneer in mobile Linux platforms and many of Motorola’s high end phones have Linux under the hood.)

Some critics have dismissed it as just another mobile Linux platform, which is technically true. The difference though is that it is backed by some of the biggest mobile manufactures, telecom operators and content providers. Which is more than one can say about any other mobile platform out there today. If Android does manage to establish itself, and I see no reason why it shouldn’t, we could expect to see some standardization in the mobile platforms space.

The catch though is that the penguin isn’t coming out of the coffee bar any time soon. Like Motorola’s Linux phones, the Android platform is also Linux-Java, which means that third party developers can only develop J2ME applications for Android. That’s right, no native Linux applications if you are a third party developer. It is ‘Open’ only to manufacturers and ODMs. That isn’t as bad as it sounds though. I expect Android to make up for it with a really cool JVM that can give third party apps the same performance, power and usability as any native app. When the first Android phone rolls out next year, the litmus test for the platform is going to be this – Will the lay user be able to distinguish between native Linux applications and third party Java apps designed for Android?

The Idea Salesman

2007-11-27T05:20:00.006-08:00

A recent issue of Knowledge@Wharton had a review of The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas by Wharton professors Richard Shell and Mario Moussa. The authors describe a simple 4-step approach to selling your ideas – 1.Survey the situation, 2.Confront Barriers, 3.Make your Pitch, 4.Follow-up on Commitments.

What attracted my attention and helped me relate to what the authors had to say was that these four steps are not very different from another (almost) 4-step process that I use everyday, the Software Development Lifecycle – Analyze, Design, Implement, and Maintain. The similarity seems to point to the possibility that, like building complex software, idea-selling or influence is an art that can be mastered by following a simple process.

The study, think, act, follow-up process is one of those abstract universal patterns. You can use this process to achieve just about any goal, provided you know the specifics of the particular goal that you wish to achieve. ‘The Art of Woo’ seems to get right to the specifics – the 6 channels, 5 barriers, 4 styles, 3 mistakes.

The first chapter of the book is available online. I'll have to wait till the next purchase cycle at the library to get a hardcopy though. Meanwhile, I came across this BW article - The Art of the Ask - that deals with the closely related topic of how to get people to put their money into your idea.

PS,Further reading:
Seven Hints for Selling Ideas

He he he, Namskara!

2007-11-23T05:34:00.000-08:00

I am in a meeting. Phone rings. Unknown number. I had just taken a new connection a couple of days back and the only my immediate family and friends knew the number. So I assume it must be important, excuse myself from the meeting room and answer the call. The voice on the line goes, "He he he, Namskara ..." Sounds like someone called the wrong number so I politely try to explain. But the voice on the line does not seem to care. That is when it occurred to me that it must be a recorded voice ad from my mobile operator.

After the meeting, I try to call up the customer care centre but all their executives are busy. So I try again and then again. But even after an almost a hundred attempts, all the customer care executives are still busy and I'm the only one having nothing better to do. That’s when I heard about the national do-not-call registry. After some searching, I finally find my mobile operator's do-not-call web page, filled it and click the submit button. That was two months ago.

I still get an average of three calls per day. If I don't answer it, they immediately follow up with an SMS. Very prompt. But then again, all is not as hopeless as it seems. I heard from a friend that he gets similar calls on his landline from a competing operator. Imagine dropping whatever you are doing and running to answer the phone only to discover that your mobile operator has a new ringtone for download. If that isn't bad enough, there is this other guy I talked to, and he actually got a call from one of those busy customer care executives offering to block unsolicited calls for only 99 rupees per month. Now that is the definition of the word - hopeless.

However, this experience has served to broaden my perspective. I now understand that people don't always think alike. My friends and I may not like receiving those calls. We may find it annoying. We may even consider it downright harassment. But there must also be more than one marketing executive and his manager who think that this is a great idea. Come to think of it, if it serves to broaden people’s perspectives, then certainly it must be a good thing. In fact, it is entirely possible that these telephone operators are trying hard to broaden people’s perspectives out of as sense of corporate social responsibility. And customers like me who have had their perspectives broadened should be thankful for that.

PS: Figured out a way to reach one of those busy customer care executives. Called the customer care number from my office phone. Talk about differentiated service!

Purpose

2007-11-12T07:14:00.001-08:00

It has been almost a month and a half since my last posting. It wasn't because I didn’t have anything to write. For a change, it was because I was actually busy with something else. Busy, jumping through hoops and totally stressed out. (But that is a different story and I hope to write about it some other time.)

So in the midst of all this, I asked myself the big question. Why? Why am I doing all this? Does it really matter in the end? What really is the purpose of this life? I was at my wits end and nearing burnout, so I was in an unusually religious frame of mind.

The answer was obvious - the purpose of this life is to do God's will. But then, what is God's will? I am yet to see any burning bushes. So how do I know what is God's will? What does God require of me? As it turns out, I was not the first person to ask this question. And so I did not have to search far and wide for the answer.

Someone had once asked Jesus a similar question, "What is the greatest commandment?" It was meant to be a trick question. But then again, being God, Jesus was pretty clear about what he wanted from people. Jesus answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and Love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

It is as simple as that. Love God, love yourself and love the people in your life. That is all that God requires. He doesn’t expect me to change the world, get a promotion every year, make a lot of money, achieve the impossible or any of those things. In the end, it only matters how well you scored on this love thing.

And somehow, knowing that made all the difference.

WiMax goes mobile!

2007-09-28T03:56:00.000-07:00

We were sitting on the terrace of our house in Bangalore engaged in some hostel room style debate on the city's infrastructure woes. It was three years ago, on a clear moonlight night with lots of mosquitoes. We were on the terrace because a of power outage in our part of the city. Hence the talk about infrastructure.

And then I suggested that instead of just building more roads and offices, the government should build Wireless Broadband networks so that people can work during the commute or from their home in some obscure village. This would significantly reduce the strain on urban infrastructure. I wasn't talking about private companies providing wireless broadband to the rich. This was about the government providing it as part of public infrastructure; like roads, bridges, buses, water and electricity. After all, India is supposed to be a socialist country. Naturally, my friends thought I was just trying to be funny or something.

Today, governments around the world are turning to WiMax to connect the unconnected. And Motorola has taken it to the next level with its live Mobile WiMax demo in Chicago as part of the WiMAX World show. Can't wait to get my own WiMax mobile, hopefully before the end of next year.