Recollection of three incidents... one triggering the next :)

(1) - Better change to IT industry sir...

I had to rush to attend a talk. I crossed the road and wave at a couple of auto rickshaws before this auto driver stops. He seemed to know the particular auditorium and I hopped into it. The auto snaked it way through the Bangalore city traffic encountering traffic signals every now and then. In one such long red-signal, the driver started talking to me.

Are you basically from Karnataka sir?
- nopes, not really. I am from Tamil Nadu.
Oh, then you speak better kannada...good.
- actually I have lived here for close to five years.
hmmm, so what do you work on sir?
- well, I am an engineer, working on electronics.
oh, is it. My son also got into Bharat Electronics and will be into software. Why dont you also try to change into IT sir?
- why so?
If you are ten years experienced in SW, you can earn little less than a lakh rupees per month. You cannot be in any other industry
- hmmm yes, you are true, but I like it.
Its not what you like sir, its which work gets you the max money.
- ok sir, I will try.

I get down and pay the fare. Walking back from the auditorium after the talk, I was pondering on what the auto driver was telling couple of hours ago, that I remembered my communicator chat conversations with a freshman @ HCL and he was in fact asking me some difficult questions

(2) Pay, Onsite, Offers...

That I am into this electronics HW field now, what should I learn on?
- Its mostly applying what you have studied in college, you have to go understand the higher perspective on the go...
Oh, fine fine, can you suggest me any books?
- Read the 'High Speed - Black Magic' book. (In fact many of us have kept the book down after reading few pages).
Tell me which field in better - HW, Firmware or software applications?
- In terms of ?
In terms of pay, onsite and of course job opportunities.
- All are good.
You are in this field for six years, how much do you earn?
(I close the communicator chat - In fact my father asked me this only once in all this six years)

(3) Return paths can be anyway,

My hands feel the thick engravings of a fresh one-hundred rupee note. With a ruffling sound, I take the note from my wallet and paid my dinner bill. Smiling at Gandhi back, I was forced to recollect this young man with a smiling face whom I interviewed. It was my first experience of interviewing people for electronics HW job. The whole day, I was meeting people mostly from the power electronics background, a field that I had no hands-on experience. I was literally tired after 3-4 hours of this. Lastly came this resume came and came this guy. He was one year elder to me working in Bangalore for a French company. He was good in explaining the projects. Good.
Then came the time when I saw some specific eda tool in his resume which he claimed he knew. Probing a little in I figured out he has not worked in the tool at all...ok fine, he might have been good in analysing the results. So one final question on high-speed current return path and the reply left me completely aghast. I felt like kicking that guy. Politely I had to reject this candidate.

By first incident, I was surprised by the extent of brainwashing that IT has done to the society. By the second incident, I felt how much our system of education has trained people to focus on money alone. The third incident I felt how much our IT and education system combined has left people totally waste.

We all want to earn a better living and never yearn for one !!!

A dangerous face lurking in the dark...

These days almost every other person you meet has a mail-id. Some people muse that internet gave addresses to millions who do not have a proper snail-mail address. Most of the mail-id owners these days have a networking site profile that says something about themselves, their hobbies, their likes and many more. The idea behind these personalized profiles is to help like minded people network. These profiles also aid in knowing more about the individual/owner but behold: there is always a dangerous face (an ugly face perhaps) that lurks behind these profiles.

Sakshi was pursuing her masters in industrial relations when she got a marriage proposal from a well known family. The guy held a masters degree in engineering and was working for a small firmware company abroad. Sakshi had a fine liking to arts and was adept in painting and playing the keyboard. She saw the guy’s profile and gathered that he played the flute and many more. While meeting in person, he too accepted that he played flute occasionally. Few months after marriage what Sakshi experienced was hell; I mean she experienced the truth. The guy actually had an opportunity to attend flute classes for three weeks when he was ten years old! Sakshi also found that each line item in his profile was wrong. His real face was ugly than what his profile conveyed. His hobby included reading, but he had never read a whole novel in his life. The ugly face posed a more dangerous face, a threatening one perhaps when she had to politely apply for divorce and put an end to the relation. But will the Indian society accept?

The incident happened a few years ago and this intrigued me to probe into profiles of few people whom I have met in office or elsewhere and found that an alarming number of profiles contain information that do not match with the real face of them. The irony is that almost 95% percent of Indians do not have a hobby or a past-time activity and their ego forces them to fill one in the profile. The one filled is probably the activity that their parents thrust upon them in their childhood.

(Name are obviously changed, but the incident mentioned is real)

Not only on web-profiles, many fake their real identity as well...

Last Sunday I met Mr.Vel at a fair in Chennai. I had known this person earlier through a web group. Slowly the talk went into hobbies and he exclaimed that he was a great fan of Tamil language and his pastime was to update his blog. I commented back saying that his blog was last updated way back in 2008. He paused for a moment and weaved a story that all his writings were in paper and before I could ask further questions, he said he had lost all papers while shifting his house and left the place for a moment.

This reminded me of Sri, who joined with me in my previous company on the same day. He claimed that he was an expert in net technology, business, art, and many more. He also started bullying other guys in net-tech group and had a pleasure making him feel greater at the expense of others feelings.

(Name are obviously changed, but the incident mentioned is real)