Like a few other things in life, pressures to be someone or something are also a constant companion that the society or our environment forces upon us. They come from all corners, from family, from friends, from school, from workplace, from neighbors, from icons, from established societal norms and from wherever else they can come from.
Recently, I happened to meet a parent whose son has recently completed his engineering from a reputed college and has started working in one of the leading software companies. The father spoke to me at length about the life at software engineering companies and actually came down to Bangalore to see the sprawling campus of the software company his son works for. Now by any standard, for his age, son is earning well and is ambitious enough to make a place for himself wherever he is. But father wants him to do an MBA (another obsession beyond my comprehension), along with performing better than all his peers at work, and be the first one to get promoted. Give me a break, kid has started working only few months back after toiling for almost 2 decades, let him enjoy his first rendezvous with freedom that only your own money brings. Why do you want to build up so much pressure that he is not able to enjoy any moment in life and if he defies you then you play the ‘poor parent’ and put him under a ‘you did it’ pressure. Either way you put him under so much pressure. When is he going to live his life? Should you not be contended enough that your kid is well placed, when there are so many of his age who are struggling to find a foothold in this world, and have no sight of what future hold for them? And what do you want to prove and to whom by trying to make him the way you want to see him?
Now I know the popular argument here is that the pressure helps you perform better and some pressure is good for you. But is it not fair that I should decide for myself what I want to do and what I want to achieve? And once I decide by goals, I am sure I would build enough pressures on myself to go ahead and achieve that. Are you not restricting me by telling me what you want me to be…would it not be better if you rather decide for yourself what you want to do, and leave my decisions to me? Are you not forcing things on me because someone else did it to you? How free will we all feel, once you break this chain of building pressures on each other?
Tuesday, 29 March 2005
Thursday, 24 March 2005
What kind of Intelligence do you have?
Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence |
 You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator. |
Monday, 21 March 2005
Culture of Long Hours
I have always wondered if the culture of spending long hours at workplace is good or bad, is it really as harmful as the media projects it to be (Economic Times carried a long series on the life of people in technology companies), or people outside the industry perceive it to be, is it really required, is it forced upon or is it by choice.
Let us try and look at one aspect of the culture in a typical technology company. Most of the people join the company straight out of college and in batches of 100 to 200, all with similar backgrounds and same age group. The joining is usually followed by a training schedule before these groups get split across various projects. So to begin with life of a typical fresher in the technology company is an extension of college life. The profile is usually a bachelor, sharing a flat with 3-5 other people, traveling together to the office. This is where they develop their social circles within their batch. The infrastructure and setup at office is much better than the one available back at home and all the friends are there at work, add to it the aspirational facilities like playing various games, gymnasiums, swimming pools, cafeterias…What is my motivation to go back home, where I might have nothing to do other than watching TV? So, in this case, I want to stay longer in office by choice, as my whole social circle and my eco-system exists within the office premises
The stress and pressure associated with deadlines is always there, but my opinion is that on a regular basis, human brain can work actively for 6-7 hours and not more than that. There are exceptional times or crisis times when you have to work longer, but on regular basis is it sustainable, or is it required, I do not think so. If you look at the typical behavior of late sitters, they fall in one or the other of these categories:
1. I go home late every day, I am never home before 10:00 PM. But what I do not tell you is that I also start my day at 10:00 AM, and after I reach office around 11:00 AM, I go for lunch, followed by few coffee breaks, which easily take away around two to three hours of my time. It is already late afternoon by the time I effectively start working, and then I leave office around 9:00 PM. My net effective working hours 6-7 hours, same as the person who does a 9 to 5 routine job, its just that I work in a different cycle, but since I reach home late, I give everyone a perception that I work very hard and my company takes the hell out of me.
2. When I walk into the office in the morning, I plan to leave late, as I want to clock more hours, sometimes for work and sometimes to give an impression that I am working too much, sometimes I want to impress my boss and sometimes my family and friends. So I walk in at 9, and then decide to work now and then and rest of the time spend clearing my personal mail boxes, doing my banking, tracking my investment portfolio and paying my bills and if all this is done, browsing the newspapers and other stuff on the net.
3. I genuinely believe that I must be in office before my boss walks into office and after he/she leaves, what I do and do not do is immaterial.
4. Since everyone else stays in office for long hours, I must stay or if I leave at 5 someone or the other will remark that I am leaving at half day. This is the most contagious one, when I stay back in office only because of peer pressure, not realizing that by staying back I am propagating the same pressure to others.
There are popular arguments about efficiency at work, or time management issues for long working hours, but in my experience, most of the people are pretty well organized and have no issues about either their efficiency to manage work or to manage their time. The questions that we need to answer honestly for ourselves are:
>Is the culture forced upon me or am I am a party to creating this culture?
>Is it really required for me to be sitting long hours in office, or I am there because I just enjoy being there?
>Do I really work long hours or I just give a perception of working long hours, by staying longer at office?
Let us try and look at one aspect of the culture in a typical technology company. Most of the people join the company straight out of college and in batches of 100 to 200, all with similar backgrounds and same age group. The joining is usually followed by a training schedule before these groups get split across various projects. So to begin with life of a typical fresher in the technology company is an extension of college life. The profile is usually a bachelor, sharing a flat with 3-5 other people, traveling together to the office. This is where they develop their social circles within their batch. The infrastructure and setup at office is much better than the one available back at home and all the friends are there at work, add to it the aspirational facilities like playing various games, gymnasiums, swimming pools, cafeterias…What is my motivation to go back home, where I might have nothing to do other than watching TV? So, in this case, I want to stay longer in office by choice, as my whole social circle and my eco-system exists within the office premises
The stress and pressure associated with deadlines is always there, but my opinion is that on a regular basis, human brain can work actively for 6-7 hours and not more than that. There are exceptional times or crisis times when you have to work longer, but on regular basis is it sustainable, or is it required, I do not think so. If you look at the typical behavior of late sitters, they fall in one or the other of these categories:
1. I go home late every day, I am never home before 10:00 PM. But what I do not tell you is that I also start my day at 10:00 AM, and after I reach office around 11:00 AM, I go for lunch, followed by few coffee breaks, which easily take away around two to three hours of my time. It is already late afternoon by the time I effectively start working, and then I leave office around 9:00 PM. My net effective working hours 6-7 hours, same as the person who does a 9 to 5 routine job, its just that I work in a different cycle, but since I reach home late, I give everyone a perception that I work very hard and my company takes the hell out of me.
2. When I walk into the office in the morning, I plan to leave late, as I want to clock more hours, sometimes for work and sometimes to give an impression that I am working too much, sometimes I want to impress my boss and sometimes my family and friends. So I walk in at 9, and then decide to work now and then and rest of the time spend clearing my personal mail boxes, doing my banking, tracking my investment portfolio and paying my bills and if all this is done, browsing the newspapers and other stuff on the net.
3. I genuinely believe that I must be in office before my boss walks into office and after he/she leaves, what I do and do not do is immaterial.
4. Since everyone else stays in office for long hours, I must stay or if I leave at 5 someone or the other will remark that I am leaving at half day. This is the most contagious one, when I stay back in office only because of peer pressure, not realizing that by staying back I am propagating the same pressure to others.
There are popular arguments about efficiency at work, or time management issues for long working hours, but in my experience, most of the people are pretty well organized and have no issues about either their efficiency to manage work or to manage their time. The questions that we need to answer honestly for ourselves are:
>Is the culture forced upon me or am I am a party to creating this culture?
>Is it really required for me to be sitting long hours in office, or I am there because I just enjoy being there?
>Do I really work long hours or I just give a perception of working long hours, by staying longer at office?
Monday, 14 March 2005
Weekend Trip to Puttaparthi & Lepakshi
Out of sheer curiosity and to meet my objective of going out of Bangalore at least once a month, I planned a trip to Puttaparthi with a friend of mine. Puttaparthi is about 160 kms from Bangalore, so it was a perfect place for a day trip. This time of the year being summers, we left early in the morning and thought of having breakfast on the way. But to our surprise none of the roadside Dhabas were open till 9:45 AM and by then we had reached. The interesting thing about these Dhabas is that they all call themselves ‘Punjabi Dhaba’, which is dually written in Gurmukhi script, but when you stop by and ask for menu, it is typically the local stuff like Idli, Dosa etc. Road was not excellent, but it was not bad also.
By the time we reached Puttaparthi i.e. around 10:00 AM, we were very hungry and after a bit of struggle to park the car, we went to only decent looking place to have breakfast, though there were a lot of Nepali restaurants around, but none of them seemed inviting enough. Now most of the guide books do not talk much about this place, except that this is the place where Sathya Sai Baba lives. So we tried asking people about the things that we can see around. We went to the temple, where there is a huge hall with very ornate roof and place where apparently Baba gives ‘darshan’ to people twice a day for 15 minutes each and apparently you have to stand in row for it for few hours. Anyway the objective with which we had gone was to see how these ‘Spiritual Gurus’ manage to create a complete eco-system around them, which is self-sustaining and mostly everything is done through voluntary action and contribution. The surroundings in Puttaparthi were not a as appealing, it was like a normal small town on the outside. But it did have some huge educational institutes, including a medical college, all of which are run by Sai Baba and his devotees. Another important place that we were told that can be seen is a museum which is called ‘Chaitanya Jyoti’. The architecture of the building was very oriental with lots of red and gold color used, and typical structures that you find in South east Asia. The museum predictable was about the life and times of Sai Baba, with lots of his videos and multimedia stuff. He is depicted as one of the Avataras and hence called ‘Bhagwaan’, and the guide will tell you how he is better than all the earlier Avatars. The whole concept is very similar to what I saw a few days back in ‘AksharDham’in Gandhinagar, but this was at a much smaller scale.
The question that comes to mind after a visit to such places is, these people usually say that they are not affiliated to any religion and draw all the good concepts from all religions, but at the same time are they not trying to establish a religion of their own a la ‘Gautam Budhha’.
We were done with Puttaparthi by 12:30 and there was nothing left to be seen, at least we could not gather that from people there, except the Darshan part, which we were not too keen on. Then I surfed through my Lonely Planet to see if there is anything close which can be visited, and there was this small place called ‘Lepakshi’ which had a famous Veerbhadra temple and a Nandi statue at the beginning of the town. My closest association with the word ‘Lepakshi’ was that all the Andhra Pradesh Emporiums are called ‘Lepakshi’ and I was told this is the place where the art on black metal originated, and I was hopeful of finding some artifacts there. But ‘Lepakshi’ was small village and the temple and the Nandi bull were the highlights of the place. The temple was no doubt beautiful. The intricate carvings always make me think, what a flourishing economy it would be when these temples were built, when people could engage themselves so deeply into the finer aspects of life. For the first time I saw a Naag coiled around a huge Shiva Linga and all this in the open, and not beneath a roof. There were several other forms of Shiva inside the temple, but this one was intriguing. No wonder all the foreigners were climbing on top of it and getting their photographs clicked. I am sure if there were any staunch Hindus present there, they might have felt this as an insult to Shiva and objected. The temple had typical temple architecture with pillared corridors around the temple and whole structure on square pillars all of which were carved and said stories of the time when it would have been built. I can go and live there for sometime, as there was something that I felt connected to and something that said that I may come back here sometime.
After spending some time in Lepakshi, we started back for Bangalore and were in Bangalore by 4:00 PM and again we were hungry again and not many options appeared on the way for lunch too.
By the time we reached Puttaparthi i.e. around 10:00 AM, we were very hungry and after a bit of struggle to park the car, we went to only decent looking place to have breakfast, though there were a lot of Nepali restaurants around, but none of them seemed inviting enough. Now most of the guide books do not talk much about this place, except that this is the place where Sathya Sai Baba lives. So we tried asking people about the things that we can see around. We went to the temple, where there is a huge hall with very ornate roof and place where apparently Baba gives ‘darshan’ to people twice a day for 15 minutes each and apparently you have to stand in row for it for few hours. Anyway the objective with which we had gone was to see how these ‘Spiritual Gurus’ manage to create a complete eco-system around them, which is self-sustaining and mostly everything is done through voluntary action and contribution. The surroundings in Puttaparthi were not a as appealing, it was like a normal small town on the outside. But it did have some huge educational institutes, including a medical college, all of which are run by Sai Baba and his devotees. Another important place that we were told that can be seen is a museum which is called ‘Chaitanya Jyoti’. The architecture of the building was very oriental with lots of red and gold color used, and typical structures that you find in South east Asia. The museum predictable was about the life and times of Sai Baba, with lots of his videos and multimedia stuff. He is depicted as one of the Avataras and hence called ‘Bhagwaan’, and the guide will tell you how he is better than all the earlier Avatars. The whole concept is very similar to what I saw a few days back in ‘AksharDham’in Gandhinagar, but this was at a much smaller scale.
The question that comes to mind after a visit to such places is, these people usually say that they are not affiliated to any religion and draw all the good concepts from all religions, but at the same time are they not trying to establish a religion of their own a la ‘Gautam Budhha’.
We were done with Puttaparthi by 12:30 and there was nothing left to be seen, at least we could not gather that from people there, except the Darshan part, which we were not too keen on. Then I surfed through my Lonely Planet to see if there is anything close which can be visited, and there was this small place called ‘Lepakshi’ which had a famous Veerbhadra temple and a Nandi statue at the beginning of the town. My closest association with the word ‘Lepakshi’ was that all the Andhra Pradesh Emporiums are called ‘Lepakshi’ and I was told this is the place where the art on black metal originated, and I was hopeful of finding some artifacts there. But ‘Lepakshi’ was small village and the temple and the Nandi bull were the highlights of the place. The temple was no doubt beautiful. The intricate carvings always make me think, what a flourishing economy it would be when these temples were built, when people could engage themselves so deeply into the finer aspects of life. For the first time I saw a Naag coiled around a huge Shiva Linga and all this in the open, and not beneath a roof. There were several other forms of Shiva inside the temple, but this one was intriguing. No wonder all the foreigners were climbing on top of it and getting their photographs clicked. I am sure if there were any staunch Hindus present there, they might have felt this as an insult to Shiva and objected. The temple had typical temple architecture with pillared corridors around the temple and whole structure on square pillars all of which were carved and said stories of the time when it would have been built. I can go and live there for sometime, as there was something that I felt connected to and something that said that I may come back here sometime.
After spending some time in Lepakshi, we started back for Bangalore and were in Bangalore by 4:00 PM and again we were hungry again and not many options appeared on the way for lunch too.
Friday, 11 March 2005
Anagrams
Anagram is a word or phrase formed by reordering the letters of another word or phrase, such as satin to stain. Word ‘ANA’ means from bottom to top and ‘GRAMMA’ means letter. Its said that using Anagrams you can find the hidden meaning behind words, specially names. Here are some of the interesting anagrams that I recently found:
The Microsoft Corporation = Horror of Competition Acts
Princess Diana = End is a car spin = Ascend in Paris
Boeing = Big One
Dormitory = Dirty Room
The Country Side = No City Dust Here
Mother-in-law = Woman Hitler
Funeral = Real Fun
Vacation Times = I'm Not as Active
Software = Swear Oft
A Decimal Point = I'm a Dot in Place
Debit card = Bad Credit
Did you realize that Bangalore contains the following words:
Bang, Role, Robe, Lane, Aero, Goal, Bare, Era
Lean, Bore, Bone, Ban, Log, Gala, Area, Near, Beg, One, Ego
Earn, Born, Able, Age, Noble, Orange Alone, Anger
Regal, Learn, Labor, Galore & GLOBE
The Microsoft Corporation = Horror of Competition Acts
Princess Diana = End is a car spin = Ascend in Paris
Boeing = Big One
Dormitory = Dirty Room
The Country Side = No City Dust Here
Mother-in-law = Woman Hitler
Funeral = Real Fun
Vacation Times = I'm Not as Active
Software = Swear Oft
A Decimal Point = I'm a Dot in Place
Debit card = Bad Credit
Did you realize that Bangalore contains the following words:
Bang, Role, Robe, Lane, Aero, Goal, Bare, Era
Lean, Bore, Bone, Ban, Log, Gala, Area, Near, Beg, One, Ego
Earn, Born, Able, Age, Noble, Orange Alone, Anger
Regal, Learn, Labor, Galore & GLOBE
Tuesday, 8 March 2005
Reflections on Women’s Day
Today on the occasion of International Women’s Day, I got an opportunity to hear an eminent woman achiever, who shared her opinion on the mixed work force and diversity in workforce and how we can leverage the diversity, rather than letting it become a deterrent. There was not much new in what she said, but during the Q&A session, she shared some of her life’s experiences, how she addressed some of the common challenges that working women face and how what keeps her going?
Now after almost a decade of work life, if I look back and see what have been my experiences as a woman in the business world, I would say there were not many occasions where I either faced a challenge or got an undue advantage for being a woman. There were situations where I was the only woman amongst all the men, which at times created an air of awkwardness and sense of discomfort for both me and my male colleagues. But there is another angle to it, if I was the only woman around, it gave me a bigger visibility and I did not have to repeat every time ‘Who I am?’ So every time there was a slight disadvantage because of my gender, there was an equal advantage that came my way, may be not at the same time, but over a period of time I think they equal out.
The key reasons I see behind this are:
I joined IT industry when it was still in its nascent stage and me and the industry grew at the same time.
There were very few old timers or stalwarts in the industry and hence no established rules and norms.
Men who joined the industry started their work life with the concept of co-existing with their women colleagues
Being knowledge industry, no part of the job requirement was gender dependent.
From the very beginning, there had been a reasonable representation of women in this industry and hence the acceptance of co-existence is very high.
Minimum threshold level of education in IT industry is very high
Flat organization structure helps to have more equals in every aspect
Would love to hear from others, both men and women in IT industry about their experiences about gender diversity….:-)
Now after almost a decade of work life, if I look back and see what have been my experiences as a woman in the business world, I would say there were not many occasions where I either faced a challenge or got an undue advantage for being a woman. There were situations where I was the only woman amongst all the men, which at times created an air of awkwardness and sense of discomfort for both me and my male colleagues. But there is another angle to it, if I was the only woman around, it gave me a bigger visibility and I did not have to repeat every time ‘Who I am?’ So every time there was a slight disadvantage because of my gender, there was an equal advantage that came my way, may be not at the same time, but over a period of time I think they equal out.
The key reasons I see behind this are:
I joined IT industry when it was still in its nascent stage and me and the industry grew at the same time.
There were very few old timers or stalwarts in the industry and hence no established rules and norms.
Men who joined the industry started their work life with the concept of co-existing with their women colleagues
Being knowledge industry, no part of the job requirement was gender dependent.
From the very beginning, there had been a reasonable representation of women in this industry and hence the acceptance of co-existence is very high.
Minimum threshold level of education in IT industry is very high
Flat organization structure helps to have more equals in every aspect
Would love to hear from others, both men and women in IT industry about their experiences about gender diversity….:-)
Saturday, 5 March 2005
Media Reports – To believe them or Not
I just finished reading one of the classic Sherlock Homes novels and like most of his novels, it also contained a story of how the credit of what he does is taken by the so called public servants and how the stories are twisted when you read them in newspapers.
I was just trying to relate it to the stories that I have seen in my lifetime and how they have been reported in the media. Having worked in two very media savvy companies, I am inclined not to believe most of the stuff that is printed today, barring the bare facts. In fact I almost feel agitated when people quote newspaper to support their argument, if only they knew how newspaper reports are phrased. Believe me it’s a piece of creative masterpiece to see the simple facts being twisted and turned around to look so glamorous and aspirational. The other day I was talking to one of my good friends, who is in a very unique profession and I suggested that its time he should start appearing in media and he told me that all the space on Bangalore times comes for a huge price. So all those interviews that you read on Bangalore (or Delhi/ Mumbai…whatever) times come with a huge price tag to the interviewee. Not to mention the pictures on Page 3, well should be really mind if look at Page 3 as an ad space and anyone can pay for it and be there….
I was just trying to relate it to the stories that I have seen in my lifetime and how they have been reported in the media. Having worked in two very media savvy companies, I am inclined not to believe most of the stuff that is printed today, barring the bare facts. In fact I almost feel agitated when people quote newspaper to support their argument, if only they knew how newspaper reports are phrased. Believe me it’s a piece of creative masterpiece to see the simple facts being twisted and turned around to look so glamorous and aspirational. The other day I was talking to one of my good friends, who is in a very unique profession and I suggested that its time he should start appearing in media and he told me that all the space on Bangalore times comes for a huge price. So all those interviews that you read on Bangalore (or Delhi/ Mumbai…whatever) times come with a huge price tag to the interviewee. Not to mention the pictures on Page 3, well should be really mind if look at Page 3 as an ad space and anyone can pay for it and be there….
Friday, 4 March 2005
Can Once In A Lifetime Happen Twice?
Last Saturday I saw this romantic comedy called ‘Serendipity’, courtesy a colleague who lent me the DVD. I just loved the movie…probably because it was so simple. And this somewhere goes down with my idea of Romance, where things should happen without any of you making an effort to make them happen. I think another reason I liked it was that I believe in the most of weird concepts used in the movie like
Omens or Signs happen at the right time and place in your life
The belief that you connect so strongly to some people that they become part of you, no matter if they are with you or somewhere else
You can fall in love with someone without even knowing who that person is, not even the name
Serendipity - Fortunate accidents do happen and I am waiting for one to happen to me.
Anymore suggestions for similar movies…:-)
Omens or Signs happen at the right time and place in your life
The belief that you connect so strongly to some people that they become part of you, no matter if they are with you or somewhere else
You can fall in love with someone without even knowing who that person is, not even the name
Serendipity - Fortunate accidents do happen and I am waiting for one to happen to me.
Anymore suggestions for similar movies…:-)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)