(Written 26-29 January 2010)

A most reassuring sign that India's time has come is when the President of the United States, a country strong and independent for 235 years, speaks to his people, sternly, of competition with India, a country and civilization while much much older, independent from foreign rule for only 62 years. Comparing GDPs, defense budgets would be a futile exercise, yet he sees a challenge. 

A best friend of mine from Ireland, controversially, once spoke of a longing past-desire to have had Britain rule Ireland for a longer period of time. While that instantly made him unpopular with his fellow Irish, his point of view was that a lot of the land and religious feud would not have happened, economic reforms would have taken place faster and that over time the Irish would've learned to self-govern. This is an extremely popular view of past colonies, India and Hong Kong are probably no exception.

What would that have meant for India? Perhaps better roads, better infrastructure, better civic sense and responsibilities, lines, order, sterile and hyper-safe environments? Just keep in mind, there is no country anywhere in the world that has managed to embrace the glories of the past with the opportunity of the new. Japan has all but relegated any spirituality to private sanctuary. China is doing well in embracing both, but tilted heavily toward the new. Greece failed at both making it to the present and retaining the old. Only India is doing well at both and should continue to do so. While the lack of Infrastructure, water, civics is difficult and depriving they can be built. A recollection and sense of who we are, who we were and the gifts we've presented to the world cannot be rebuilt from memory. Our identity as a republic has always been independent and separate from outsiders. 

I think independence from Britain was one of the best things to have happened to India. Taxation without representation, suffrage, child education are not trivial issues. I suspect these issues would have remained India's bane much longer had the British stayed. Now primarily child education and poverty remain as THE challenging issues.

I, however, do not pay taxes to the Indian government. At least, not yet. And so, I have resigned my opportunity to speak any ill, since I do nothing to improve the situation. For me, its home.

Just thinking through, let alone writing, a company business plan is immensely challenging and difficult. The leaders of 1948 had to take advice and counsel from all corners of the country, judicial and personal, and come up with the constitution of India. Some of the leaders were killed, some of them died before they saw the dream come alive, others were not good leaders and yet others brought up change in future generations simply by the power of their thought. All this not long after each arm of the country was further separated into unimaginable borders. It may not be perfect, and in some cases the constitution may even be outdated. But it's what we have and we should be proud of it. It came after almost a 1000 years of slavery. And we're seen as scary competition in just 62.

Happy 60th Birthday Dear Republic.

An amulet I always love to see on someone's desk is the laughing Buddha. 

While meant to be powerful, this particular form is usually presented as small, rotund, drunk-happy and jolly in appearance. These are some of the most highly sought after souvenirs in China and Nepal and are available in all sorts of materials such as wood, teak, rosewood, sandalwood etc. Some believe a vigorous 'rub' of the Buddha's tummy bestows luck on the individual doing so.

Having attended Bal-Vikas and other theological classes during childhood and having read and attended discourses on the world's religions, something about this presentation of the Buddha is very ironic to me.

Briefly, prince Siddhartha (Buddha's original name), was taken aback by the wealth of suffering and pain that existed just beyond his palace walls. He decided that he needed to understand the source of such suffering. In order to do so, he proceeded to subject himself to varying levels of physical and mental deprivation. These included fasting without food or water, sleep and other rigorous disciplines. He then learned that it wasn't necessary to subject oneself to such pain in order to experience some truths. These were then expressed in the four noble truths, and the solutions to these, in the noble eightfold path.

Basically, someone who fasted, tortured himself and abstained from any worldly pleasures, could in no way have ever been short, rotund and the way he is portrayed in these symbols. 

So, the next time you see a Laughing Buddha, go ahead and rub the tummy. But think about some of the wisdom in the four truths and eightfold paths, and then remember it isn't meant to be as jolly as it appears. 

At the least, the 'right concentration', 'right mindfulness' and 'right livelihood' portions of the eightfold path would probably have an issue with 'luck', i.e. money or other material requests, bestowed by simply rubbing the Buddha's tummy. He probably wouldn't have gone for that.

Wanted "Senior Engineer - 4-5 Yrs Experience, proficiency in java, sql, oracle, ...xyz....etc." Sound familiar? Imagine if every (tech) position was written in this way. Would we have qualified at the starting points in our careers? Probably not. Someone took a chance with us, lowered their expectations and we met them. Someone definitely took a chance on me. We grow and we evolve. Our spouses and parents see this every day of our lives in our personal realms. We're nowhere near as able and capable as we can be. And we were worse years ago. And they know it. :)

At work, it is a deeply rewarding experience to hire someone that you feel is a risky bet because of their lack of experience. They're eager, excited, not as jaded with corporate life and are a breath of fresh air to everyone around them. They make mistakes, slip and fall, but so do we. They'll need to be corrected and will occasionally give you the deer-in-headlights. We all do that, they're just newer to the game thats all. But they're so eager and the stakes really are low and they recover faster than anyone else. In two years an investment like this pays off. If lacking in experience, when hiring look for aptitude, thinking skills and interest.

One of the most nerve-wracking experiences for techies is attending a job fair. I've attended several of the largest tech job fairs in the country, in and around Santa Clara. It is an absolute tech meet market. Getting two questions from a company after your 30 second pitch is a minor victory. When fresh out of college, premium watermarked paper costs a lot. And after handing out all those resumes, you're lucky if you get a handful of calls back. I was so eager to start working after these experiences that I taught myself on nights and weekends on my first job. I know I paid off on my investment.

Don't expect someone like this to be with you forever. This is just an even exchange. They give you their best, eager, manic, caffeine-rich, near-24 hour days of their lives, and you give them much needed experience, maturity and help them grow. It's important that both move on at some point, but enjoy the experience while it lasts. Help them with communication, business writing, meeting etiquette and other softer skills that no body teaches you in college. If the person is any good, you'll find yourself relying on them more and more as time goes on. That means your investment is paying off.

Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys, in one of his speeches once said (paraphrased) "All of us are the fruits of a tree somebody else watered. During our lifetimes, let's promise to water another tree, so new fruits may bloom."

Words to live by.

Forbes had a good list that I captured here. Many colleagues came up to me though, immediately after, and suggested I add a few more. So, by popular demand here is another roundup of some painful jargon. Part deux (faux french and euro terms strike me as needing to be on the list too).

"Deep Dive"

If you're not in the navy or in mining, this term is off limits for you. What it really means in geek terms, is to get more technical, in the weeds (see below) or to simply add more details, usually of a technical nature. Let's just call it for what it is. "Can we have a more detailed discussion please?"

"In the Weeds"

Managers, are most guilty of this one. It's their way of remarking to themselves or the attendees, and simply asking the rhetorical question, "Did anyone get what I said?". Just prior to this is the customary third degree technical questioning completely inappropriate for a larger managerial meeting. Multiple versions of this term exist. The most heinous office-space versions involve people in the room, I kid-you-not, pulling out an imaginary weed whacker (Yes I know) and making a motor noise like so - RR-R-R. Really.

"Parking Lot"

A meeting consultant must have come up with this in the last five years as part of his/her unique vocabulary. Ever since it's made a cunning appearance onto the scene, it has become the catch-all for discussions that are usually not relevant to the meeting at hand. Oddly, if you pay attention, sometimes the person who calls "parking lot" i.e. requesting to defer an item for discussion, is the very person who digressed the discussion to begin with. People tend to have chats in a parking lot only to resolve fender bumps and nicks, or if in the midwest, to stock up on ammunition, so if in a meeting, call it for what it is. Not bloody relevant. This term needs to be euthanized quickly.

"Strawman"

Basically if I propose a complete hack, want to request feedback without being humble enough to be open about it, or don't know what the bloody heck I'm doing, I'm working on a strawman. If I just say I need help people surprisingly always offer to help. I just don't call it a strawman.

"Synergy"

If there's one term that's driven us techies up the wall over the last decade, its synergy. When someone means "I want what you have" or "I'm going to learn a lot from you" or "my people/tools/processes suck, yours are awesome, HELP" before or after "I'm going to acquire you", they cannot be honest about it and would rather say "lets find or explore synergy". It's one of those words that's morphed from a noun into a verb and adjective. Please stop with the synergies.

"Leverage"

Like synergy, leverage came into everyday business vocabulary as if our primary occupations involved the use of fulcrums and levers. I wish it did. Those were simpler times. I know the words 'use' or 're-use' don't sound complex enough, but that's really all we're doing. Let's just say that. Developers reuse things all the time. You'll never hear me say "let me leverage xyz's xml processing library". I'll reuse it.

"Traction"

Again, if not in the chiropractic or spinal disc realignment business, you've got nothing to do with traction. All you need to say is something is gaining acceptance, popularity or wider support. That's all. It's okay to use simpler words. Really.

"Google it"

This is an up-and-comer, but every bit as irritating. When someone wishes to impress upon you the very outer limits of their researching capabilities this is the term that is used. Usually it means they did a lazy search, and captured the first piece of data (not knowledge) they could find. I have a hard time placing my trust in someone who just read something 5 minutes before I do. I prefer expertise. 

"Agile"

I'm working on a follow-up post just dedicated to this term. It has morphed from a set of principles from career programmers into an entire industry. It encapsulates and justifies everything from lack of design, insufficient documentation, poor requirements, collaboration over expertise, non-linear amounts of waste and sometimes poor practices, all in the name of delivering smaller pieces of value quicker to the end-client. The focus continues to be on getting 'agile' vs. delivering value using agile principles. There is more confusion than clarity on this one topic, and entire forums of software people bemoaning the state of agile affairs, and when the word itself is used as cover for anything and everything, it makes itself into the realm of jargon. Getting back to basics and rethinking is highly called for on this one. 

Notable Mentions : "Bucketize", "Gap Fitment", Any permutations of the list above.

Ultimately this post is about making our meetings and our work environments more productive and accessible to all. We all have lots to contribute towards each other and to improve the quality of our work, but all of these terms serve as downers and meeting filler material at best. Jargon like these only help meander an otherwise meaningful discussion for no apparent reason. Some of these terms have existed for a whole decade. It is unacceptable. Let's take back our work environments from the consultant-speak, and bludgeon these terms into permanent oblivion. There is a reason the second S in KISS stands for stupid.

Now that's what I call synergy.

I used to get petrified of these meetings. At an earlier stage of your career, you're less likely to be involved in these sorts of meetings and so you're less likely to know how to deal with them. Just know that over your career there is a transition of first being scared, then confident, then knowing what your outcome will be and then finally getting to be the executive who decides the outcome i.e. the H or F part. Let's first define what this meeting is.

It's the sort of meeting where something fundamental is about to change, and you are single-handedly the cause for that change. It is most definitely not a status meeting, a platform meeting, an update meeting or any kind of regularly scheduled meeting. It also isn't a panic, pin the blame or root-cause analysis meeting. It most definitely isn't a technology-related meeting. It's much more.

When you present something fantastic, uniquely value-adding, a proposition that could get people above you in hot water, or stand out by challenging the status quo of business, that's when you have a GHOF meeting. When you challenge basic assumptions, organizational models, executive wisdom, redefine competition, identify new business opportunities, or all of the above that's GHOF at it's best. You have to identify something, typically a problem or five, a host of solutions, investments or deas and tie all the pieces together. You're basically identifying something no one else thinks about - and because you have - are implicitly or explicitly applying for any opportunity that arises out of that. The untold assumption is that you're suggesting status quo isn't an option, and so if not given the opportunity to solve the problem, what else exists?

I like these meetings because it reduces outcomes to two fundamental options. Green light, red light. No amber. It dramatically increases odds of success to a guaranteed 50%, gets you visibility, makes you known as a non status-quo'er (there are too many of those) all while painting a giant 3-d bullseye on your back. Things will change for you. Guaranteed.

I'll follow up with tips for one of these, but I try to work on at least one or two of these a year. That means at least three-four ideas you have to discard in the process. Desh Deshpande, of Sycamore Networks, famously used to recommend his employees always go on job interviews at least twice a year. That way they know what they're worth, aren't afraid of taking risks where they are, and can dive headlong into an opportunity without worrying about unemployment. They know they're good enough. They just found a job elsewhere to prove it. I recommend if you don't or can't head down the entrepreneurial path, try to create for yourself at least 1 GHOF meeting a year. It does the work soul much good.

Oh, and if offered cake at one of these meetings, never refuse.