Sea water turns sweet, alarm on Mumbai-bound U.S. plane, the Israel-Lebanon conflict, youngsters run riot in city, encroachments, floods and hey Pluto is no more a planet. Really interesting that Pluto managed to reserve a place for itself in most of the leading news papers' Front Page. Something that it couldn't as a planet during the last 76 years.
Looks like there had been much discussion about whether Pluto, which until lately was considered the outermost planet of the solar system, should even be counted as one of the planets. And the result? It had to step down of one of the most glorious status ever of being a 'planet' only to be declared a 'dwarf planet'.
I couldn't stop digging into this more when I saw this in the headlines, probably coz of my little dream of getting into astronomy during the schooling days. Never mind. A quick look at Pluto's history would let you realise that it had been a fascinating planetary object in itself. Interestingly, Pluto proved a disappointment after its discovery, as it was much smaller and fainter than expected. The planet was initially thought to have a mass six times that of the earth which implied that Pluto was an unusually dense planet (for whatever reason that may be). All this changed in 1978, when Pluto’s satellite, Charon, was discovered. This showed that the mass of Pluto was only 1/400 of the earth making it only somewhat denser than water, much smaller than the moon in size.
Spending most of my life with computers these days, why the astronomers approved a 'new' definition of a planet that demoted Pluto to a lesser category might not make much sense to me. But Pluto ain't any IT Pro to get lethargic after a bad review. Well the number of planets has gone down by one and it's just a good news to all the kids struggling to remember the planet names during their exams. I wonder what would a site like www.nineplanets.org do, now that there are just eight of 'em? How would your little sister use your old physics text book, which in turn was borrowed from someone else a year ago?
I am not sure how upset Pluto probably is hearing the news, but just in case you are wondering if there is someone who just got frustrated, you should consider reading this.
If this is the fate of a planet, oops a dwarf planet which worked real hard circling the sun with a period of 248 years (oops!), I wonder what would be the fate of other planets going forward, hey Earth, you reading this?
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Sunday, August 06, 2006
The Job-Hoppers
This one is dedicated to all the IT pros who consider it is their right to get paid once every month and their duty to jump from one company to another at least once every year - The Job-Hoppers
Note: Anything that follows will revolve around IT pros who have less than say 3 or 4 years of experience, I am not sure if it is the same with the other set and haven't had a chance to experience it myself.
Okay before I start this, I thought it would be more appropriate to include some of the jargons that one cannot do without for reading what would follow, so here goes a few of 'em.
It would always make sense to start with the one that happens the most, which is spoken about the most, something that you would never imagine to happen and something that any normal company can't do without, and the one that flashes in my mind is the "bench". If you are in bench, it means that company has just taken in too many people and sweet enough to recognize you as one of the "potential" candidates to get paid for doing nothing, yes nothing. Some of the things that might help you be occupied during this time are email forwards, email forwards and email forwards. Bench period can typically range from a couple of days to god knows how long. They say idle mind is the devil's workshop, the devil in you starts thinking, and off goes a mail to a hundred different ids, all in the hopes of getting out of this "dream" land, yes that's what you get to do when you don't have the forwards to entertain you, hoping to find a better place, to stay away from the bench, only to land up in a place which turns out to be even worse. I just can't imagine the reason for such a concept; I have heard that the "lucky" ones in bench play a good back-up role considering the numer of job-hoppers. Yes, projects can't come to a halt when someone leaves and you need to have back-ups ready to replace 'em, but a guy can't be put in bench until someone leaves either. If people leave, you get more people than required and put 'em in bench, if they are in bench, they leave of boredom, idleness and frustration, if they leave 'coz of bench, why put 'em in bench at all.
The next one that I cannot miss out on is "paper". This is what this whole damn thing is about! "Putting paper" as it is commonly called. This is when an IT pro decides to take the prestigious decision of quitting the company and moving to another place. This happens so often that the common question about your work from a friend of yours whom you get to meet after a year is "Where are you working now" and no more "How is work"! The act of putting paper is "silently" executed so well at times that it might just make you wonder as to what is so big in it that one has to be this over the top secretive about it. But this is just one side of it, it is mostly one of the much celebrated period in one's "corporate" life too. There are some obvious ways to find out if someone had just put their papers - The most common one is when you notice this guy spending just all his time in a cabin with his manager, ideally positioned far away from the rest of the world, discussing something that you would never make a right guess on what that would be all about. This can happen even more when there has been a guy who had been in this company for around two years, and there comes a new one into this company with the same profile as this guy getting a few bucks more than him. This guy had been slogging here for the past two years only to see a new person come in with his same profile and getting paid better?
Well the company is not at fault always, as it might have sounded until now. Expectations are just too high. The mind-set of "yearly" promotions and onsite being the only goal in life often leads you to press the red-button - the paper. The concept of how you grow is often totally different from how it could have possible been, like how it is in any other industry, like how it is in the other parts of the world. The hope to see a new designation every time you receive your appraisal letter is something that one cannot probably see in any other place. And when this change does not happen, what best can someone think of, other than the paper. Probably these are things that can exist in any industry but onsite is definitely not one such thing. Onsite is when you get to fly out of the country, for work I suppose. Onsites are at times compared to be something equivalent to your honeymoon period. It's not uncommon for companies to be rated based on the "number" of onsites that they might possibly have in store for you. When there are two who are eligible for the onsite and just one who can be sent, our dear manager puts in all his brains to make sure he is not going to see an empty seat in his office due to this, manages to send the better one off to the honeymoon promising stars and moons to the other guy. Stars and moons are nothing when onsite is missed, this guy gets ready to run out of this hell, to probably land in another. The other guy gets back from onsite, after having a lot of fun, making a lot of money, doing a little work with just one thing in his mind. Now that he has got an onsite, the next one is definitely going to the other one. Our guy is not happy with this, well what is life without any onsite, he had been living for it after all. He is now all set to hunt for the next best place, his quest for onsite begins, again.
Now when there is a new guy who is joining, the company had taken him in since they could not do without one additional guy and desperately needed someone with that profile. This guy is already in another place and this company should take one step forward to pull this guy in, and fix on a pay which is a couple of bucks greater than what the other guys who have been in the company for over two years are getting. Well finally, if one guy comes in, the other goes out and this continues, just continues.
There is one more thing that you would have probably expected to see a little earlier, something that you would have guessed would be the evil spirit behind the paper, the pay cheque. This is something that you can never workout on a balance between what you think you should get and what your manager thinks you should get. Something more than what you expect is the best thing that could happen but that's only until you hear someone say numbers greater than yours. What else can simulate the devil in you better than this?
Leaving a company might not be just as simple as it probably sounds. There are certain things that one gets to realize only during the last few days. You won't get to walk in to the same good-old office, won't get to do the work that you had been doing all these days, won't get to see your "decorated" cubicle ever again and the worst of all will miss all the people with whom you had worked day in and out. They are not just people working with you anymore, they are now a few of your friends whom you will never want to miss. Things have gone too far by now, not-so-happy pay cheques, a missed onsite, bench and every other crap, it's just time to leave, leaving all the good things behind.
There are so many reasons that could make you finally use the red-button, well there should be quite a lot when it happens this often. This is just the tip of the iceberg, a few things that used to haunt my thoughts sometime back, and something that I don't want to dig too deep now. I can't talk about everything, well I don't want to, these are few things that you wouldn't want to think about, things that you wouldn't want to happen that often.
Huge state-of-the-art buildings, pool tables, swimming pool, gym with all imported equipments, cafeteria, A/C all through the day, vast parking lots - few things that you can see at my work-place and probably not at my dad's place. He worked in the same company for more than 35 years. I wish I could, and I hope I would.
Note: Anything that follows will revolve around IT pros who have less than say 3 or 4 years of experience, I am not sure if it is the same with the other set and haven't had a chance to experience it myself.
Okay before I start this, I thought it would be more appropriate to include some of the jargons that one cannot do without for reading what would follow, so here goes a few of 'em.
It would always make sense to start with the one that happens the most, which is spoken about the most, something that you would never imagine to happen and something that any normal company can't do without, and the one that flashes in my mind is the "bench". If you are in bench, it means that company has just taken in too many people and sweet enough to recognize you as one of the "potential" candidates to get paid for doing nothing, yes nothing. Some of the things that might help you be occupied during this time are email forwards, email forwards and email forwards. Bench period can typically range from a couple of days to god knows how long. They say idle mind is the devil's workshop, the devil in you starts thinking, and off goes a mail to a hundred different ids, all in the hopes of getting out of this "dream" land, yes that's what you get to do when you don't have the forwards to entertain you, hoping to find a better place, to stay away from the bench, only to land up in a place which turns out to be even worse. I just can't imagine the reason for such a concept; I have heard that the "lucky" ones in bench play a good back-up role considering the numer of job-hoppers. Yes, projects can't come to a halt when someone leaves and you need to have back-ups ready to replace 'em, but a guy can't be put in bench until someone leaves either. If people leave, you get more people than required and put 'em in bench, if they are in bench, they leave of boredom, idleness and frustration, if they leave 'coz of bench, why put 'em in bench at all.
The next one that I cannot miss out on is "paper". This is what this whole damn thing is about! "Putting paper" as it is commonly called. This is when an IT pro decides to take the prestigious decision of quitting the company and moving to another place. This happens so often that the common question about your work from a friend of yours whom you get to meet after a year is "Where are you working now" and no more "How is work"! The act of putting paper is "silently" executed so well at times that it might just make you wonder as to what is so big in it that one has to be this over the top secretive about it. But this is just one side of it, it is mostly one of the much celebrated period in one's "corporate" life too. There are some obvious ways to find out if someone had just put their papers - The most common one is when you notice this guy spending just all his time in a cabin with his manager, ideally positioned far away from the rest of the world, discussing something that you would never make a right guess on what that would be all about. This can happen even more when there has been a guy who had been in this company for around two years, and there comes a new one into this company with the same profile as this guy getting a few bucks more than him. This guy had been slogging here for the past two years only to see a new person come in with his same profile and getting paid better?
Well the company is not at fault always, as it might have sounded until now. Expectations are just too high. The mind-set of "yearly" promotions and onsite being the only goal in life often leads you to press the red-button - the paper. The concept of how you grow is often totally different from how it could have possible been, like how it is in any other industry, like how it is in the other parts of the world. The hope to see a new designation every time you receive your appraisal letter is something that one cannot probably see in any other place. And when this change does not happen, what best can someone think of, other than the paper. Probably these are things that can exist in any industry but onsite is definitely not one such thing. Onsite is when you get to fly out of the country, for work I suppose. Onsites are at times compared to be something equivalent to your honeymoon period. It's not uncommon for companies to be rated based on the "number" of onsites that they might possibly have in store for you. When there are two who are eligible for the onsite and just one who can be sent, our dear manager puts in all his brains to make sure he is not going to see an empty seat in his office due to this, manages to send the better one off to the honeymoon promising stars and moons to the other guy. Stars and moons are nothing when onsite is missed, this guy gets ready to run out of this hell, to probably land in another. The other guy gets back from onsite, after having a lot of fun, making a lot of money, doing a little work with just one thing in his mind. Now that he has got an onsite, the next one is definitely going to the other one. Our guy is not happy with this, well what is life without any onsite, he had been living for it after all. He is now all set to hunt for the next best place, his quest for onsite begins, again.
Now when there is a new guy who is joining, the company had taken him in since they could not do without one additional guy and desperately needed someone with that profile. This guy is already in another place and this company should take one step forward to pull this guy in, and fix on a pay which is a couple of bucks greater than what the other guys who have been in the company for over two years are getting. Well finally, if one guy comes in, the other goes out and this continues, just continues.
There is one more thing that you would have probably expected to see a little earlier, something that you would have guessed would be the evil spirit behind the paper, the pay cheque. This is something that you can never workout on a balance between what you think you should get and what your manager thinks you should get. Something more than what you expect is the best thing that could happen but that's only until you hear someone say numbers greater than yours. What else can simulate the devil in you better than this?
Leaving a company might not be just as simple as it probably sounds. There are certain things that one gets to realize only during the last few days. You won't get to walk in to the same good-old office, won't get to do the work that you had been doing all these days, won't get to see your "decorated" cubicle ever again and the worst of all will miss all the people with whom you had worked day in and out. They are not just people working with you anymore, they are now a few of your friends whom you will never want to miss. Things have gone too far by now, not-so-happy pay cheques, a missed onsite, bench and every other crap, it's just time to leave, leaving all the good things behind.
There are so many reasons that could make you finally use the red-button, well there should be quite a lot when it happens this often. This is just the tip of the iceberg, a few things that used to haunt my thoughts sometime back, and something that I don't want to dig too deep now. I can't talk about everything, well I don't want to, these are few things that you wouldn't want to think about, things that you wouldn't want to happen that often.
Huge state-of-the-art buildings, pool tables, swimming pool, gym with all imported equipments, cafeteria, A/C all through the day, vast parking lots - few things that you can see at my work-place and probably not at my dad's place. He worked in the same company for more than 35 years. I wish I could, and I hope I would.
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