Why not be a terrorist?

                With the economic crunch being felt heavily all over the world for the past year or so, people are finding it really tough to get a job. At this juncture, looking at the day to day incidents happening in the world, here's one avenue that is always booming and recruiting. 

• Here's where firing in the true sense that takes place and that's a part of your job.
• There are no non understandable HR policies, Team Leads or Managers.
• You will not need your passport, proof of residence, not even your real name, but just the spirit and passion to join.
• Those with experience on Project IGI, Counter Strike genre of games are given higher preference.
• After the training, your put up "on-site" for sure, sometimes the training too is "on-site".
• Hands-on experience, on world's advanced technologies.
• Just a hint of information on your organization's activity will be a heartthrob for News media houses worldwide and will be the top priority on their broadcasts.
• However its just your luck or rather fate how long you survive depending on various factors such the area of posting, job description etc.
• Guess what, certain countries offer top class treatment, facilities, free food and shelter, healthcare,  world-wide media publicity and what not, you name it and you got it.
• Of course, in this job too there are one or two dream workplaces where, even if you get caught red-handed by the Police, you would be given everything as mentioned previously,under their protection and one can live longer.
• Surprisingly this is one the few jobs which guarantee you a long virtual life after your death because you might appear often on History Channel, for years.
• Depending on your "at-work skills", Wikipedia may even dedicate an exclusive page on your name with information right from about the first cloth that wiped your a** to the last cloth that covered your face, for the world to know.

With so many perks which no common man can imagine in their regular lives, no wonder its not a surprise that many, world-wide are silently realizing this potential avenue and preparing  themselves to be a part of it. Who knows, maybe in near future there will be universities offering degrees to master the pure art of terrorism.

Discriminations - Unnoticed or rather unheeded..!!!

Gender, Color, Religion, Caste, Status, Nationality...etc

  The above list goes on and there had been countless occasions of discrimination where people have experienced and fought against many of these both in vain as well been successful. The word DISCRIMINATION has gained so much importance, sensitiveness and  no surprise it has become a weapon in politics.The above mentioned are some widespread and popular ones however if we just stop a while and take a look, there are quite a set of unnoticed discrimination that are still prevalent in the world around us.

• As a kid in school the same mistake done by a girl gets a different treatment that of the same being done by a boy.
• A younger one is almost always muted out of a conversation by the parents or other elders without neither having the slightest idea of the point they were about to make nor giving them an opportunity or space to participate.
• Going out with friends has always been a piece of cake for guys and not for girls, be it any age.
• Most buses have seats especially marked for ladies and the rest is untagged and hence ladies too sometimes sit there and no fuss is made until a guy sits in a seat marked up for ladies.
• When standing in a queue never a guy is pitied upon and made to jump the queue where as a girl is.
• The girls alone have to change their last names and many change their initials too upon marriage, hope some have their identity spared at least.
• The dowry system is still at large, exclusively demanded from girls, for ages now.
• Neither the society nor the family will question a guy who remarries because his wife can't bear a child but will react to the worst possible extent that they won't even let a girl think of remarrying someone else because her husband's impotency.
• There is no part of the world and even the world that proposed and practiced male polygamy accepted the polygamy of females.
• Even Barak Obama seems to have got the Peace prize not for his contribution to world peace but just that he's Black American.
• In local news media, its Flash news if its about Karunanidhi (DMK) or Jayalalitha (ADMK)  but the news about the rest of the world is just secondary.
• In the so called National media or the English news channels its breaking news even before rain hits New Delhi or Mumbai but its just news even after the casualties of the flood elsewhere in the country.
• In Orkut or FB, a community or person hosting a picture of Indian flag burning  is reported as abuse but not many bother to realize and help the actual Indian dying out of hunger, on the streets.
• Even the local native people started to accustom to believe Hindi or English being the medium of socially acceptable and appreciable language,music, culture, fashion, food and what not, compared to their native ones.
• In addition to that in service based entities like Gymnasiums, Spa, Disco etc....playing an English or Hindi song is termed cultural and even an etiquette but never a local native music, though umpteen good ones may exist.
• Dosas and Idlies have become once in a long time as compared to the daily burgers pizzas or dhabas.
• Though available in abundance and good for health as well, water is replaced by carbonated drinks by many people as a thirst quencher in-between meals.
• Almost every FMCG to automobiles and to mobile service provider make many of their advertisements neither in Indian locale nor use Indians actors but the products are marketed for being sold to Indians.
• Though men and women shop to their best possible extent, the variety of products are incomparably a lot for ladies than for men.
• The Indian movies are 99.99 % are themed for male actors and female actors just enjoy the so called glamorous heroine part, almost always.
• Internet is not spared nevertheless, the voice and video traffic is deemed high priority when compared to the  helpless data traffic.
• Last of this list and definitely my personal best in the list of discrimination is the age old game of chess where the White is always the first one to make a move, till date.

"SOFT"ware Industry Practices

      ".......Ram : Hey buddy how's your work going about  ?

            Ravan : It's really on my nerves man, had to work at least 12 hours a day and on most weekends as well...this is ridiculous and initially I thought it was because of some project deadline......I'm not that stupid to still believe that eight months down the lane...but what to do....got used to it man!!!

              Ram : Yeah....same story with me as well man...I thought at least you would've something different and happy to say about it......"

            Does this conversation sound familiar?? Are you just one amongst the few in the software industry having experienced or have heard of such a situation ?? If your answer is  YES to any of these questions then welcome to this industry.

            Here are some industry practices which can be found quite familiar at many corporates in the software industry.

• Desktops, Laptops, Meeting rooms, White boards, Projectors and Engineers are all collectively called as RESOURCES.
• All the RESOURCES are taken for granted to be available for work, 24x7.
• RESOURCES asking questions citing the HR policies of the company are often marked.
• RESOURCES who are slogging throughout without questioning whatsoever are quoted as examples of VALUABLE resources and are eye-washed by being given appraisals (which should have normally been given as remuneration to all who clock extra hours at work).
• RESOURCES who speak of the facts and raise the relevant questions pertaining to project planning are considered to have attitude problems and team compatibility issues.
• Redundancy of doing the same work is termed as Quality check.
• Freshers are entitled to have training on umpteen technologies irrespective of whether they're going to work on it or not.
• The training period for the freshers will extend indefinitely until the company decides to  make them permanent.
• Switching from one company to another at any level of designation is a frequent affair and some even call it a necessity for career growth.
• Some RESOURCES take advantage of the various work policies like work from home or flexible timings etc to the worst extent (burying all work ethics) that the HRs would by no other choice curb those polices and put in place some stringent ones, making a deep impact (unpleasant of course) in the work environment paving a way for higher attrition rates even.

 The above list will be updated as more views and inputs flow in.

School --> Engg College --> "TRAINING" --?!?--> Phew...Work !!!

                    Since the DOTCOM boom in the early 1990s, the growth of job opportunities has been soaring high ( Setting aside the recession what we have been experiencing in the past 20 months) . On par with that, the number of engineers coming out of college has been on the rise tremendously year after year. But still in spite of the demand, the quality engineers that the industry expects are sparse in the enormous quantity of engineers coming out of colleges every year. 


                  Making a sort of root cause analysis I felt the reason is narrowed down to just TWO. Its EITHER the mistake of the engineers themselves and the engineering institutions for not being up to the quality expectations of the industry OR the mistake of the educational system itself. Looking at the number of engineers who are deemed not qualified by many MNCs (its quite a LOT, needless to say), it doesn't make sense to say that all those engineers and the numerous institutions are erroneous, hence the latter is in the limelight.


                           In the early years of the last decade,  as and when the  engineers came out of college, if not all but most of them were offered a good position by various MNCs (sans the training what is given presently) because the curriculum prescribed by the educational system then, was ON PAR with the requirements of the industry. As time progressed, the technological advancements in almost every industry became a regular routine and of course their expectations and requirements too got REVISED accordingly. Whereas the corresponding change did not happen accordingly in the educational system. But since the industry cannot reject (as their HR requirements were ever growing) the subsequent genre of engineers just because they were not technically up to their benchmark, they introduced TRAINING for the engineers to ramp them up.


                             As time progressed there wasn't much of an updation to the curriculum (No idea why wasn't that the need of the hour, for the respective authorities) that made the engineers immediately employable. Hence the TRAINING process became a evident part prior to getting into any project and the latest is that it further worsened to eliminating people based on post TRAINING assessments. Even here, the incompetence of the engineers is not the major reason but the volume of knowledge that needs to be grasped and be materializable and the short training period is the actual mental pressure.


                               The present scenario is that the freshers are mostly quizzed and questioned by most of the MNCs on what extra certifications they have done and if so further on that and very less on what they have learnt as a part of their curriculum.


                    Its high time the brakes are pulled for bridging the "Technological gap" and the Industry - Institute coordination (in the true meaningful sense) be established for updation  either ways  which would make the passing out engineers feel truly competent and industry ready (in the technical front) as well as make the MNCs cut down their TRAINING expenditures and  get back to the ways it was recruiting in the past.

BREAKING NEWS !!!

I heard the phrase "BREAKING NEWS" for the first time on CNN, right after the 9/11 attack. It was flashing all day throughout the course of the entire episode. That was the period what I feel as "The Incubation" as far as the Indian television news channel industry was concerned. Very few players here then, who actually broadcast the BREAKING NEWS themselves. At that time I yearned for WHEN, will such a kind of quick response news be aired LIVE or in other words, news be broken on an Indian News Television. As time passed by, the Indian News Channel industry bloomed and umpteen number of News Channels came into existence and my yearning finally started to recede. For once I was happy on the fact that our Indian News channels have started to compete with the News Channel giants across the world in providing quality "BREAKING NEWS". But today, the objective of our news channels have shifted greatly into a way of using "BREAKING NEWS" everyday for highlighting all sort of stories which are not way worth it making to that category and hence the whole meaning, importance and essence of "BREAKING NEWS" is totally lost.

The trend as on date of our news channels are of providing EXCLUSIVE news footage rather than the actual news conveyed in its true sense. Every news channel on a daily basis will definitely have at least one such news item to use as their USP (sounds funny for a news channel though). With the advent of Internet, telecom and technology its happy to see the advancements in news channels (be it Online opinion polls or the Sms polls etc) but the questions many a time taken up for discussions or opinion polls aren't actually the questions that arise based on a particular news event but rather a discussion which actually gives new dimensions to the issue which dilutes the actual issue discussed in first place.

There was once a time where controversies or issues were brought to the light by news media but now the news media itself is being used as a medium to spark controversies and then being broadcast as something EXCLUSIVE caught on tape, making the little known people involved in it, a celebrity, overnight. It would be really incomplete if the advertisements doesn't have a mention here. Are the advertisements in midst of news or the other way round ?? Day by day the news footage space on screen is reducing with more and more advertisement blocks occupying the bottom of the TV screen.

Nowadays more often than not the News Media have come under the scanner of the Information & Broadcasting Ministry citing the media coverage of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks for instance. I feel the media hype or the media frenzy (to be more apt) that was created for the Swine Flu here has made the common man panic rather than be aware. The opportunistic side of such adverse coverage of Swine Flu situation has resulted in the sky rocketing demands for the face mask and medicines (that supposedly said they had cures for the Flu).

In a nutshell the news on TV is more of "re-engineered" news and "highlighted" entertainment rather than what it truly needs to be.