a post worth reading

This was posted on one of the networks by Anaggh Desai

Sent to me by a friend :

They are the poster boys of matrimonial classifieds. They are paid handsomely, perceived to be intelligent and travel abroad frequently. Single-handedly, they brought purpose to the otherwise sleepy city of Bangalore.

Indian software engineers are today the face of a third-world rebellion. But what exactly do they do? That's a disturbing question. Last week, during the annual fair of the software industry's apex body Nasscom, no one uttered a word about India's programmers.

The event, which brought together software professionals from around the world, used up all its 29 sessions to discuss prospects to improve the performance of software companies. Panels chose to debate extensively on subjects like managing innovation, business growth and multiple geographies.

But there was nothing on programmers, who you would imagine are the driving force behind the success of the Indian software companies. Perhaps you imagined wrong. "It is an explosive truth that local software companies won't accept.

Most software professionals in India are not programmers, they are mere coders," says a senior executive from a global consultancy firm, who has helped Nasscom in researching its industry reports.

In industry parlance, coders are akin to smart assembly line workers as opposed to programmers who are plant engineers. Programmers are the brains, the glorious visionaries who create things. Large software programmes that often run into billions of lines are designed and developed by a handful of programmers.

Coders follow instructions to write, evaluate and test small components of the large program. As a computer science student in IIT Mumbai puts it if programming requires a post graduate level of knowledge of complex algorithms and programming methods, coding requires only high school knowledge of the subject.

Coding is also the grime job. It is repetitive and monotonous. Coders know that. They feel stuck in their jobs. They have fallen into the trap of the software hype and now realize that though their status is glorified in the society, intellectually they are stranded.

Companies do not offer them stock options anymore and their salaries are not growing at the spectacular rates at which they did a few years ago.

A Microsoft analyst says, "Like our manufacturing industry, the Indian software industry is largely a process driven one. That should speak for the fact that we still don't have a domestic software product like Yahoo or Google to use in our daily lives."

IIT graduates have consciously shunned India's best known companies like Infosys and TCS, though they offered very attractive salaries. Last year, from IIT Powai, the top three Indian IT companies got just 10 students out of the 574 who passed out.

The best computer science students prefer to join companies like Google and Trilogy. Krishna Prasad from the College of Engineering, Guindy, Chennai says, "The entrance test to join TCS is a joke compared to the one in Trilogy. That speaks of what the Indian firms are looking for."

A senior TCS executive, who requested anonymity, admitted that the perception of coders is changing even within the company. It is a gloomy outlook. He believes it has a lot to do with business dynamics.

The executive, a programmer for two decades, says that in the late '70s and early '80s, software drew a motley set of professionals from all kinds of fields.

In the mid-'90s, as onsite projects increased dramatically, software companies started picking all the engineers they could as the US authorities granted visas only to graduates who had four years of education after high school.

After Y2K, as American companies discovered India's cheap software professionals, the demand for engineers shot up," the executive says. Most of these engineers were coders. They were almost identical workers who sat long hours to write line after line of codes, or test a fraction of a programme.

They did not complain because their pay and perks were good. Now, the demand for coding has diminished, and there is a churning.

Over the years, due to the improved communication networks and increased reliability of Indian firms, projects that required a worker to be at a client's site, say in America, are dwindling in number. And with it the need for engineers who have four years of education after high school.

Graduates from non-professional courses, companies know, can do the engineer's job equally well. Also, over the years, as Indian companies have already coded for many common applications like banking, insurance and accounting, they have created libraries of code which they reuse.

Top software companies have now started recruiting science graduates who will be trained alongside engineers and deployed in the same projects. The CEO of India's largest software company TCS, S Ramadorai, had earlier explained, "The core programming still requires technical skills.

But, there are other jobs we found that can be done by graduates." NIIT's Arvind Thakur says, "We have always maintained that it is the aptitude and not qualifications that is vital for programming. In fact, there are cases where graduate programmers have done better than the ones from the engineering stream."

Software engineers, are increasingly getting dejected. Sachin Rao, one of the coders stuck in the routine of a job that does not excite him anymore, has been toying with the idea of moving out of Infosys but cannot find a different kind of "break", given his coding experience.

He sums up his plight by vaguely recollecting a story in which thousands of caterpillars keep climbing a wall, the height of which they don't know. They clamber over each other, fall, start again, but keep climbing. They don't know that they can eventually fly.

Rao cannot remember how the story ends but feels the coders of India today are like the caterpillars who plod their way through while there are more spectacular ways of reaching the various destinations of life.

India Stops Importing Phone and starts Exporting

India world largest Telecom Market stops Importing Mobiles and rather starts exporting them। Import always had its "मच मच "- increased cost , addition to import bill, Loss of foreign exchange . The numbers are also interesting .

Here is another company that is into reducing handset prices for India.


Already Handset prices have hit a new low. I purchased a Nokia 1255 for 1700/- which was being sold at 3000 a year ago. handset prices अब और कितना कम होगा साला .

Smelling Gas !........... smooth

Aaah finally I had something to say........ I had been waiting for these developments to happen for quite some time. The comming of Gas in My Near By Vicinity. Since I stayed in Vasai, Most Vehicles plying in Vasai have to go to the nearest CNG filling point i.e Mira Road....which happens to be 20 Kms from Vasai. For long I had been wondering that It would take years for Gas a gas pipeline to be launched in Vasai. But no !. Things have changed since I discovered this.

Yes ,........ if you search on the internet .....there is this Dahej Uran pipeline ........promising enough to gasify entire Mumbai- Ahemadabad highway.

Add to it ..........I found another Gas filled link on the internet

Yes ........... All till I had become tired of asking people in and around hyderabad whether they have spotted a cng filling station in hyderabad.......or whether they had seen any vehicles plying on CNG..........only to be given bewildered eyes (what the f*#k are you asking ? what are your intentions ? )

Electric Bike

With the advent of electric bike two wheeler travel को एक नया meaning आयेगा . that will bring affordable transport to many here.
Evera  is going to be introduced in the Bombay market in april. The other day I was watchin some series and tthere we they had some special small sized bikes esbeing designed for wome. The home made reva is being upgraded and also being offered to psu’s at a reduced cost. CNG is in adequate in India I hear. Bikes are being fitted with CNG kits nowa days
..Tata has come up with a hybrid version of the indica , Maruti could probably come up with  a similar model too…….don’t what they haveinstore for us.
But yes the Indian road revolution is on its way.

mumbai-pune highway

mumbai-pune highway
Originally uploaded by branditlikeme.

the mumbai-pune expressway , some businessmen opine has or is set to change the way the the whole Mumbai Pune stretch does business. Our government never completes any projects in time. This one too I reckon was completed beyond its completion date. In Austrailia I am told that the state of New south wales is the most populous state and is the place where most of the Australian business is conducted. I feel that Mumbai-pune stretch is somewhat shaping in a similar manner.

here is the actual link

interim thoughts...: Dheeraj learns to work!

interim thoughts...: Dheeraj learns to work!
this is an interesting article on one of the blogs i frequent click here

Readers Dont Digest

I always used to wonder  ‘ साला , why don’t these CEOS write something while Mahesh murthy used to write. ?. I always used to wonder ‘ how come MM finds time to write while other CEOs done find time. And why they only take out time to pose  a broad grin for Business magazines like the one here.

It seems the way it is once someone starts a business he would like to dedicate one full time to that business and except in case of Mahesh Murthy , he goes traveling every time he gets some time. I have been reading his articles from the very beginning and it seems that he does no have anything to write. Especially to all the reader,  जिन्होने painstakingly made an effort to read his article every fortnight.  Especially to all the readers  who have many a times waited eagerly for his article to get published.

Sorry Mahesh Murthy I did’t expect that from u.