Month: May 2008

Categories
Thoughts

Pick Pocket

Two guys are walking down a dark alley when a mugger approaches them and demands their money. They both grudgingly pull out their wallets and begin taking out their cash.
Just then, one guy turns to the other, hands him a bill, and says, “Hey, here’s that $20 I owe you.”
—

Jokes apart,
Today in the crowded bus, somebody picked my pocket and stole my phone. (so I would be without a cellphone or any electronics gadget for the next 30 days)
The strangest thing is that all throughout the trip, I was concerned by my wallet. One of my closest friend whose phone got stolen 6 months ago, also had the same feeling just before his phone was stolen. I wonder how often do we exhibit clairvoyance, getting a bad feeling just before something bad has happened.

Categories
Thoughts

Productivity

Apple with 21,000 employees can generate an annual revenue of over 25Billion USD
Microsoft with 79,000 employees generate a revenue of 51 Billion USD

While Infosys with over 90,000 employees generate a revenue of just 3 billion USD.
Similarly Wipro and TCS have more than the workforce of Microsoft, yet they generate only 5-6% of the revenues which this software giant generates.

Now for these companies to reach the size of Microsoft or any other technology giant, need to generate atleast 20 times the revenue. And going by the past trends, the only way they can achieve that is by hiring 20 times the workforce.
i.e. hiring 1.8 million employees each. Staggering numbers, isn’t. Even at current levels these companies find it hard to hire. I wonder if it is feasible to ever reach 1.8 million workforce.

The other approach might be to make the workers work 20 times harder… i.e. instead of a regular 8 hour shift, make them work 160 hours shift. Unfortunately a day has only 24 hours. Also almost everybody from Indian IT industry that I meet is swamped with work. They already put in long hours and I doubt if making them work any harder would benefit at all.

Ever wondered how can a country of a billion souls be short in labor?
Why is it that all the industries are finding shortage of manpower?

So the answer lies in productivity. The companies need to work smarter, cut the flab, inefficiencies and need to start respect employee’s time and efforts. Only after they start doing that, can they get the most out of an employees.

If you look at farmer suicide, the reason is not availability of loans or bad monsoon. The fundamental reason is low productivity. The average per capita income of a farmhand is couple of dollars per day of manual labor. On top of that if you add the fact that urban labors are paid either daily/weekly/monthly, while a farmer earns his bulk of income during harvest which happens 2-3 times a year, poverty is inevitable. The only way around would be to increase productivity. Either by encouraging surplus labor to move to cities or by opening up more and more rural industries. However productivity is never a key word whenever I hear about India’s grand plans to beat the West in development.

I took TCS, INFOSYS and Wipro as an example. Primarily because these are believed to be the most modern of Indian companies. Also it is easier for IT companies to enforce the best business practices than the legacy Brick and Mortor industry.

 

Categories
Humor Miscellaneous

economics of vanity

i saw this article on my fav blog. and i could not stop laughing.

I RECENTLY overheard an interesting conversation between two co-workers. After a female economist returned from a sun-filled holiday a male colleague (also an economist) remarked, “You look much hotter tan.”

She thanked him, but noted the decision to tan may suffer from time inconsistency. “A tan marginally increases your attractiveness now, but you will regret it in twenty years when your skin looks like leather. One day I will look back and think: why did I bother? I looked fine tan or pale in my youth. You fool yourself tanning by now and thinking you won’t care about the consequences in the future.”

He argued the value of looking your best when young is greater than the value of looking better when old. Beautiful women attract more suitors. Thus, looking great now improves a woman’s marriage prospects. The dividends of which will pay off for the rest of her life (securing the necessary botox). He suspected her discount rate is too low.

She countered as you get older the marriage market become more competitive for women, all the more reason to maintain a smooth complexion. Also vanity does not diminish as you age.

No complement between two economists goes unpunished.

Categories
review

Parting Gift

Today my best friend and my office colleague gave me gave me this book:
Richard Branson’s “Screw it, Let’s do it”. Along with it, he gave me one of the best handwritten note I have ever seen.

The guy in the book
is just like you
a genius,
loving life to the core,
Crazy enough to try the impossible
and
Succeeds every time
and
Never Finished …….

All the Best.

When was the last time someone captured the essence of you so accurately and was actually able to put in words?

Categories
Thoughts

Why girls dont love software guys….?

This is part of the wonderful email forwarded by Sudarshan Kadam

Categories
Miscellaneous

Bengaluru International Airport

Bangalore is proud to present a new airport. After 10 years of delay and colossal cost overruns, this airport would be finally open. The best part of the airport is that a drive to the airport would take more time than the actual flight. Hence for most of the destinations in the South India, it would be faster to take a train than to take a flight. And did i forget that it is so expensive that for the past 1 decade govt was collecting extra tax on the petrol sold in Bangalore for it, and now on top of that you will have to shell out a hefty User development fees.

Anyways for those of you who would be unfortunate enough to use it, here are a few useful maps.

Continue reading “Bengaluru International Airport”
Categories
News

Being Handicapped gives unfair advantage

I read this interesting post about how a strong willed man overcome his disability and regular, able-bodied athletes are using every dirty trick in the book to ensure that this man without any legs is ineligible for participation in the Beijing Olympics.

Well they should be scared, Oscar Pistorius, the 21-year-old South African paralympic, can run 400m in just 46.34 seconds (against the 8 year old world record by Michael Johnson of 43.18 seconds).

Categories
Thoughts

Tagged Again

I was tagged by Nita and now by Amit. Hence this post.

I usually don’t write a lot about myself on this blog, but about an year ago I had written some 8 random facts about me and this would be the second such post.

1. Last movie you saw in a theater?
I saw Denzel Washington’s Out of time on DVD.
Its a nice movie about a police officer who is being investigated for murder of his mistress and is investigated by his Ex-Wife.

2. What book are you reading?
The Man
This is an interesting fictional book about a Black US President who came to Power in the 60’s and is about to be impeached.

3. Favorite board game?
Jenga
Although each game lasts for no more than 10-15 minutes, but every second spend there is nail biting.

4. Favorite magazine?

Economist. I also often quote its article on ENagar 🙂

5. Favorite smells?
First rain of monsoons falling on dry earth.
And the smell of a girl’s hair.

6. Favorite sounds?
The sound of Payel.

7. Worst feeling in the world?
Waiting for the final verdict on an unfavorable outcome.

8. What is the first thing you think of when you wake up?
Where is that damm Alarm.

9. Favorite fast food place?
I am a kind of person who can spend 4 hours over a nice lunch. A great meal is always served in multiple courses, and is accompanied by beverages and an interesting conversation.

10. Future child’s name?
I don’t think after marriage a guy retains a right to take any decision.

11. Finish this statement. “If I had lot of money I’d….?
Go on a world tour.

12. Do you sleep with a stuffed animal?
No, nothing other than a pillow and a bed sheet.

13. Storms – cool or scary?
Its scary only when I am flying, else its time to race to the roof and enjoy the whether.

14. Favorite drinks?
Wine 🙂

15. Finish this statement, “If I had the time I would….”?
Take a vacation and travel.

16. Do you eat the stems on broccoli?
No idea what that is.

17. If you could dye your hair any color, what would be your choice?
I like my natural color – black.

18. Name all the different cities/towns you’ve lived in?
Don’t ask me.
New Delhi, Mumbai, Jhasi, Itarsi, Lucknow, Varanasi, Vadodara, Kota, Raipur, Calcutta, Patna, Gwalior, Kharagpur, Jabalpur and Bangalore.
Add to that, I would be amongst the rarest of the Indians who can claim to have travelled to each and every state of the country (Lakshadweep and Andaman Islands are the only 2 major places where I have not gone)

19. Favorite sports to watch?
Water-Polo, and Video Games

20. One nice thing about the person who sent this to you?
Nita is a great Journalist and I love Amit’s comments and his posts.

21. What’s under your bed?
I believe in spartan lifestyle and sleep on the floor.

22. Would you like to be born as yourself again?
Sure, I love my life 🙂

23. Morning person, or night owl?
I am most productive in the morning, but I like to reserve it for personal work.

24. Over easy, or sunny side up?
Sunny side up 🙂

25. Favorite places to relax?
In the lap of my mom 🙂

26. Favorite pie?
I prefer cakes.

27. Favorite ice cream flavor?
Vanilla, but only if it is made from real Vanilla beans.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Why I won’t order from Dominoes anymore.

For the past 3-4 months, I have been working almost 16 hours a day. Since today I did not even have the time to walk to the restaurant for a dinner, I thought of ordering Pizza.

Here is my experience:
1) I went to the website to try to locate the phone number of the nearest outlet. But after the home page, any other access results in the following output:

2) So I thought I would call up their Hungry Kya Helpline 1800-111-123.
3) It was promptly picked up and the order was taken.
4) After 5 minutes, when I provided the address, immediate reply came: “Sorry our branch does not cover your area. I will give you the number of the nearest outlet, you can place your order there.”
5) I told them this is my order, why don’t they call up the other store/do an online transfer of order. But they don’t have this provision.
6) I finally called up the second store, they said there is an outlet in the basement of my building and this is its address. Hence wasting another 5 minutes of my time.
7) When I called up their 3rd store, they said: “Thank you for calling Dominoes…. blah blah blah…. sorry due to too much order volume we won’t be able to service your order for the next 50 minutes” (BTW it was a normal weekday, no special occasion or weekend rush)

How can a store whose marketing is centered around home delivery and Hungry Kya concept except that their customer would starve itself for 50 + 15 = 1hour 5 minutes?
Why do they so proudly advertise their phone number when it does not work?
Do they really think a customer would be patient enough to repeat the order 3 times?
What is the use of advertising the 30 minutes guarantee when every time they have some excuse or the other to not commit to it?
Why don’t they fix their website?
Why can’t they put a simple call center. You order there and the order would be routed to the nearest store?

Am I asking too much… It took me less time to go all the way to the restaurant, have a nice meal and come back.

Categories
Cartoons

decision making

dilbert
Ever wondered how even though everybody wanted to be involved in decision making, nobody actually want to take the responsibility of making a decision?