self managed

Was reading this:-

Take the September 24-30 issue of The Economist. Page 76, opened at random, offers some startling statistics about how companies work inside. According to a study commissioned by Dov Seidman, author of "How," 43% of American employees surveyed say their company works on a command-and-control culture–management by coercion. Another 54% say their employers are top-down, but with a dollop of carrots and sticks, and talented leaders who try to inspire followership–a category Seidman calls "informed acquiescence." Only 3% actually practice employee self-governance, where a shared set of values and principles guide employees in their work and align them with the company’s larger purpose.

The Economist goes on to report that, unlike the employees in the belly of the beast, the bosses at the tops of companies who were interviewed saw a very different picture. Bosses, according to the study, are 8 times more likely than the average to say that their company is self-governing. 27% of the bosses say their employees are inspired by the company–only 4% of the employees see it that way. 41% of the bosses say their company rewards performance based on values, rather than purely on financial results–14% of the employees agree.

What does the gap cost companies?

What I am not clear is how to actually “practice employee self-governance”. Sometime back while attending Agile Project Management, I heard about “self-managed teams” and “situational leadership” – rather than leadership through assigned authority, people from the team who are best suited for a job picks up a task or a challenge and leads the team to manage that particular situation. I can imagine this working out for a startup or an open source project etc. I am very curious on how to make it work in our kind of environment. Keeping apart all that is not within our control, it would be an interesting experiment. Like in a project if the tasks are open for all to see and people picks up tasks to do, like the collaboration tool being talked about here.

Well Read IT guy

I was looking for what is recommended as the must reads for an “IT Professional”. Below is the most recommended ones I came across, not in any particular order. If you know any other must read, do leave a comment.

1. Code Complete – Steve McConnell
2. The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master – Andrew Hunt, David Thomas
3. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code – Martin Fowler
4. Introduction to algorithms – Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein
5. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs – Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman, Julie Sussman
6. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software – Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides (Gang of Four)
7. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering – Fred Brooks
8. Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams – DeMarco and Lister
9. The design of everyday things – Donald Norman
10. The Timeless Way of Building – Christopher Alexander
11. Psychology of Computer of Programming – Gerald Weinberg
12. Making Things Happen : Mastering Project Management – Scott Berkun

I have read about 6 of above. Other than that, below are some of the books I read and I would recommend, even though some of it is not exactly related to IT as such:-

1. iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It – Steve Wozniak. Got to the book after listening to his talk through IT conversations. Inspiring.
2. Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary – Linus Torvalds. Again in the list just to have read about one of the heroes.
3. Extreme Programming Explained – Kent Beck . Read this (or Test Driven Development) to atleast to know that there are other ways to do this.
4. Drive: Surprising Truth about what motivates us – Dan Pink. Just finished – will write a review later.
5. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – Robert Pirsig . Might be recommended in any list.
6. Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully – Gerald Weinberg. It was a useful read, on working with customers.
7. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey
8. Dilbert and the way of the weasel: Scott Adams (or one of any other book by Scott Adams may be a must read – just to make sure we don’t slip into weasel behavior)
9. Outliers – Malcolm Galdwell. He tells good stories, even if it may project the points he wants to prove. Read this atleast to comfort ourselves that genius can be made with deliberate practice.
10. Innovation and Entrepreneurship – Peter Drucker. Even if you don’t start a new business, even to do innovation in smaller ways, this might be useful.
11. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die – Dan and Chip Heath.
12. How to Win Friends & Influence People – Dale Carnegie. Including just because they may be others like me in this community who need some help..:)

Some other books recommended by different lists:- Working Effectively with Legacy Code, Godel/Esther/Bach, Sun Tzu, Practice of Programming (Kernighan and Pike), blogs/books like Paul Graham, Joel Spolsky, Seth Godin.

Also need to mention – Joel Spolsky’s list which I have used as reading list in past.

morning walk

I went for a walk/run today morning, after maybe 3 years break – was able to complete one round of a football field. Incidentally the field was in the same college where I had gone to collect application forms around 18 years back (time does fly). We need to cross this field to reach the office, it was deserted that day. I got robbed while returning after collecting the forms and being my first experience in a college campus, I didn’t know that one should keep the mouth shut – I said something sarcastically, the guy punched me hard in the stomach, I lost my breath and he kicked me for a good measure. That was it, I never set foot in that college afterwards and didn’t apply there as well. About a year ago we moved into a house right across that college, so now from the living room, my view is of this football field. It is now a morning walk destination for residents around the place, so today I decided to start. College had changed, but the field and the broken steps, overgrown bushes that cover the stands – all of it remains exactly the same.


Anyway the run felt really good. Planning to do it for 10 days at a stretch without any evaluation (my rule for making any habit). This quote comes to mind – "Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t shoot their husbands, they just don’t." – From Legally Blonde, Elle’s reason for defending someone. I need some endorphins these days..:)

thinking about balance

Slow and steady wins the race. Being very fast wins it too.
You should be confident. But have humility and don’t be arrogant.
Be practical, but stick to principles.
Have rules, but not too many.
Be obedient, but nobody great was ever obedient.
Get a degree, but college education is a waste of time.
Earn money, but too much money means no life.
Have passion for the job, but being too passionate about your job could lead to being a workaholic.
Always move forward. Never look back and wonder. But history repeats itself and one should learn from the mistakes.
Be honest, but too much honesty could cost you.
Talk to enemies, but get your job done.
Satisfy the customer, but not at a cost.
Make a profit, but don’t be greedy.
Be transparent, except when it can hurt you or someone else.
Have a great career, but give time to family, don’t stress too much.
Be ambitious, but be ethical.
All we want is peace of mind and being comfortable, but don’t be in your comfort zone, push yourself.
Be a capitalist, except when it hurts people.
Don’t care for the rules, but I want that which the people who follow rules get also.
Be data oriented, but too much data is a problem.
You manage what you can measure, but learn to manage what you cannot measure also.
Be in control, but too much control is a problem.
Reconcile all view points, but don’t get paralyzed.
Be objective, but be subjective also.
Assertive, not pushy.
Take credit, but don’t gloat.
Time vs cost
Cost vs quality


Don’t choose "Neither Agree or Disagree". Find a balance, but don’t stand in the middle of the road where you can get hit by both sides.

Wayanad and Ooty

8 days, 1400 kilometers, 4 hotels, one burst tire – had a great trip to wayanad and ooty. Wayanad was on our list for so long and it didn’t disappoint at all. We visited Tirunelli temple, Banasura Sagar Dam, Pookode Lake, drove to the base of Chembra peak, Soochipara waterfalls and stayed at Vythiri resort for one day. Drives were great – way to Lakkidi, Tirunelli temple, drive through Meppadi to Ooty, way to Chembra peak. Wayanad roads were pretty bad at stretches. It must be in one of those ditches, my tire was torn, not punctured. I found that I didn’t have the wrench, but luckily found help – there were multiple tire repair shops in that town. It was like déjà vu – I had seen a comedy clip from a movie a week back, it was about three people who called themselves “Puncture Brothers”. They would put some nails on the road, someone will wait around for a car to go over them and then they will be around for help. This town was just like that – with such roads around, they must be getting good business. Anyways went through even worse roads after that which should be taken in a Jeep preferably, but didn’t have any more problems. I guess it has become a common knowledge that as soon as you enter Tamil Nadu, roads will become better – even the way to Ooty from Wayanad (through Meppadi) was pretty good.


Vythiri Resort needs a special mention – it is worth a visit even if it is expensive. Couple of weeks back I read a novel “the Beach” on which a movie is also made – which is based on a pristine Thai island with heaven like setting, beautiful untouched waterfall etc. This might be a miniature version of it. Permanently wet from continuous rain, a private waterfall, mountain stream running through the resort and a natural rain forest. Food there was also exceptional.

A friend told us that Ooty will be disappointing after Wayanad. It was not completely true. We didn’t stick to Ooty proper as such. Went out to Paikara lake, Kotagiri/Kodanad (views were like places from Lord of the Rings – there was one peak which even looked like the castle from LOTR), Avalanche/Emerald lake and dam, Lamb’s rock, Dolphin’s nose. Drive back through Coonoor-Mettupalayam road was also good.

So far found hotel reviews (trip advisor mainly) to be good and Google maps (supplemented with wikimapia for a few) haven’t cheated (with a generous amount of confirmations on the way – people are very helpful). Maps in Kerala have been pretty accurate so far, but those in Tamil Nadu still to earn that trust – there are often no names for roads and no landmarks to confirm with – often it is like go 4 kms, then turn right, go 6 kms further, turn left etc.

I had attended an Agile Project Management session this week. I have never executed project in agile mode yet, but have read/evaluated methodologies for quite some time. I think the fundamental philosophies (better collaboration, prototyping / visible working software, customer involvement, prioritized requirements, self managed team taking responsibility without assignment, just enough documentation and processes, adaptability) is something that should be practiced irrespective of the methodologies used, even if it is waterfall.


One thing though – there was one statement that “people don’t know what they want, until they see it”. Maybe corollary is that “when they see it, they would want something changed still”. It is so true in real life. I am going to go off on a tangent. I keep hearing so many things from people about what they want to do – one thing is common, most of people want to do something other than what they are doing, but don’t know exactly what. I feel those who know what they want clearly and be sure that they will be happy when they get exactly what they wanted are lucky (and must have done their research well or have great clarity of mind). If only we could work towards what we want (“see / experience / prepare for / learn about” the thing we want) while trying to reconcile with what we have now in the best possible way..

Obama

Once more, people are writing off Obama – there are articles about how he could be one term president (he said he would rather be good one term president one and half years back). So the story continues with another twist.


I have been following Obama’s story since almost four years. I first heard about Obama through a Time magazine article when he was a senator – it was portraying him as potential presidential candidate. From then, I have watched the speech at DNC which made him a contender overnight, read the profiles of everyone associated with him – his mother, father, wife, advisers like Plouffe, Axelrod, Jarret, Gibbs, signed up on his election website to receive news, followed primary by primary, every debate, elections, through every up and down, inauguration and state of the union addresses and got familiar with sites such as TPM, DailyKos and even know which columnists are his fans and which are not. It is a fascinating story – or the media and his PR sells it like it is fascinating like everything American sold as larger than life (“leader of the free world”, “world series” etc) – either way it is an interesting story.

His was a long odds victory – maybe at a time when nobody else was eligible or credible enough after the disaster of Bush junior. At multiple points in the campaign it looked like he will surely lose. When videos of his pastor denouncing 9-11 came up or when he was associated with a domestic terrorist since they were in same neighborhood, fears of him being Manchurian candidate, fears that he is Muslim (his middle name being Hussain), fear of him being socialist etc. The guy has delivered every time to turn them around.

By the time he was elected, stock market crashed, auto industry was going bankrupt, two wars were going on and depression was imminent. Stimulus worked to an extent, auto industry was saved, one war is closed at least on paper, another getting closed on paper, avoided getting into third at least directly and things were starting to turn around. Then came healthcare bill and brutal battle in which again he almost failed only to turn it around at last minute – he was called granny killer, Nazi, Hitler. Tea party came up with still doubts on where their funding is coming from.

Now he is being written off yet again as someone who cannot close decisions, ”leading from behind”, not being able to empathize, professor rather than a leader, inexperienced, weak, good campaigner but poor execution etc. May be most of it is true. He seems to be seeking compromise in everything and as they say “those who stand in the middle of the road get hit from both sides”. It might be a failure of too much compromise.

Other thing is, when and how to decide if someone is poor performer or if truly situations are against him. There are some who have made up their mind long back that he is going to be a failure and exactly why. He seems to say always that he is doing the right thing which will take longer time to realize and don’t judge based on short term news cycles – that factor (of long term planning and thinking) was there to witness at least during campaign (how they plotted winning the primaries by numbers and the 50 state strategy etc).

So now another twist is setup. Fear of yet another recession, Fed outlook says economic situation will continue until 2013, expecting more cuts which will be unpopular etc, it again looks like lost cause. So they have set it up as another underdog story with a villain as well (extreme right wing).

balance

Good quote

Everyone can look perfect or they can look terrible. And it’s true for every job, as well. Every boss. Every co-worker.

It’s a pretty safe bet that we all live our lives somewhere between the perfect and the terrible. And nothing is really really good always. But there is still sometimes. Because the really really good parts exist only in brief moments.

So when you think you need to switch jobs, or switch cities, or switch spouses, or switch any of the other bazillion things that you might feel are not as good as they should be, remind yourself that your job, your family, and even your dinners are probably pretty much the same as everyone else’s. And remind yourself to enjoy those brief, really, really good parts.

Count your blessings kind of thing. But mainly I thought it is interesting about balance between perfect and terrible.

“well-read” for an IT guy?

There was a library newsletter with list of new books acquired. It had books like “25 Stupid Mistakes, Stock Market”and “SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS -The Birbal Way” – so I asked them what is the criteria of selecting books to buy since the library don’t have books like Mythical Man Month, Making Things Happen, Design of Everyday Things etc. They replied promptly (happily surprised) to send a book recommendation and they will consider. I use this reading list as one reference. What would be a good list?


Two quotes:- about winging it without reading the masters of the field

How dare we, then, decide to just wing it? To skip class. To make up history. To imagine that science is a matter of opinion, something optional, a diversion for the leisure classes… How can we work in the marketing tech field, for example, without knowing about David Ogilvy and Lester Wunderman and Claude Hopkins? Or Kaushik and Shirky?

in similar lines, about learning the history of your chosen field

Learn all of the history of your chosen field. I always wonder why all crappy bands sound the same but the bands that make it through history (whether you like them or not: the Beatles, U2, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, etc.) have such unique sounds. Part of it is by studying as much as possible the entire history of your chosen field. I keep telling my kids: if they want to learn to sing, or to tap dance, or draw manga comics, or to do anything, use YouTube or whatever to learn everything you can about all the masters in your field over the past 100 years.
Learn all of their styles, learn how to mimic them, learn their styles better than they knew them and what influenced them. Be able to recognize them at a moment’s glance. And only then will you start to develop your own unique style, which you can only then begin to master. Louis Armstrong did this, studying every musician he could, working with every musician he could, blowing on the trumpet every day for 60 of the 70 years of his life. That’s the only way to get good. To be better than the other six billion people on the planet who would like to be as good as you would like to be. How can you compete against that? Only hard work backed by true, sincere passion.

So if you want to say, how can you work in IT without having read so and so – what might that be?

drop or support an underperformer

At lunch, we were discussing about Dhoni persisting with Piyush Chawla and leaving out Ashwin saying he is more stable character. Similarly read the criticisms of Kamran Akmal and why five Pakistan captains have carried him so far. It may be too simplistic to think that these are simply captains’s choices alone, but still.


I think the question is how far do you support someone with the hope that he will rectify his mistakes, find his form and ride this blip? How do you know that by giving someone a chance to not let him down is actually putting him a bad position of having to perform something he cannot at the moment? How do you know if your ultimate support for someone who is underperforming is not bordering on cronyism? Sometimes letting someone down may be good for both the parties, but it is a hard thing to do.

The reason these resonated so much with me is, once I had persisted with a team mate thinking he will improve, by trying to mentor until customer asked to remove him from the team at which point it felt worst for him. It was a life-long lesson – that if I had acted decisively before, I could have avoided the larger pain for everyone. I know it is an argument like the one Jack Welch would make about how firing someone is actually good for him, but most of us have become set in our ways and if mistakes repeat, it cannot magically turn the other way round – that is just wishful thinking.

random

1. There is a standing debate on whether to become a specialist or generalist. I guess sitting on the fence on that is called versatilist. I had an option once to move into a package specific group after working on it for years, but decided against it since I didn’t want to do that alone for rest of my life. Gaining enough depth is some things and enough breadth was more appealing – trick probably is to know what is enough depth/breadth and not end up knowing nothing. Jack of some trades and master of few?


2. My current project is doing a transition for 3 months and moved on from knowledge transfer to secondary support, we were discussing today morning about subtle differences in the way things were explained in classroom vs how they are actually done. Happened to see this article today on procedural knowledge – obvious stuff, but it is expressed well. Article quotes from the book The Design of Everyday Things by David Norman (had this book in my list for too long – ordered today):-

People function through their use of two kinds of knowledge: knowledge of and knowledge how.
…
Knowledge how [is] what psychologists call procedural knowledge.
…
Procedural knowledge is difficult or impossible to write down and difficult to teach. It is best taught by demonstration and best learned through practice. Even the best teachers cannot usually describe what they are doing. Procedural knowledge is largely subconscious.

3. Four levels of business knowledge:- 1. Data 2. Information – context of data and purpose of it 3. Insight – what information actually means 4. Wisdom – how to achieve a goal using insight and experience. Good framework to think about any knowledge. 

initial advantage

"They say the secret of success is being at the right place at the right time, but since you never know when the right time is going to be, I figure the trick is to find the right place and just hang around."
— Bill Watterson

I have saved this strip – I think it follows where Calvin hopes if the right place is a comic book store, so you can hang around in front of that.

I was thinking about this initial advantage. Heard this in Radiolab podcast On Success with Malcolm Gladwell as well – about a random initial advantage maximized over a period of time. Of course, small things like hardwork, passion, attitude and a little bit of genius helps. It is not about the initial advantage through quirks such as which year you were born etc, but advantage created by people with own initiative. I have been involved in setting up a new team recently – given everybody gets same chance and starts from same place, looking at how people come up differently. I have seen people becoming go-to persons in projects without anyone realizing that is what is happening. Last week I was hearing about someone where customer is saying they can start a project, but need one particular person even though he doesn’t have background on the project, but the potential was very obvious. I feel those are people who keep working on some aspects of the project – be it business knowledge or technology – and with enough time and effort spent on their own – eventually it widens the gap with others. I had one person join my previous account during a major technical upgrade project, kept digging into product issues which was not exactly his responsibility and within months became highly regarded by vendor and business partners – it was in an area where we had multiple people released from project due to complaints from a nasty customer contact and I had almost written it off as not possible to turn around.

That is my second thing – I think many people wait for assigning responsibilities before doing something. I think many times we can go beyond the typical assigned responsibilities – yes, some time we get managers who ask you not to be overenthusiastic. I don’t mean it in a way of being over ambitious or doing it in a calculated way. But there are people who learn the most and become such go-to persons (linchpins?) without anybody telling them to be.
Lastly – being hungry for it. I think we need to watch out for that time when we stop learning and stop wanting to do anything other than minimum required.

random

One of the blogs I follow regularly is Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist. Her stories of startups, suffering from Asperger’s syndrome, weird mix of seemingly unrelated anecdotes, personal references and thoughts on career is interesting and often thought provoking. Like this one that Prom is a career stepping stone. Excerpts:-

The thing that is most difficult in work life is adjusting to different cultures as seamlessly as possible. People do not lose jobs because they don’t get the job done. People generally lose jobs because of poor cultural fit. If people think you fit on the team, they’ll cut you slack even when you don’t get the job done. In fact, the Harvard Business Review reports that people don’t even care if you don’t get the job done if they like you.

It’s the getting people to like you part that is so hard.
.. Asians are kicking everyone’s butt in academics. But.. Asians don’t do as well in the workplace. Because the skills that you need to do well in school are not the skills that you need to do well at work. Work is not a meritocracy—it’s a popularity contest.

Also after a long break, I was catching up on Radiolab podcasts this weekend. Radiolab podcasts is science based – they choose all sorts of subjects like time, love, chimps, sleep, parasites; get scientists who are doing interesting work; narrate stories using music and sounds and have delightful hosts who are not really scientists but have long experiences in hosting such programs. Often the topics may seem drab like tumors for example, but the kind of stories they pick, narration and insights will make sure you stay hooked till end.

One of the shows I listened to last weekend was called “strangers in the mirror”. It was with two guys who have face blindness – they can’t remember faces. They were talking about the social awkwardness of it – one of them said he just withdraws from the shame of not identifying the people he is supposed to know and other said he tries to charm his way out of such awkward situations. So other day in the elevator I met a person with whom I had lunch a week back where we were introduced. As he entered elevator I said hi and he didn’t have a clue who I was – then I told him about others who were in that lunch with us etc and his response was to invite me to a dinner which of course never materialized..:)

Follow a career (or a boss?)

Three perspectives on "the boss" from my friends..

– One who quit Infosys to start his own company – he said the best part was "having no boss and being nobody’s boss".
– Second (also ex-Infy) says "They are trying to promote me. I am an excellent programmer. Why would I want to be a mediocre manager?"
– Third feels he should look for a good boss to work with in future, that careers are made by following good bosses in their ventures and growing with them. It could be called "sucking up", but if you are indeed good, working with a good leader can be a learning experience. Like this quote "The advice I give people all the time is pick your manager first. A great manager will negate most other work problems, whereas an awful manager will negate most other work pleasures."


So I guess the choices are don’t be/have a boss or find a good one to work with..

leadership

"When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!’" —Lao-Tsu

This could be the same response from people working for a worst leader also.

communities

I was thinking about what creates a community and holds them together. Specifically communities which are formed naturally by people who are interested rather than a formal organization – like an open source community which works on a problem. Some thoughts

• Shared cause – which can excite / inspire / motivate people, something that can make people automatically follow. Irony usually is, such cause cannot be manufactured – it should be naturally (passionately) felt by the leaders, enough to articulate honestly why we should do something.
• Clear, concise articulation of problem and solution – common cause should be explained in a simple, understandable way, something that can stay in people’s minds.
• Discussion / contribution – if it is information coming from leaders with little contribution from the group, it cannot grow. People should feel it is their baby too who needs to nurtured and grown. There should be opportunities for anyone in the group to take a lead and suggest a change in direction.
• Need strong early contributors – while there is opportunities for all, some early contributors should be encouraged to become regular until the roots take hold and contributions become regular and habitual. For anything to become a habit, discipline in initial period is critical.
• Continuous updates – lack of information can scatter the initial interest, but the story of continuous progress will keep the group engaged.

blow up the constraint

a good quote – for whenever we are stuck in perfect problems. so hard to do.

The only problems you have left are the perfect ones. The imperfect ones, the ones with a clearly evident solution, well, if they were important, you’ve solved them already.
It’s the perfect problems that keep us stuck.
Perfect because they have constraints, unbendable constraints, constraints that keep us trapped. I hate my job, I need this job, there’s no way to quit, to get a promotion or to get a new boss, no way to move, my family is in town, etc.
We’re human, that’s what we do–we erect boundaries, constraints we can’t ease, and we get trapped.
Or perhaps it’s your product or service or brand. Our factory is only organized to make X, but the market doesn’t want X as much, or there is regulation, or a new competitor is now offering X at half the price and the board won’t do anything, etc.
There’s no way to solve the perfect problem because every solution involves breaking an unbreakable constraint.
And there’s your solution.
The way to solve the perfect problem is to make it imperfect. Don’t just bend one of the constraints, eliminate it. Shut down the factory. Walk away from the job. Change your product completely. Ignore the board.
If the only alternative is slow and painful failure, the way to get unstuck is to blow up a constraint, deal with the pain and then run forward. Fast.
– Seth Godin

random

• After a long time of reading only non-fiction, read two fictions in a row – Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse and L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy. Steppenwolf had a very interesting beginning, somewhat Ayn Rand/John Galt style, but it all went crazy after that. It was a struggle finishing it. L.A. Confidential somehow didn’t meet expectations at end – film was better than the book I think. But I had hard time putting it down. I would love to read a book which is “unputdownable” – but less gore, more of life and experiences.
• With British Library closing in TVM, there are fewer options now. My library charges 10% per book, so experimentation is limited. The best library experience was in US – 10 public libraries connected, with a decent online catalog which allows taking a book from any one of the connected libraries and you go to your local library when it is ready. You may take up to 100 books at a time, for free (they depend on public donations to an extent). It was rare to not find a book, fiction or non-fiction.
• For past one month or so, have been coding at least ½ hr a day (new year resolution). Learning Django/Python. Went right in, did a helloworld to get the software setup and started on a project straightaway – to get multiple RSS feeds (google alerts on customers, competitors, technology, domain to begin with) to build a sales news sort of site. As of now up to creating configurable panels (I liked iGoogle panels) using YUI. Learning through an actual project is more interesting than learning the theory first. All you need to have is a good reference, steps to debug and a good IDE.
• In the same way, started building a news reader in Android. I liked NYT news app in Android, but didn’t find anything for Indian news sites. Trying to see if I can build a rudimentary one for Hindu. Reached up to working app with just headings list so far. Two projects help to switch focus when one gets stuck.
• On a related note, read recently about some companies looking for StackOverFlow reputation of new hires – that’s very interesting.
• Back from my 3rd trip to Bangalore in 3 months. For at least a day, I was happy to see the rain soaked TVM with many things not changed for as long as I can remember.