1.
I travelled to Pune for a few days this week. I was recovering from the cough, cold and headache during the first couple of days, with a runny nose and runny eyes as well. Got better through the journey and healed by the time I got back. Pune was hot, it was 40 or 41 degrees. When I landed in Pune, I felt the color palette of the whole scenery was light brown, like the filters used in some western movies to get a dull desert like color. Irony was after we finished, return flight from Pune was delayed due to thunderstorms. Rain water was falling in sheets not drops from the airport roof. It was worth the trip though - to meet a lot of people, get a sense of what is going on and orient myself. A few vignettes from that travel and conversations as notes this week.
2.
“If I get to know people, they will come to me with their problems too, which will increase my workload”
“Oh, you are also from the same project? I had seen you around, but never realized”
Current hybrid work is a mess. People come to the office, but are not working together in solving a common problem. They are not learning from each other. Communication is fragmented and formal. It is individuals, not communities with a common purpose. Associations are by factors like college alumni, from the same state/district or such, rather than a shared journey on which people travel for a few years.
It is going to impact career of new people coming to the industry, with less rigorous training during covid years, setting lower standards of excellence, incomplete understanding of the overall picture of why we do what we do, not being able to learn from seniors, setting them on confused path of how to get work done without understanding the right way and why it should be so, focusing on wrong incentives since they do not know what else should they care about.
Managers are overworked since they need to spend more effort in repeating messages for different people, in different formats and follow up more to get things done since motivation and ownership is low. This stress and isolation is leading to mental health issues. Need to figure out how to fix and try whatever is in our control.
3.
“Procurement processes are light, it is easier and quicker to start a new project and they follow light software development process”
I met someone working in Consumer Technology and was discussing the procurement, vendor management and deal consultants complicating the contracting and governance in big enterprises and how Big Tech is different. They understand software development more fundamentally and don’t have to apply the procurement processes for the larger business to the software as well. They understand the right questions to ask to govern software projects and rely on just enough engineering metrics.
4.
“He was able to lay down the strategy and follow through with execution as well.”
We were comparing leadership styles of different leaders we had come across. We have seen leaders who are exceptionally brilliant, but neurotic in ways which makes them difficult to work with. I felt it is the basic, simple processes and ideas that are difficult to implement in large organisations and the ones who are able to cut through the red tape, keep it simple and be relentless in execution succeeds.
5.
“Business users can create a user story directly from the Business Intelligence dashboards, complete with solution options”
Generative AI hype is at peak. I attended demos from Nvidia and Amazon and this was one of the demos - to generate a user story to improve a business process after identifying an opportunity through review of a business metric trend. It seems the number of proof of concepts being done is huge, but the number of production implementations is less. Concerns on security, scale, cost, vendor lock in and data are yet to be solved fully. It will be interesting if the experiments succeed in the next one year.
6.
“What is the package? What is the take home per month? Is there overtime pay?”
This was a conversation I overheard in the return flight, from two seats back. An “uncle” was quizzing a helpless seatmate who he just met, after telling her about his multi crore building projects. These status games played by the “uncles” and “aunties”, along with the lifestyle changes have made it difficult for youngsters. Aspirations of generations should change and companies shouldn’t exploit youngsters by underpaying, but the type of work, need to find a lifelong passion and finding an environment that is stimulating have taken a backseat.
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