I was part of a panel discussion around social networking on a BBC radio program called Four Corners last night. You can listen to the audio here
This was the first time I was on radio and it was an interesting experience. It is truly weird to hear your own voice!
Infosys is planning to hire 25,000 people this year. That is almost 500 a week or 100 a day for each working day of the week or about 12 every working hour of the day or about 1 every 5 minutes! So by the time you are done reading this blog post, Infosys would have added another cog in their well oiled machine.
This rampant hiring raises several issues. By announcing that Infosys will hire 25,000 this year, they might have satisfied their shareholders. But what message are they sending across to existing and prospective employees? That Infosys is no longer an exclusive club? Can their big bosses anymore claim with any credibility that they hire only the best? However big the candidate pool maybe, you can not find 25,000 "best" engineers in an year. The reason why big companies can get away with not so top notch talent is because their processes are so well defined that software development almost mirrors an assembly line. The creativity of the individual hardly seems to come into play.
My first reaction to this was that this is bad news for startups like ours. If companies like Infosys are going to hire in such large numbers, where will the smaller companies find talent from? But after giving it a little thought, I feel that this in fact a blessing in disguise. By hiring in hoards, the big companies have let it be known that they are no longer looking for the best or the brightest. They just need to fill in the numbers. There is hardly any pride left in working for an Infosys or a Wipro when every second guy on the street works there. So while it will get harder for smaller companies to hire in large numbers, my belief is that we will be able to attract a few good top notch engineers who are bored of being lost in the crowd and want to make a difference. And that is all we need. Because unlike others, we are an exclusive club :)
I am sure the world is waiting with bated breath to find out how much moolah I am raking in with my recent sell out (as Santosh puts it!) to commericalism. Well, you will all be excited to know that I am pulling in a princely 90 cents a day on an average! Woo hoo! Since it will take almost 2 years to collect enough to buy a Nokia 9500 at this rate, I am thinking I can instead use the 90 cents to buy an omlette paratha everyday from the dhaba downstairs from my office.
A little bit of research in to the whole adsense thing revealed that an industry exists solely on top of adsense revenues! There are scores of sites which provide tips on how to maximize the ad potential of your website. In fact many websites make over $30,000 a month only from Google ads! However, this is not easy money as it might first appear to be. To make that kind of money, your website needs to provide lot of useful content to be able to attract millions of visitors. The website content has to be such that Google delivers right kind of ads. So its a full time job but it pays well!
Any how, if I can't soon upgrade myself from eating omlette parathas, these ads are going off my blog!
I am experimenting with google ads on my blog. I am curious to see if I can make any money at all from my blog. I want to buy the Nokia 9500 which costs roughly $700. Since I have never bought a cell phone (in US cell phone comes free with the plan), I am reluctant to pay for it out of my pocket (especially when that cell phone costs an arm and a leg!). So I have decided that all "proceeds" from blog ads will go to my cell phone kitty. I just hope my good old T-610 can last till then (unlikely...).
Last month and half have been incredibly busy for me. We were in the endgame for shipping the alpha version of People Aggregator, which is a highly extensible social networking platform. The last few weeks of a release cycle are at least as important as the previous 6 months of development. Several months and years of progress can go to waste if the team loses steam during the end game. I am happy and proud to say that the People Aggregator team truly switched into top gear over the last 2 weeks. The QA team was putting intense pressure and three figure bug counts were giving me sleepless nights! But in the last week alone, the dev team fixed over 150 bugs and made sure the product truly showcases their hard work. On Saturday, we huddled around a computer and pulled the switch on put the code on a live URL. The system is now in limited release as we tweak it further based on user feedback and prepare it for a wider public release.
It is a great feeling to "ship" software. There is nothing like a the final few weeks of a ship cycle to bring a team close together. Countless late nights, having dinner in office, even sleeping over and working on weekends can get stressful and yet it is fun in a strange way when you see the result of your hard work coming to life. I definitely enjoyed it and I hope the team did too!
The current uproar about the decision to increase the reservation of seats in educational institutions to 50% reminded me of the darkest period in Indian history that our generation has witnessed. Most of us (us being folks in mid 20s - "desh ka bhavishya") were too young or not born to witness the Emergency. But I clearly remember the mayhem the country went through when the original Mandal commission recommendations were enforced.
I was in grade 6 or 7 at that time and travelled to school by bus. It started with demonstrations near the Delhi University's south campus area which was on the way to my school. Our bus would be stopped by the protesting college students. Soon it started getting violent and few buses were burnt. Many political parties started organizing "bandhs" (call for closure of all business for a day). Our school being a more prominent one in Delhi decided to play safe and whenever a bandh was organized, our school was closed. It was a game for us kids to check the newspaper each morning to see if it was going to be a holiday or not. The protests continued to escalate and reached a crescendo when one college student immolated himself and very nearly died. Another student was shot by the police while protesting. At this point, all schools decided to call for early summer vacations. We had almost 4 months of vacations that year and even the school homework was mailed to us. I was too young to properly comprehend what was happening but it was apparent that this quota thing would affect us when we were old enough to go to college. That was also the first time we heard terms like "SC", "ST" and "OBC". That one summer caused a whole generation to become acutely aware of the caste differences that exist in our society.
The student protests subsided with time and the Mandal commission recommendations were implemented. But it led to the downfall of the V.P. Singh government - the first non Congress govt. since emergency. Congress soon came back into power. At this time India was on the verge of bankruptcy and had to actually pawn off gold to prevent from defaulting on loan payments. Manmohan Singh was forced to implement economic reforms and open up the economy. Rest of course, is history.
The summer of 1990 is etched in the minds of our generation. As a nation, we hit an abyss of despair and hopelessness that summer. It was the time when "kya hoga is desh ka" (what will happen to this nation) dominated drawing room discussions. Looking back, it was perhaps the year when we hit rock bottom and slowly started to bounce back. 16 years hence, the ghosts of Mandal Commission are back to haunt us. We have a good thing going and I hope we will not let petty caste politics to come in our way.
My stature as a cricket fan went up a few notches few days back when I learnt that I am only 3 degrees away from Rahul Dravid! Rahul is a friend of a friend of a friend! OK I know that doesn't count for much but I am working my way up. One day I hope to be hanging out with the team in their dressing room (dream big, they taught in school!).
Last week I was priviliged to watch the one-day international between India and England in Faridabad. We had upper pavillion passes so the view was as good as it can be. Ashish was supposed to go but had to back out at the last minute due to work and I ended up going.
I wont go into the details of the match but needless to say, it was one of most dramatic comebacks India has made in recent times. Suresh Raina was amazing. He treated the English bowlers with disdain, almost contempt. And that too when he is all of 19 years old!
But while we are at it, please spare a thought for the cricket fan - who undoubtedly is the biggest sports fan amongst all. A one day cricket match lasts for roughly 8 hours. To go and watch the match live usually means leaving at 5 in the morning, standing in long queues, paying a fortune for the tickets and then sweating it out in the Indian heat. So after making such a big investment of time, money and effort, if the team doesn't perform, the feeling of disappointment is immense. I felt that way when India had lost to Pakistan last year. I had almost started getting the same sinking feeling this time around too when India slumped to 92/5. We were losing wickets in a bunch and that too to poor shots. Everybody around me in the pavillion was starting to groan about what a waste of time it was to sit out the entire day only to lose so tamely. Fortunately India did make a comeback and won a close match. But even if we had lost, do you think that the fans in Faridabad wouldn't have come to watch the next time India plays there? No way! The stands will always go full. People will continue to sweat it out, continue to take a day off from work to watch the match and continue to be eternally optimistic of their team's chances. Such is the anatomy of the Indian cricket fan. I doubt any soccer, basketball or baseball fans can even come close! Long live the Indian cricket fan!
I finally got around to uploading the presentation I made at the BarCamp. I had talked about my experiences as we bootstrapped Tekriti over the last one year. Hemanshu captured the essence of my presentation on his blog well so I will not elaborate much on my slides here.
I will however, like to say few things about bootstrapping vis a vis funding a startup. Bootstrapping basically means creating and sustaining a company without infusion of external capital. The initial capital might be put in by the co-founders or borrowed from friends and family. However, the business plan must enable the company to sustain itself fairly quickly. The other form of setting up a company is by raising venture capital in return for equity. Both approaches have their pros and cons and some companies are impossible to bootstrap (for example, where large amount of capital investment needs to be made in infrastructure or product development).
For first time entrepreneurs, bootstrapping has some advantages:
1. Bootstrapping has a low entry barrier, especially in the case of software startups. Quit your job, get internet and a computer at home and you have your startup right there! You can sell your services and build your product with almost zero investment. Of course this works only if you start small enough. But important point is that you can start your company when you want to. By deciding to bootstrap you have removed the big external factor of raising VC/angel capital.
2. Bootstrapping ensures that you start small. This is really important for us first time entrepreneurs with no prior experience in running a business. When you bootstrap your startup with your own money, you are forced to start small. That is a good thing because it gives you the chance to learn the nuts and bolts of running a company at your own pace. As you learn, your company grows. So chances of things getting out of hand are reduced.
3. Bootstrapping keeps you honest with your money. I think bootstrapped companies are more conscious about keeping their costs in check. Since essentially they start from a zero bank balance, they value money more.
4. Finally, bootstrapping prepares you for eventually raising money. This is yet to be validated by us since we have not yet tried to raise money for Tekriti. But I feel that we would be better equipped to present our case to VCs if we can demonstrate that we have acquired the previously missing business experience while bootstrapping a company. Of course, you get better valuation as well if you already have a company up and running as against having just an idea and a business plan.
So, if you want to startup, do not be afraid to explore the possibility of bootstrapping. Starting up a company does not always require huge amount of money. It can be done with just a computer and internet!
My post regarding job quotas in private sector got several comments. Krish also posted a detailed comment regarding this.
The crux of most comments can be summarized from this quote by sach1tb
For a private enterprise, profit is the only aim, which explains optimizing one's workforce to achieve greater revenue. But the government, on the other hand, has a social responsibility. Few enterprises can boast of a social impact -- most of them are large ones, who finally got time and money to help. Taking in a few of the underprivileged, not as a favour but a responsibility, is what small companies can do to decrease the social (read financial) disparity. And yes, a rising economy, when it fills our pockets instantaneously, and promises a much delayed and indirect impact on the lower classes, isnât going to help too.
I do not agree that profit is the only aim of private enterprises. While social upliftment is not and can't be a prime motive for most private enterprises, it is in the interest of companies to contribute to larger social causes. A more prosperous society provides for a stable political environment, creates a larger consumer base and allows for harmonious conduct of business. So almost selfishly, enterprises must participate with the government in bringing social upliftment. However, forced job reservation is not the way to go. Even from a logistics point of view, maintaining right quotas is a nightmare for a small company. If an employee from a particular category leaves, a candidate from the same category must be hired irrespective of availability. Secondly, such regulations are prime targets for the dreaded "inspector raaj". This can only make things harder for small companies. Finally, job reservation can have an adverse affect on interpersonal relationships within an organization since anybody who joins via reservation will be percieved to have lower ability even though that might not be true at all. Reservation in educational institutions can be justified to an extent because it levels the playing field for everybody. But beyond that, ability and not caste should alone be the criteria for selection.
What we need are stringent laws to ensure there is no discrimination in the workplace based on caste, color or gender. Even private companies should have no right to summarily reject an applicant on the basis of their caste or sex.
