[ Sajith M ]

All employees of the Company are required to be in Business Formal wear on all working days.
Men: Full sleeves light colored shirt, dark trousers, tie, black shoes and dark socks
Women: Western business formals, cotton churidar kameez, salwar kameez, starched cotton saris and professional looking sandals.

The above lines were found in an offer letter from a software development organization based in Trivandrum for the position of Senior Software Engineer. Yes that’s right, they expect you to wear shoes and neckties in the hot and humid Trivandrum. Wow! I am surprised that they actually manage to hire people despite this.

I wonder if there is any justification for a dress code policy at all. If we accept that the primary responsibility of a software developer is to develop and maintain software, does it matter what the person is wearing while he is performing the function that he is hired for. I usually wear t-shirt, denims and sandals to office. Can anyone argue that wearing “Full sleeves light colored shirt, dark trousers, tie, black shoes and dark socks” will make me more productive? Most intelligent beings would be immediately able to answer that in negative. Still people persist with this patently stupid notion called a dress code.

Here are some of the typical arguments for having a dress code. And then my attempt at explaining why its all bull.

• Uniformity: You usually see this in the military. Why should a private firm that is not even remotely linked to the military try to use similar tactics is beyond me. Also, I am unaware of any instance where uniformity has been helpful in the task of software development. Different ideas, different thoughts are actually required in this environment and trying to curb the individualism by imposing uniformity is an attempt at what can only be called self-destruction.
• What would the clients think if they see you: Last few years, I am yet to see someone who was upset on seeing a developer in the casual attire. Am not including people from banking and financial sector as they seem to belong to an entirely different planet altogether. That said. I dress differently when I am meeting a client or a VC. Assuming that you have hired intelligent beings, would it not be better to treat them as such? Would not “dress appropriately” be a better policy than a strict dress code?
• Without a dress code chaos would ensue: Again, I have not seen any evidence of this.
• I like to dress “professionally”: I wonder when and how did a necktie or suit become associated with being professional. But leaving that aside, if you like to dress up, by all means do it. But don’t force others to follow in your footsteps, let them take their decisions.
• It is a career booster: Do you really want to work at a company where how you dress is all that matters? Do you really want to work at a company where the only way to move up the career ladder is to ape the suits? There are plenty of companies out there who would hire you for the skills you bring to the table. Is it not better to work for them instead?

Final Notes
If you are not comfortable dressing “up”, don’t go working for one. When you interview with a firm if all the interviewers are in formals, then that should be a warning signal for you. Heed the warning and don’t walk away, just RUN :-)

Posted under: Thoughts
Tagged with: Dress Code, Formal wear, Software Development, Software Engineer

This is what Obama told a business round table, which comprised of top US CEOs, on Thursday:

The last thing, I think, that we have to pay some attention to is making sure that we’re not dropping back into protectionism.

While one would be tempted to agree with Obama here, the problem seems to be that the US president wants other countries to stay away from protectionism, while the US legislators continue to draw up legislation that smack of protectionism. For evidence look no further than the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 mandating the use of iron and steel and manufactured in the United States or the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) placing restrictions on H-1B visa.

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Section 1110) says, “None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this act may be used for a project for the construction, alteration, maintenance, or repair of a public building or public work unless all of the iron and steel used in the project is produced in the United States”.

While recipients of TARP funds will be subjected to the same rules so-called H-1B dependent employers must follow. (An H-1B dependent employer is one whose workers brought in with that visa comprise 15% or more of the employer’s total workforce.) These rules include:
1. The employer can’t displace any similarly employed US worker with an H-1B hire within 90 days before or after applying for H-1B status or an extension of status.
2. The employer can’t place any H-1B worker at the worksite of another employer, meaning it can’t outsource a worker for a client, unless that employer first makes a “bona fide” inquiry as to whether the other employer has displaced or will displace a US worker within 90 days before or after the placement of the H-1B worker.
3. The employer has to take good-faith steps to recruit US workers for the job opening, at wages at least equal to those offered to the H-1B worker. The employer must offer the job to any US worker who applies and is equally or better qualified than the H-1B worker.

The US protectionist policies would not only erode the competitiveness of US companies, they could also lead to more other countries setting up their own trade barriers, and a tit for tat war could ensue justified by ‘See someone has put up barriers against us, and we are only retaliating against the barriers’. This would be bad for the US economy and the economy of other countries; bad for world economy as a whole.

While this statement from Obama would have been welcome under normal circumstances; under the current circumstances when the legislators are cooking up legislations to arm-twist and enforce the “Buy American” slogan, this statement comes up as being nothing more than pure hypocrisy.

Posted under: Thoughts
Tagged with: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, competitiveness, H-1B, Protectionism, TARP, Troubled Assets Relief Program, United States

The Hindu writes:

“Our activists will go around with a priest, a turmeric stub and a mangalsutra on February 14. If we come across couples being together in public and expressing their love, we will take them to the nearest temple and conduct their marriage” Mr. Muthalik said.

Now is this not absolutely great? I mean this is the best social service anyone can do. Think about it, you love someone but the parents don’t like the idea, so what do you do?
Well, thanks to the Muthalik Wedding Services, all you need to do is be with your loved one and get caught by the activists; they will get you married (hopefully, you won’t be charged for the service) and then you can go back home (now as a couple) and tell everyone concerned that you were forcibly married by Mr. Muthalik’s activists. Ah! Is that not so very simple? :-)

Posted under: Thoughts
Tagged with: Moral Policing

The incident last weekend in Mangalore, in which women were physically assaulted by a bunch of goons bearing allegiance to the Sri Ram Sene – a fringe right-wing outfit – simply because they chose to visit a pub is a matter of shame for the entire nation.

What culture are we talking of protecting? Is violence against anyone you can think of part of this culture? Is assaulting women also part of this culture that we talk of protecting? Does this culture endorse everything that happened at Mangalore?

Some people with a warped sense of Hinduism and Indian culture seem to be hell bent on imposing their view on the majority of people. And so far this intimidating tactic seem to be working with great effectiveness, thanks in no small part to our police force that seems to be virtually blind to everything that happens around it.

Incidentally, Mr. Pramod Muthalik please understand that culture cannot be static, rather it evolves with people. A culture that does not evolve with the times, simply dies. Indian culture is what India is now, it cannot be what India was 500 years earlier, or whatever else is it that you imagine it to be. If you prefer to remain a few centuries behind the rest of us, you are welcome to it; just don’t make everyone else do the same.

Posted under: Thoughts
Tagged with: Mangalore, Moral Policing

First, We had the SHRC exposing the police illegally detaining 11 people including 2 minors. Source

The Karnataka State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) conducted a raid on the Byatarayanapura police station in west Bangalore on Tuesday and found 11 people, including two minors, illegally detained. Byatarayanapura police had not registered any case against the eleven people. There was no record of any of them in the crime diary. Those rescued include Aniyappa (15) and Rajesh (12).

And then we have the commissioner of police calling the raids on the police station unreasonable. Source

Chairman of Karnataka State Human Rights Commission, Justice SR Nayak, said that this was the worst kind of human rights violation. “Children are assets, and we treat them like this,” he said. “The city police have crossed all limits. They do not require any medical evidence to prove that a child is a minor. They have not even registered a case or produced any of them before the magistrate, which has to be done 24 hours after someone is arrested.”
City Police Commissioner, Shankar M Bidari said that it was unreasonable for the SHRC to raid police stations and make statements that people are being detained illegally. “People have to be interrogated and police will keep them in the police station. How else can we detect crime?” he questioned.

Its interesting to note that Mr. Bidari has managed to find plenty of fault with the SHRC while keeping absolutely quite about the grossly illegal acts by his own department. Mr. Bidari since when did you start torturing 12 year old kids to detect crime. It’s not the kids who have committed a crime, rather its your very own department that has. And perhaps instead of finding fault with the SHRC, you should instead find (and fix) the problems with your own department. And yeah, admitting a mistake is not a bad thing if you go ahead and fix it. Try accepting the mistakes and fixing them instead of blaming people who expose the illegal acts of your department.

Posted under: Thoughts
Tagged with: Bangalore, Human Rights, Illegal detention, police, Torture

India’s first Field Marshal, Sam Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw (better known as Sam Bahadur) is no more. He would be remembered for a long time to come. Salute to India’s finest soldier whose last words were “I’m okay!”

Posted under: Thoughts
Tagged with: Field Marshal, Sam Bahadur, Sam Manekshaw

When an employee is fired, the first statement tends to be “Everyone is replaceable”. Oh sure enough everyone is replaceable, but is the cost worth it?

Ideal scenario would be something where a manager would rationally examine a dismissal before making a conclusion and all the while keep emotions out of it. A sensible manager would analyze the cause of the problem, see if it can be fixed, and if it cannot be fixed then (and only then) decide on dismissing an employee after fully considering the effects of the dismissal.

Sure enough, try hard enough and you will be able to find someone who can fill the position. The problem is that the new person does not have a clue of the history and neither does he have the expertise that comes from having worked the job for a while. If you lose someone, that means that you have lost that expertise of how and what the organization does, the history of how things came to be the way they are and of course the human relationships.

If you are considering firing an employee whose performance is failing, stop and think for a moment: whose fault is it? If you hired the person, are you not responsible for a judgmental error of his/her capabilities? Is it (at least partly) not your fault for not providing oversight or not having the employee in the right job for their skill set?
Maybe the person is not right for the current job and needs to be moved to another department. But if you decide to move a person to another department, firing the person for past non-performance is probably the silliest thing that you can ever dream of doing.

Also, should an employee’s performance that has been great in the past be dropping for reasons that are not work related – perhaps a divorce or any other personal problem, a better strategy would be cut back on the work load. Remember, the employee will be there the next year while the problems might not be there.

Having considered the past, present and followed the HR guidelines for performance improvement; the next step would be to consider the costs of dismissing the employee and then weigh them against the cost of working around the problems.

Yes, there are enough professionals out there who you think can fill the position. But it still takes time and money to search for, interview and finally hire a replacement. And that’s not all, there are subsequent costs incurred in training and the learning curve that cannot be eliminated if you want the replacement to assimilate the processes and culture. And finally, you have to consider the impact on the rest of your team. Do not underestimate how they will view the termination, for if they do not believe that the person let go was treated fairly, you sure have trouble at hand.

As a special case, remember that true leaders can probably never be replaced. The best you can do is calculate the damage that would be caused by losing them. Their brain contained vision, knowledge and the game plan that you have lost for ever. Of course not everyone in a leadership position is a true leader, a true leader is one with a vision and the backing of the people whom he is leading. So apply this clause with caution.

So you have done the analysis and feel that you can replace the person and the costs are acceptable, you still should not rush. Before you actually take the decision, it might be a good idea to talk to the peers of the person whom you are about to let go and also your peers – they might have information that you might have overlooked. And finally, you want to handle this in a way that is professional and courteous; do not let this become an ego trip.

As a side note, if you are the manager who thinks he must (or can) dismiss his entire staff, it is best to take an even handed and fair approach to the termination process or else you might find that you are also replaceable.

Posted under: Thoughts

When you started using LimeWire, did anyone ever mention that if you did certain things you might be breaking some laws?
Why would they put it [music] on the internet and invent mp3 players if it was against the law?

Read the complete article here.

Posted under: Thoughts , P2P

Something makes me wonder what is our Health Minister upto? Can this guy focus on developing the standard of health care for this country’s citizens instead of getting involved with everything that he should not be?

So now we have Dr. Ramadoss saying that IT professionals (including BPO employees) get huge salaries but “don’t know how to spend it”. And then going on with “They maintain a sedentary lifestyle. They smoke, go for late night parties and some even take drugs”

Now I don’t know what prompted the minister to jump to such a gross over-generalization, but I guess it would be better if he focussed his energies on improving the health care standards instead of raking up a new controversy every week.

And, oh it would be nice to see a government that does not treat adults as kids who need supervision. And would leave adults to make their own choices instead of ministers’ imposing their views on what is good and what is not.

Posted under: Thoughts
Tagged with: BPO, IT professionals, Ramadoss

The fact that our I&B (Information and Broadcasting) ministry is banning thing again comes as no major surprise. Talk of censorship and ban coming from I&B ministry is no longer surprising. Here is the latest:

Two underwear ads banned for vulgarity

The government has banned two underwear advertisements for indecency and vulgarity. The information and broadcasting (I&B) ministry has directed all television channels to stop screening advertisements of Lux Cozy and Amul Macho with immediate effect.

Television channels have also been instructed “to be more careful in future in selection of advertisements and to strictly adhere to advertisement code”.

This is not the first occasion that advertisements have been found objectionable. Channels had been issued a warning in April regarding a similar advertisement of Gen-X undergarments.

How long will we have ministers treating people as dumb folks who can’t decide what they want to watch and need to be protected against evil content.

Posted under: Thoughts , Censorship
Tagged with: ban, banning, Censorship, I&B