Be prepared to execute - Don't let money to overburden you

The recent economic crunch has imposed serious implications on the profitability of some companies, the growth of some companies and bombarded the morale of the people. Yet there few good companies out there who do not believe in mass layoffs. Though, laying off people may help you in short term, laying off people in large numbers will have adverse effects on the companies' long term growth strategy. If you are going to layoff people just to cook up your balance sheets thinking that you can aggressively recruit people when economy recovers, you can proven wrong. It is natural law that when you go for a shopping on "Black Friday" all the offers are over. You will end up grabbing very few or none at all. These are just knee jerk reactions that could potentially cost your growth and market position. Rather, be aggressive internally to improve productivity and let your people know that productivity matters a lot. The productivity will manifest if you have focus and the focus will bubble up if you have interest and the interest is culmination of your passion, the burning desire.

Try to make people loyal to you, may it be your teammates or the customers. The character is something which you show up when you are in difficult times. When you connect with your existing customers and understand their concerns and address them, they will become loyal to you and evangelize your delivery capability. Similarly, when you show kindness, openness and warmness to your teammates, they will turn loyal to you. The loyalty does not know anything about economies. People will be there with you when you badly them. Tell your teammates who are low performers on how much they affect the team. Try to mold them, mentor them and coach them. Put the team ahead of your career growth. Make them feel that they are in the safest pair of hands and they are not risking their career being with you. Great leaders do this (and of course I got to learn from those people).

If you are an employee working for some company, try to read the vision of your company at least now. While I accept that "old is gold", some times "old is rust". Get rid of old ways of doing things such as practices in human resources, engineering, quality, project management. Now, the internet has become a huge database. Employ "sensible data mining" to leverage the huge database which does not cost you much (in most of the cases). Today, you can be happy to know about Web 2.0 and probably before we recover from the short nap, the world would be having Web 3.0. The entire world might be doing some sort of distributed computing with mobiles/personal computers. Be prepared for a change and most importantly "be spontaneous in acting for the change". Once you do that, you should be seeing yourself taller and in elite club.

Do not let money in multiple forms balance sheets, stock prices, CTC, bonuses and fringe benefits to take control of you. Allow the paddy to ripe and then do the harvest simply not because it is one of ways harvesting, but because it is right way of harvesting.

CoW - Linux way of creating process

Linux operating system is one of THE most popular operating systems and continue to lead the embedded operating systems markets. In this blog, I would like to give an overview of a design decision in Linux and it is one of the reasons why I see Linux not only as Software but also as an Art. The kernel developers thought leadership is unquestionable. I am great fan of Linux Kernel Developers. Without bogging you down, let me come to the point directly. The rest of this post tells one of the reasons "why Linux is masterpiece?".

UNIX operating systems create processes using the system call fork () and overlay (load) a binary/executable image using exec () system call. The system call fork () does not have a parameter and the system call exec () few parameters to load a program from a permanent storage (File System). Practically, the system calls fork () and exec () are twins; fork () is the elder brother and exec () is the younger one. Let us first see the functionality of “fork”. As you may know a process is program in execution that has a state such as data, heap, stack, pending signals, open files and environment variables. When you want to execute something, let us say running a command “ls” from the shell, the “shell” process typically calls fork (). When the fork () is successful, the kernel creates another process which is copy of the process. So each successful call to fork () returns twice – once in the called process (aka parent process) and second time in the newly created process (aka child process). As a standard, all the operating systems copy the address space of parent process and create another address space. There is a overhead involved while creating fork’ ing a process.

Shortly after the process is created, either parent or child process is loaded with some other program. Typically, one of the system calls in “exec” family of system calls is used. When “exec” is executed, the entire address space of the called process is recreated. So there is considerable amount time spent in this “double creation”. Surely, there is some kind of optimization can be done to gain substantial performance.

In Linux, fork () does not copy the address space but just simply creates the kernel data structures needed to the new process. Now, both the parent and child process uses the same address space and the entire address space is marked read-only. So, both the parent and child process can continue to read the process address. When any one process tries to write to a page (memory page), the kernel duplicates the address space and creates the address space. But this is unlikely to occur. Another scenario is the loading a new program into memory. When this occurs, the kernel any way creates a fresh address space and starts to execute the loaded program. By this approach, the “double creation” is avoided. The deferring the duplication of address space has given a performance and sometimes procrastination helps.

The functionality of fork () is called CoW – Copy on Write. So from next time, when you see a Linux box and a running process think about CoW. But you have two process after fork (), which process will be scheduled first? Yes, Linux is a masterpiece. On a lighter note, CoW can also be described pictorially as below.



Taken from from my previous blog

New Hopes for Outsourcing and Co-Sourcing - Thumbs up

Satyam fiasco has taken unimaginable proposition and sharp reaction is coming from developed countries (people from developed countries) such as US. Given the current economic crunch and the fact that it does not show any signs of recovery in near future, so many people are fearing that they will be out of their jobs in those countries. Many has already lost their jobs. It is very bad situation for those people who want to retire but ended up working few more years as their retirement fund has eroded. Since the recession is much deep rooted, there is fear that there will be few more rounds of layoffs before showing some hopes of recovery. I would like to give my views on global economy and how it is positioned to go to next level by banking on the growth/consumption of developing countries.

With this backdrop, Satyam's melt down has imposed serious implications about the credibility of its Indian peers. The people, who question outsourcing and its effectiveness, wanted to make use of this opportunity to advocate more against outsourcing. Some of them argue that outsourcing does not offer value. However, I would like ask a simple question, "Without any value or advantage, why many jobs are outsourced for more than 20+ years and to continue to outsource or co-source". The companies will have their own strategies for outsourcing. That being said, the emerging markets are not only focused on creating more jobs by outsourcing, they are going to be biggest consumers going forward. As a matter of fact, many, including UN say that the world is tilted towards emerging markets. Refer the article. So when the growth in emerging markets, it is worth investing in the emerging markets.

I strongly believe that the people who are reacting sharply during this downturn and more sharply after Satyam's accident will turn the other way. Once the current unemployment pressure cools down, these voices will be come down. At the same time, the big players of Indian IT should continuously innovate in their business models and to make sure that there is high accountability in the delivery moving towards risk driven or accountability driven business models and output/productivity is predictable and reasonable. They should stop being another shop or backyard to any developed countries but to deliver high values their customers. Indian IT companies should continuously keep their cards open for moving beyond outsourcing to matured partnerships.

Also, all the corporates in developed countries would like to do business in emerging countries where the population is huge as the consumption will be more. When you want to market your products in emerging countries, it makes sense to set up office and employ local talent for operational efficiency (low cost) and high skill (local talent have knowledge of the culture and marketing strategies). From my point of view, Outsourcing and Globalization are two sides of a coin and one cannot exist without the other. As long as outsourcing is stopped (at policy level), the outsourcing is going to continue. However there could be margin pressures (from my viewpoint, this is more a sort of operational challenge) which matured Indian IT will be able to handle in a better way.

More than outsourcing, the need of the hour is ability to absorb and take part in the growth of emerging economies. Surely, the emerging markets have potential to take the global economy to next level provided it is used in proper way. As an Indian and an Engineer from IT industry, I strongly feel that the growth of Indian industry and particularly IT space is promising. You will see more and excessive jobs getting created in India after this economic downturn (which is likely to recover in another six months flat). To sum up,

1. Please do not generalize things unless you see a trend especially if it is bad.
2. When US/European economy recovers, more jobs will be created in US/Europe and then more jobs will be outsourced.
3. The emerging markets are going to lead the next phase of the growth of global economy and this will also create substantial jobs in emerging economies.
4. When more jobs are created, the consumption will shoot up and this will take our planet to prosperity.

Yep Cloud Computing at striking distance

It was Wednesday morning and you are heading for your office to meet an important customer. Your close and long-time-no-meet friend calls you up as you drive your car. You pick up the call, the car senses that you are on a call and it fixes up an upper speed limit until the call is terminated. You start to have a conversion with your friend. Both of you agree to meet the dineer. At dinner, you guys decide to go for a weekend tour with few of your friends. With hundreds of tourist spots, based on your preferences and your friends' preferences, your mobile gives you few destinations with best deals for air travel, hotel accommodation, tourist guides, cabs. You enter the number of people and just touching the mobile screen once to say "ok". Mobile takes care of making all reservations and gets confirmation. Once all the reservations are confirmed, the mobile runs "traveling salesman algorithm" for your entire trip and gives you the itinerary.

Performing all these operation in mobile will be costly and time consuming. So, these complex operations have to be performed in remote places. The mobile just issues the command and will not be interested to know "how the information was processed". In order for the mobile computing be successful, the integration of mobile with cloud is very important. The cloud can be at service provider's network or the mobile can connect to the cloud of another service provider. The mobile-cloud integration is key and will be cornerstone for next mobile revolution. There are lot of developments having in this space. We should be hearing some stunning announcements in near future. Keep a watch on Google.

Few snakes are out - World Bank again

The recent mayhem of Satyam's Ex-chairman caused a lot of worries. There are heated debates in Times Now, CNN IBN, NDTV and NDTV Profit. The reporters are doing a decent job in trying to bring the facts to the viewers. It is painful, alarming, disgusting and never-again accident. The "so-called" corporates are trying to prove that they are on par with politicians. The politicians do vote bank politics to give power in order to earn money. The corporates are clever enough to avoid a redundant step of trying to capture the power. The news on Satyam have not dried up yet and in fact there are lot of developments such as grilling of "ex" Chairman, MD and CFO.

Now, few more snakes are out of the park. Again, World Bank has opened its mouth saying that it has barred few more companies. The companies are Satyam, Wipro and Megasoft. All the companies, at some point of time, were trying to give "improper benefits" to bank's staff. World bank has started to dig the mess to find some of its employees have illegal partnerships with above stated companies.

If you are curious to know more about the story, here are the links.
Wipro Story
All Stories

Let us give some time for the corporates to give some meaningful and sensible answers. If I am not wrong, one of the executives of Wipro was trying to justify the deed by conveying that Wipro does not have more exposure (less than 1 million $$$ aggregated revenues for eight years) to World Bank. This clearly shows that Wipro neither cares about its credibility nor its investors. At this point of time, I would like to believe and hope that the bad news (developments of yet another fiasco) of Wipro ends here. Because, even in the case of Satyam, everything started with World Bank and the end is terrible.

So, at this point of time, my question is "who's next".

Google Search - What is going to be its future?

Google has certainly revolutionized Internet by providing lot of web applications. Google touches everyone's life with those tools and it is quite reasonable to state that anyone who uses Internet would be using at least single Google web applications. Most of their service or tools based on "SaaS". But the cornerstone of Google in "Google Search". Internet search and crawling existed much before Google, however Google search was efficient and marketed very well. From my point of view, the success of Google can be attributed to "Google Search". Again, if we dig the success of "Google Search", it is due to the power of its search algorithms.

Having said that, prior to Google search, the entire search space was fairly static and handful of people were using the search engines. Until then, the necessity for search engine was not pressing thing meaning that the amount of information was huge however people were not interested to know them. During the time frame or slightly before Google's entrance, the entire Internet was undergoing a disruptive transformation. Some of the existing companies were not in a position to get hold of this disruption and many of the companies did not spot the opportunity.

Google's entrance with its search, has totally transformed the usage of Internet and took Internet space to next level. Shortly after that, Tim O'Reilly coined Web 2.0. Web 2.0 has taken many web application to different plane and again Google was spot on and responded well to Web 2.0. In addition to its response, Google created market and made competition irrelevant with its applications.

However, I have feeling that now Google now become an elephant. Because of its revenue from online ads, it is failing to spot another transformation in Search. The data provided by any search is fine but the volume of data being presented is so huge. So the entire "search" space is going to undergo another change where the algorithms will be working based on user requirements. We are seeing websites such as Stumbleupon which are gathering momemtum and this clearly shows that Internet users another level of Internet search.

Also, I feel that any changes in "Internet Search" will be of primary concern to Google as it can directly affects its revenues. For example, if the search works based on user requirements the probability of the user clicking the ads is more. When the ads are clicked, it is money as more and more advertisers/publishers are going to come to them. It is time for Google to be ahead by constantly working in its flagship product "Google Search". It can either organic or inorganic :-). But I feel that there are more chances of Google going in an inorganic way.

Social Intelligence - Be a better leader

It is yet another wonderful reading of an article on Social Intelligence. The article titled "Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership" by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis was published in HBR. This article is treasure for me and it brought out the reasons on why one should be social intelligent. It gave me immense insight and courage to improve my social IQ. I would like to give a short writeup on my reflections on the article and then would like to correlate the article from our perspective (based on Indian values). Here goes the a short write about the article.

The authors candidly convey why a leader should be socially intelligent? What is the chemistry behind socially intelligent leaders and his followers? How one can improve upon fusing the social circuitry of neurons by changing one's behavior? As per scientists, there are three varieties of cells in brain - Mirror, Spindle and Oscillators. (I believe there should be more varieties. but we are going to stop our discussion with three :-) ) Certain mirror cells are fired for specific action done by self or action done by others. When the mirror cells fire, that is when we feel a shared experience. The Spindle cells helps us in making decisions which we also call as gut feeling or intuition. The oscillators is responsible for physical movement that happens unconsciously due to some action of others. When the social IQ is low for a leader, it affects the followers as the brains of followers and leader is fused into a single brain. The bad leaders end up firing wrong cells of their brain and their followers brain. If the leader has good social IQ, the chemistry between him and the followers will be good and hence the team will be highly performing. The authors also claim that one can improve social intelligence irrespective of the gene and brought up by reviewing and analyzing one's behavior. One can make the right cells to fire by changing the behavior. I would recommend the interested readers to read the article in HBR website. Let us continue our discussion on these ideas with Indian values.

If we understand Indian value system, this what exactly the ancient and modern spirtual gurus convey to us. Let us slightly shift our focus to mind from brain. So no bilology stuff. The mind (I am replacing the brain with mind as brain is a machine and I believe the brain in not discussed much. It is the mind from where the thoughts crop are discussed. Need to get my view validated. Any views?) throws lot of thoughts. Some thoughts manifest itself in the form of behaviors. If the thoughts are not worked upon or not given importance, it just vanishes away. In order to build a circuitry in your brain for effective leadership (according to the above article or anything in general), it is quite essential to keep a watch on the thoughts that are acted upon. It may not be possible to keep a watch on the thoughts as they are produced in mass numbers. However it is much easier to keep a watch on our behavior. When one builds behavior quite consistently, it becomes habit and the habit gives birth to character (when behaviors/habits are fed back to the system positively, a positive character is built). When a character is built in you, the character is you and you are the character. It is almost written on stone and fuses the neural circuitary. One needs to work hard to go in opposite way. So, this is one part of the story which is measuring yardstick. So, one needs to work until the character is built.

Another part of the story is how to identify what needs to be done to be socially intelligent. I strongly believe that it will be a failed attempt if we have a checklist and work on it. Rather , becoming socially intelligent should be an experiential learning as social intelligence is tightly coupled with the situation. Though one can generalize socially intelligence, I don't think one can improve upon social IQ in a general way. It has to be done hard way by analyzing ones behavior and constantly correcting the behavior leading to character. Buidling a character is constant and process. So fusing the circuitry in brain for effective leadership is requires hard work.

References:
1. "Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership" by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis (HBR)
2. Wikipedia

Constant discomfort – Is it good or bad?

Most of us feel that we are doing monotonous work and often find ourselves in our comfort zone. As soon as we feel that we are in comfort zone, we will have certain discomfort of our being and a urge to come out of it. It is this urge of constant elevation makes the evolution of human race. But yet, most of us fail to appreciate the importance of moving out of comfort zone and do something we dare to do because of the general tendency of not accepting the change. Here is an incident (this is not fictional story. it is a real incident).

Today, due to unavailability of fuel in petrol bunks, I traveled in electric train. The train was fully crowded. Jam packed crowd may be farthest meaning. I stood on my toes. I got down at Nungambakkam and as I walked up to the stairs, I heard a mid-aged man saying “Steps”, “Steps” and shortly after that “Flat”, “Flat”. Within few moments I happen to see a person (later I understood that he was in fact visually impaired) with no signs of being visually impaired, having a jute bag on one had, was cleverly following the instruction, reached to the top of the staircase without hitting anyone (On a contrary, I noticed a man (not visually impaired) hitting his fellow passenger and flew away). I did not have a percent of sympathy for my fellow passenger, rather inspired by his confidence and agility. During the course of his move, his response to the changes in terrain was impeccable, smooth and fast. He adjusted quite well and without the voice that guiding him, no one would ever guess that he is visually impaired.

I was thinking about this incident the entire day and thought I surely write a post (to reinforce my learning). Generally, many human beings do not exhibit such attitude unless they have the urge to excel (burning desire) or they are in tight corner (situational). But there are very few bravos who constantly take initiative to move from their comfort zone. and keep raising the bars. If we are complacent, we will generally feel that it is fine to be comfort zone as the going in comfort zone generally will be good. The going will be good until an external force is met (Netwon's third holds good). When an external force is met, the situation demands a change. So, the people who are in comfort zone (due to complacency) react to the change rather in a pathetic way. They argue, without giving it a try, that the change will not work. But another set of people who know that they are in comfort zone but they have constant discomfort in being there. They try to adapt to the change with lot of help and guidance from a helping hand. They react to the situation. (I feel that I fall in this category but surely I would like to go the next category that we are going to talk about)

The set of people who constantly maneuver between comfort zone and discomfort zone anticipate the change and respond to the change gracefully. They understand that the change is required to bail out themselves from uncertainty or to constantly elevate them. The incident I said in the first paragraph is an outcome of a man who constantly come out of his comfort zone . For these kind of people experiencing is more exciting than being in limelight. They never intentionally act to be amazed. They enjoy the experience of being in discomfort zone. They never intentionally set themselves as reference points. It is just the by-product.

So, my answer to the question “Constant discomfort – Is it good or bad?” is both yes and no. It is good if you are acting on the discomfort. It is bad if you have it at feeling or emotional level. When you have it emotional level, it is like monkey having bananas in both the hands and mouth. When one more banana is given, it tends to drop one banana from hand and get the new banana from you. Discomfort should not itch you rather excite you to push yourself.

Wisdom - Necessary but not sufficient

As a follow up post on my previous post “When Experience Sucks”, I gathered the boldness to express further after reading an interesting article in Harvard Business Review. It was rather a short article but insightful and I am not going to repeat what has been told in HBR. That article helped me to validate my perception on experience and also added another perspective.

Though it is true that hard work or learning the things in life hard way bring the wisdom, sometimes wisdom alone is not sufficient to solve a problem. Even if we directly correlate experience with wisdom, the article claims that the wisdom alone is not sufficient to solve a problem. I am not going to talk experience without the wisdom (for me, it is not experience is whiling away the time). If experience alone is sufficient to solve a problem, every person with average intelligence should solve the problems (but it isn’t the case). It is reasonable to say that “all experienced people do not solve problem” or “all experienced people do not solve a problem quite well”.

The scientific studies say that “human beings” tend to think reproductively. I am trying to tie a knot between HBR article and point raised by creativity expert Michael Michalko in his book Cracking Creativity. In his book, Michalko says that most of the human beings think reproductively in a conventional way. Rather it takes a genius touch to see things productively. The ability to see things productively is needed and one can see the world productively by constantly unlearning the knowledge about the object or the problem statement. However, we have tuned ourselves in such way that we always feel it easy to have a blurred vision – seeing things from only very few perspectives. So, ability to see problem in new angles is another important attribute problems (if you solve the problem in novel way, it is bonus).

Mere experience will not help us to solve a problem or at most help us to solve the problem in “yet another time” fashion. But if one shifts the focus and sees things fresh, I am sure we will be bring in “yet another way” of solving the problem. Experience is also about constantly unlearning previous perspectives and constantly learning to see things in new perspectives.

Satyam – Never want to imagine fraud of this magnitude

The articles of Satyam Chairman’s fraud came very late and after the stock market reacted by beating down the stock. The stock is at record bottom and probably based on the current facts, the valuations are quite higher. The company’s future, one of the pillars of Indian IT industry, won numerous awards and have more than 50,000 employees, is a question mark. There are so many people invested their hard earned money build their retirement corpus. Not only the investors lost the peace of mind, every Indian corporate, every Indian who wants India to shine lost their peace of mind.

Raju was too modest in his letter to regulators and trying to take full “credit” for everything that has happened. But, I am sorry to say that his words are too modest to believe. How come board was blind, how come the “so called” executives were blind. Were they simple “accommodated” this fraud? Whatever it may be, everything should have started at a micro level. Like many drops make ocean, all the micro frauds has undergone a fusion and finally exploded as Fraud Fusion. The investors are totally blind folded and so far they have been forced to see false valuation. (There were footages in News channel where a senior citizen shared his opinion.) It is disheartening to see such scams and the after effects. It is very bad mark on Indian companies. So far, many thought the politicians are corrupt but now this fraud has given as one more lesson. There is no difference between politicians and business leaders. Both are same as they are human beings. Greed can be devastating.

Secondly, many Indian news channels (quite often sucks) have become proactive. They are proactively reactive. They start to ask questions such as “Will it affect Indian IT?”, “Will it affect FII investments?”, “Will it affect the numbers?”. I happen to listen to Dr Narayana Murthy and he rightly pointed out that we need to make our system more transparent and teach business ethics. There are two perspectives to look – Intruder and Affected Side. From intruder side, it is the Indian IT company which did the fraud and it is up to India to fix it. Fixing it may be helping Satyam’s clients to run their business by delivering projects, taking care of investors, taking good care of employees and restoring the confidence among the entire business community of the worlds including Citi, GE and Ford. Every Indian and every Indian IT company must take this to their heart and create “Integrity as their DNA”. When many institutions/companies promote Integrity and Ethics, it becomes DNA of every professional. Looking from the view of the affected party, it is quite reasonable for someone to react as they have lost their peace of mind. So, they will react however they will continue to do business with Indian companies provided they see solid and definite action from India. The response should be from peers of Satyam, management and employees of Satyam and of course Indian government.

Thirdly, the regulators, the policy makers, the associations and independent bodies must work on making the system better. The primary focus should be on repairing the system rather than speaking, speaking like a person suffering from oral diarrhea. For God sake, let us focus on much broader issue rather than localizing the issue. The secondary focus should be to bring out the truth, at least now. Let the trials start, continue and end within definite dates.

On a whole, this is a black day for corporate governance. But this is opportunity to learn hard way. But the tuition fee is quite high.

Are you a Good Leader?

I have been digging around to understand the true meaning of Leader. I almost read short biographies of leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Alexander The Great. I am currently reading the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi. I am not going to give their life histories as you will find it in Wikipedia. However, I would like to register my thought on leadership. Here it goes

Let us start with an example. You have a new born baby in your home. After few months, the kid tries to flip on its own and fails. For the little kid, flipping is a good amount of risk. After a year, the kid tries to crawl, tries to stand up and walk. When the kid tries to walk, there is risk of falling. You know that there is risk of falling down. Yet, you do not prevent the kid from flipping and filling. When the kid falls down, you cheer the kid. Within few days, the kid walks and runs.

This simple imagination (and yet it is true in everyone's life) brings out one of the essential qualities of a leader. "Do not prevent/decouple the risk, just be there to facilitate a faster turnaround". When this quality breeds, you will see yourself growing and others growing. If you do not allow your people to take risk, they will not have stamina to deal with day-to-day work. So, "Don't prevent risk. Facilitate Speedy Recovery".