RoaDJ warriors

April 2011 was stuffed with holidays. The last one being Good Friday and along with it comes eponymous long weekend. By some stroke of universe forces, I found myself on my way to Shirdi.

This was my second visit to Shirdi. This time around, both the config of demography (former - friends, latter - family and elders) of our entourage and mode of transport had changed (former - train, latter - SUV on road). The combination to give an altogether different experience than last time.

Riding by road all-night called for someone willing to take a seat next to driver and be very determined not to fall asleep. Given the config as told earlier, the onus surely and squarely fell on me. I haven't put up an all-nighter in a long time. Adding to the difficulty level of this task was the absence of any fitting music to keep both driver and me awake. Somehow driver had managed to carry with himself CDs of only ghazals. Little after 2am, sleep stealthily approached me with silent Ninja steps aided by the intoxicating deep-voiced Urdu of ghazals For some 15min in real time (and half a second in sleep time; and I think Nolan got it diametrically opposite in Inception), I doggedly dodged the Ninja's claws; just slipping out each time when it had me in its grip. But this dodging business was no help me survive till dawn. 

I fished out my MP3 player to rescue. It had some peppy dance numbers from yesteryears (circa 2000-2008 AD) stored in its never-forgetful memory. Now, the part to make it mate with the vehicle's music system. Like some couples who aren't meant-to-be, this duo also could not get it along though they both needed each other. What next? I brought out a pair of Creative EP-630 inside-the-ear earphones and attempted to do a share-ware. EP-630 plugged in MP3 player and its two dangling ear-buds doing an Avatar-esque sahelu between me and driver. The road warriors got an ear-bud each. One ear taking in sounds of the long dark (k)night (I just couldn't resist writing this) and other ear hearing cymbals and electronic bass. 

Now the show was on. I wanted to show-off my music collection and be a bit of DJ as well. So, I appeared to furtively click controls of MP3 player to show that I was customizing the music for my driver. In reality, all I was doing was turning the Shuffle mode ON and controlling volume in real-time. I was hoping that this would make a big impression on our driver. Well, some two hours later and lot of thumb twiddling, we managed to successfully keep the Ninja away with our Hatori-Honso-Samurai-sword-music. Being very near to our destination, driver decided to stop-over for tea for that last mile push. Over tea, I went into a chit-chat with him. He wryly said, "Return journey mein phir se yahi gaane mat bajana, kuch achcha aur nahin hai ismein?" There went my hope of being a good DJ (or human equivalent of www.pandora.com) into Recycle Bin. Maybe I will Restore it for more accommodating pair of ears and music taste.

The happy Facebook world

The world as it exists on Facebook is almost utopian.

• Every person looks the best they could and always smiling in their photos
• Somebody is traveling to Antarctica, somebody is skydiving, somebody cooked dinner with friends, somebody went to underpriviliged children's school, somebody just hung out with buddies
• Somebody is getting married, somebody is having a baby shower, everybody comments "both of you look very good together"
• Nobody feels jealous of anyone, every one "likes" what others are doing
• Flame wars on political debates, religion etc die down even if some renegade has the guts to bring it up
• Nostalgia rules, old photos of childhood, forgotten songs are all sprayed over
• Very few people seek angst or existentialism, even when they do -- its subtle. A coded message here, a small poem there. And it doesn't disturb the fabric of this utopian world.
• All smiling faces, everybody's life looks content with no worries

There was a time when movies sold us dreams. Its now our friends through their profile photos.

LOST and found

I am done with LOST. Completed the series yesterday night. I had earlier watched complete run of X-Files and Chanakya during 2007-08. Did watch Prison Break simultaneously as it was being telecast. I am keeping the game up with Fringe in similar manner.

Season 6 Finale of LOST was a decently satisfying end to the series. Much better than what X-Files had offered. Though I will always root for Mulder and Scully, the emotional connect with Jack, Hurley and Locke was much more deeper. 

Running with LOST made me take break from watching movies. Can't pursue both along with other priorities on my time. 

Rate My Life

The Internet knows everything. So I asked it to tell me how does it view my life (given that I spend a great percentage of my waking life interacting with The Internet)? Like a great counselor, it asked me some pointed questions. And then replied with Yoda-like wisdom:

I never imagined that my "sins" would outdo my "virtues", and that too by a good enough margin to cast any doubt over my leanings. :D For my accomplishments, Yoda had little to say. He is waiting to see what I do next.

Raw Deal

Learning to "deal" (as in transactions with business / monetary value) is fraught with having to go through emotional hammering. Well, "dealing" in personal life and relationships is not any easier also.

Suppose you go into a negotiation where you are squeezed out. The other party holds cards which impact your long term return. And the party knows that. Then, during intermediate level milestones, they wring you out by getting leverage on those Ace cards. You know that they are dealing it all unethically and unfairly. You cringe under your skin, your blood boils, your eyes want to turn daggers. And yet you let it go. You let them do the unfair thing. Let them bite into you and hold your head feigning dignity while in reality you have been shafted hard from behind. You grind your teeth and bite the steel. All for what? To protect your long term interest.

Can there be a time where loss of dignity or accepting grossly unfair intermediate negotiations becomes unbearable and one walks off the table giving damn to the longer term interest? How much is your stomach to digest all that is coming your way while concentrating on that fuzzy future pay-off? Do you take the call to tighten up your spine even when you know that you don't call the shots on this one? Do you bide your time for evening the score when you get an upper hand?

I am learning the hard way to hide my emotions when I get shafted like this. Probably I add a little more to the pleasure of the other party when they see me seething but unable to act upon it. Its tough to walk away with an air of dignity after getting looted. What do you portray - "it does not matter to me", "it shows what is your character and suits you well", "this is a trivial amount for me; I put it in your bowl as charity and I pity you that you squabble for such amount"? Or do you portray - "I am a good loser, hats off to you for playing this one to the 'T'"?

Grind, grind, grind my teeth. But unable to walk away from the negotiation. Longer term interest is the dangling carrot. Should I learn start playing poker and learn the black art of bluffing the other party into believing that I have a better hand than theirs? Lamentably, I mostly deal with open cards. And that is not how this game is supposed to be played.

Why code?

"I advised my sister to avoid software companies. Told her to try consulting companies. She anyways has to do MBA 1-2 years from now. Software companies will make her do coding." - A colleague referring to her younger sister studying at a top-rung NIT.

Another silent jab endured politely. Well, you can't tell someone else to change his/her point of view on such a subjective issue. Like Delhi vs Mumbai debates.

Google, Amazon and the likes now visit campuses at NIT. When I was in undergraduate, such treatment was reserved only for IITs. Seems now IIT students prefer to go to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley rather than Google and Microsoft. Hence these software firms may have revised their recruitment policy to fill in their hiring. Some labor market dynamics this is.

So, why have these firms fallen out of favor? Is it because NPV of salary + bonus benefits of Google India is lesser than that of trading desk of Goldman Sachs? Or is it because it is now perceived on campuses that coding at Google is not as good a work content as that of making presentation decks in IBD of a foreign bank? My sense (stemming from historical observations) would give more credit to former reason.

And here we are not even comparing an Indian software services company vs foreign bank IBD. I am talking about Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft.

I guess it is more an emotional issue for me than an objective one. I have revered these firms. Why? Because some part of felt God-like to write code. I put some considerable effort to name that experience which satisfies pleasure-reward center in my brain. And answer was made of 2 parts - "problem solving" and being able to afford laziness.

Problem solving would mean getting a kick and satisfaction after finding a robust solution for a problem which can be dissected into logical steps. Even where there is no apparent approach available for dissection into logical steps  (e.g. fuzzy logic), still developing heuristics which give reasonable results statistically. You can model sea-waves, smoke trails, light reflections, inference user intentions --- you can model nature and universe.

Being able to afford laziness is that you can automate tasks which are routine. This frees up time for being lazy or delving more into the core nature of problem rather than going about doing mundane work daily.

While I discovered these 2 aspects intuitively from my own experience, it was a huge satisfaction to see same conclusions coming from uber-Hacker Eric S. Raymond. A sense of validation coursed through me.

But what is so special about this? Can't you model complex financial transactions and be lazy by automating trading? These applications very much exist in real world business and finance software. Yes, they do. And this is where I still am confused. Why would I appreciate coding more for a web-search engine vs modeling Black-Scholes? What is the difference?

Maybe it comes from some deep antagonism towards profit-centered capitalism and vices of money. Do I hate money or don't want it in my life? Definitely not. I have reasonable aspirations and I do enjoy pleasures money can bring. Yet, invariably one starts serving money rather than other way round. Its that spirit of hoarding information and employing greater-fool theory in business transactions which possibly goes completely against the grain of hacker spirit. Like the infamous open letter of Bill Gates to Homebrew Club hobbyists.

And then I have had some lessons learned from Talisma days. Great product, we believed itself. We enthusiastically coded for it. Awesome working environment, freedom etc etc. It went bust. What happened? Did Product Management team failed to see market trends? Did Marketing and Sales goof up? The fact of the matter is that a great engineering product too can fail if business side fails; either by its own doing or failing to ward off excessive force thrown in by competitor (Netscape vs Microsoft, uber example). We all need breads on our tables. We all need to go out on those holidays. We all aspire to have a home with modern amenities. We want to give our kids a bright and secure future. These all can only be bought by money and not by any idealism. But is it required to fool the customers through marketing gimmicks, to wear the smiling-face when facing investors? Sadly, answer is yes. The system that enables movement of capital is so structured that there is no escape for all these pretentious vices of business side of things. Practically, I can only try to keep getting minimally involved in it.

Minimal involvement means not taking up managerial positions. Not being responsible for P&L. They wont let you have that. Maybe you yourself cant have it, when you see peers and juniors moving up to become your superiors. That competitive animal inside you, will it accept this?

Such is the nature of these thoughts that they navigate laterally rather than top-down.