My dream company.

When I was a student, I wanted to be a teacher. Because, I always had many ideas to make teaching better, to improve students performance and to teach life lessons to them. I got this opportunity for a short while after college. I feel very content with the way I taught. Mainly, because my class not only loved me, but I earned respect from them. I am not saying this to just appreciate myself, but students have shared these feelings. Best proof is, even after more than five years they are in touch and ask my opinion in making choices. Class's overall passing percentage was more than 80% (without any outside coaching). Same class had 20 -30% success rate in other subjects. This was a great feeling of content. I think my, childhood lessons paid an important role in being successful as teacher. I hope to teach sometime again in my life.

After teaching, I have been working as software engineer for many years now. Have got chance to work with both big giants and small start ups. While working, I always dream about how will my own company (one day) look like. Here are my thoughts:

* No one in my dream company will work for more than eight hours a day. That includes lunch and tea breaks. Along with that will ensure that no one actually works less than seven hours a day. I have spent 12 hours at office. But never any good came out of that. Mostly, the time I spent beyond normal hours deteriorated the quality. Forced me to work more the next day to fix the mistakes I did, when I was tired. Needless to say, demotivated me and increased my frustration.

* Working hours will be 9-5, 10-6 or 11-7. That will give people flexibility of time, but they will still have common hours to work with each other.

* Saturdays will be the optional holidays. Employee can either take off on Saturday or on any other week day. This will give employees more time to finish their chores. As most of the businesses are close on official weekends.

* This is difficult to implement but my favorite. From my personal experience, there have been times, when I had no work to do. but could not leave office before 6 PM. You all know why. In my dream company, it will be target based. Any one who accomplishes his tasks/targets on time can leave for the day without any guilt. Of course, its not straight forward to implement. But its achievable. Just need to take care of many other factors before implementing this. Like ensuring that everyone has enough work in front of them before start of day and every one is self motivated and have the feeling of ownership.

* Each employee will have 1-1 session with their mentors at least once in a month(Not managers). This solves two purposes. First, the mentor feels powerful as he gets a chance to lecture some one (everyone loves that). Second, this helps in understanding the employees expectations and provides a platform to motivate him and explain him the common motives of company. Usually, company's have annual reviews. But those reviews are used as means of promoting or firing employees. All through the year, employee never gets to know about his weaknesses or strengths. This not only demotivates but also adds frustration.

* To accomplish above, One important aspect needs to be taken care. Give mentors authority to make decisions. This is more essential from the juniors point view of whom the mentor is grooming. This imparts confidence in them, that if they share some thing with their mentor, he will take care of it. And obviously, it imparts motivation and ownership in mentors.

----Contd

Many of these points are sheer common sense, but still not found commonly.

10 reasons I love twitter for,

10 reasons I love twitter because:

1) I can follow any one without waiting for their approval. And Anyone means anyone from SRK to Bill Gates and learn about them. Get first hand information than hyped media.

2) Unlike facebook or orkut, I don't feel obliged to write comments on the status message or photos.

3) I can get the trends and see what other people in my region are thinking.

4) I can get to know about any internet service(Gmail/FB etc) going down by searching for live tweets and can make sure its not just me. (This one is my favorite.)

5) I can search for holiday plans and get ideas.

6) I can follow various events at my local library and neighbor hood club.

7) I can follow my favorite companies and get to know what are they up to.

8) I learn to be more precise in my thoughts since I got to express myself in 140 chars.

9) I don't get to peek in others life in which I am not interested. I don't feel the stress of my tweet being liked or disliked.

10) In the end I feel connected to the world but still get my own space.

Thank God they did not blame Pakistan for the mess at CWG.

Have been hearing about Common wealth games for past eight years. Madam Sheila Dixit won three consecutive terms because she was projected as making Apni Dilli a world class city on behest of CWG. Finally, the most awaited year 2010 arrived and all the preparation started tasting bitter. For past couple of months am listening and reading about it in all the papers. Today was extreme. I almost fell into tears while listening to BBC on the way to office. Why is it that each time word 'India' appears on TV/Radio its always associated with corruption & poverty. Still have doubts whether its the poverty which makes people corrupt or its the other way around.

Have many 'whats' and 'whys' in my mind. But want to think deeper. Is it just because of corrupt politicians and contractors.

Not explaining what is going at CWG but have many questions.

1) Why did India take this project? Was it just because our neighbour flaunted its power in Olympics.

2) Even if the govt took this project and wanted to showcase the shining India, why were these contracts not distributed to private firms.

3) When will out bureaucratic system end? When will people start taking responsibility? But the bigger question: Is it only a problem with 'Babu logs' or is it the issue with our basic upbringing. I believe its the attitude. I have seen in many occasions that even in prestigious IT sector other than handful of people most of the guys still want to enjoy the luxuries of Babu's without actually doing any good work. Even if they are forced to meet targets the quality of work is not equivalent to their international peers.

4) Where did billions go? If they had spent even 1/4th of the money on actual development of Delhi at least they could have contained river Yamuna.

List keeps growing. I don't know how the issues can be solved but I just want to know how can I be a part of change. In the end I just thank God that "They are not blaming this failure to Pakistan."

Good old days.

I was trying to make a call to my mom. But she was not picking up. Tried multiple times but in vain. I got little worried. So, tried our neighbor's phone. After talking I felt relaxed. But, moments later, started thinking. In this era of mobile phones, when I don't event remember my own mobile number, I could recall three of my neighbors' numbers. That made me nostalgic and took me to my childhood memories.

I remembered these numbers because our entire street got their landlines on the same day. Three of us have phone numbers in sequence(34006/07/08). I clearly remember the day when we got these numbers. We had applied for land line for four years. The process of installing wires in our region took weeks. And one fine day, telephone exchanges waale uncle came to each of our house and installed the handsets. We all kids were too excited and so were our parents.

Before this, almost four streets shared one phone. I am talking about long before STDs and PCSs became popular. There was only one house in the entire region which had phone. Each one of us gave that number to our relatives as emergency contact number. That uncle was a retired army person. He used to charge 50 paisa to listen to his phone. Thinking about it now makes me laugh.

Whenever my sister and I visited our relatives' place who had phone, we made calls to our friends when no body could see us. Infact sometimes that was the only reason we visited them.

No need to say that time has changed. Now there are more phones in a home than number of family members. But Those were good old days.

True reward comes when you least expect it.

Since childhood, I had been hearing that Geeta says 'Karm karo phal ki ichha naa karo' Do you duty and don't expect any reward.It never went to my head.How can someone work without thinking of any reward.Especially in today's competitive economy.Can you think about working on something without worrying about returns.But,finally I understood its meaning.Actually this is an epitome of life.When you start working on something without looking at returns your entire energy shifts from hanging fruit to your work.That energy transforms your work from good to better and better.You become much more efficient.You start enjoying your work.That adds great value to your work.When you stop taking work as means of getting some thing back but as something you want to do,you do so much more and better.And when you give your best,reward becomes inevitable.It automatically follows you.You get beyond your expectations and that gives you the true reward-Reward of greater happiness and appreciation.

What else can you enjoy more!!

Is modern synonym to west?

On hearing the word 'Modern' the term 'western' automatically pops in.I kinda agree that modern actually means western or in other words west is modern.But I completely disagree with the picture of west which is usually projected.For a common person in east a modern person means a person who wears western clothes,smokes,booze or go to discos.While these attributes are completely acceptable for an eastern male but for females they are completely No No.Well I am not debating the discrimination between males and females.My point here is do these terms actually describe the word modern.Is west all about clothes and parties?
I strongly disagree.In my view a person is modern if he can think and think logically and objectively without any prejudice.A person who is ready to accept the change.Someone who can understand the rules of society and knows the importance of it.Who can understand why those rules were laid and weather they still hold good.Who is ready to change these rules for the good of society.Who is not ready to accept those obligations because these existed or because his grandparents or his parents followed them.But he is ready to fight against or for them as he understands their importance.Someone who is ready to adopt the good without discriminating against its origin.At the same time someone who understands his and his societies weaknesses and is ready fix them.A person who respects not only his culture or religion but others too.
In all these attributes west is modern.People at west do not just destroy something because it is influenced from east.They don't vandalize other places of worship because those are not according to their religion.They treat their wives and mothers and ladies with respect and dignity.They adopt the good attributes from everywhere be it Yoga,Ayurveda,Clothes or Food.Take any modern female from west to the streets of Delhi.I bet in two days she will ask you to buy her a pair of 'salwaar kmeez' unless she already came prepared.Because a modern person understands and respects others culture.(I at least had two such instance in front of me).
Take a look at history-you will find modern people everywhere.I am thinking of Raja Ram Mohan Roy.He was undoubtedly a great modern visionary.Can you believe we were actually burning widows alive on the name of rituals.If modern people like him had not existed we would have been living in the stone age.
Hence wearing western clothes does not make you modern but its their thoughts which made west modern.

What a difference!!

For past few months it was all chaotic. I was restless ,mind was wondering in all the possible directions. was feeling like I am lost in the world. Had no clear vision of what am I trying to achieve. Root of all this "My Job Hunt".(Experiences while hunting for a job needs separate post).All that chaos resulted in lost of direction. Everything,I was doing was just dumb. My work at current job was going in a hole. I was extremely dissatisfied of all the efforts. Feeling of 'good for nothing' started to dominate.
All this frustrated me enough that I decided to not to run in this rat race. Have decided to be more calm and think through my actions than just running purposelessly. Decided to focus on what i actually love - Reading and my job. It did not take longer to feel more relaxed.The moment I decided to focus my work efficiency improved dramatically. I can feel it my self.This feeling gives me immense satisfaction.Helps me in gaining my confidence back.Makes me realize that I am not that bad. Helps me in taking things lightly. Helps me in knowing what I want.Helps me in coping up with the pressure.
I am pleasantly surprised with the power of mind.As my husband always says ,"its all in mind".It truely is. Nothing has changed in terms of my current circumstances .I am still looking for a job but I am feeling much more content and confident.