Sunday, March 28, 2010

The complex, private me??


 Brainbench


Recently, I was writing some technical test when came across this PA. PA was a bit surprising knowing the technical nature of the Brainbench. Still, just for a change I thought to give it a try.

At first hand, when I saw the evaluation matrix, I was little kinda ummm @ Introvert range but after reading the Interpretation notes,  I could not disagree with anything.

Anyway, if you know me, you know how true these I-Notes are?. Here goes the I-Notes.

Your Social Boldness: Introverted VS Extraverted

You are quite introverted. Socially, you prefer a more relaxed, low-key environment, rather than the hustle and bustle of a wild night in the city. You tend not to talk a lot, but when you do people listen, because when you say something it has meaning. You are not seeking the limelight, usually you prefer to let the attention-mongers do their thing while you observe. In an unfamiliar setting, you tend to be cautious and shy while you evaluate the circumstances. You prefer to avoid conflict, so you do not put yourself into a threatening situation. Your shyness may be perceived as unfriendly, but that could not be further from the truth. People need to be patient with you and take the time to get to know the complex, private you.

 

Your Agreeableness: Candid VS Considerate

You are moderately considerate. You are an agreeable person. This means that you are well liked and people really enjoy your company. And why wouldn't they? People can sense that you are taking a genuine interest in them and this makes them feel special and as a result, they have high regards for you. With your altruistic personality, you get a lot of practice at making people feel special. In fact, you feel great joy when you help others. Another nice feature you possess is your ability to cooperate. Not everyone can do this, so it is very important in a meeting or social situation to have someone like you present in order to maintain a harmonious situation. This comes from your tendency to want equality and fairness. In dealing with others, you prefer not to manipulate people instead you tend to be open and sincere. This makes you a popular and well-respected individual.

 

Your Self-Control: Impulsive VS Cautious

You are moderately impulsive. At times you can be impulsive, but not to the point where you are jeopardizing work or relationships. You know when to follow rules, but you also know when to bend rules that are not set in stone. If your home or work space gets a little messy, you do not get upset or feel compelled to tidy up. You do not have to have perfect order in your life to feel good about yourself or your environment. You tend to be more on the fun side of spontaneity, and enjoy being flexible with your plans and your life. In general, you prefer to make short-term goals rather than long-term goals.

 

Your Anxiety Level: Excitable VS Relaxed

You are very excitable. You do not like stressful situations. You tend to react emotionally to stress, which can lead to bad moods, or even anxiety, anger, or depression. You like to be treated fairly, and may become upset if you sense that someone is trying to cheat you. You may find urges and cravings irresistible to the point that you are giving into them even if you know you will regret it or feel guilty later. Sometimes you may feel uncomfortable in social situations, even thinking that others are judging you. This self-consciousness may show through as shyness, because you do not want people to think poorly of you. You tend to worry and are apprehensive in unfamiliar circumstances.

 

Your Openness to Change: Practical VS Imaginative

You are very practical. You want just the facts - keep it plain and simple. You are practical, pragmatic and well grounded. You have no time for carelessness and impracticality. You prefer to keep your emotions to yourself, rather than exposing your feelings to the world. Life moves along much better for you when you can maintain a schedule and have routine in your life. Unexpected surprises and chaos are a major inconvenience to you. You tend to be conservative and are somewhat resistant to change. Others respect your ability to act properly in your everyday life.

 

The way you Think/Reason: Concrete VS Abstract

You are moderately concrete in your thinking. Your intellectual style is related to superior job performance when working with the public. One reason for this is that you often prefer dealing with people or things rather than ideas.

 

Link: Brainbench's Personality Assessment

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Spring Festival…


These days, most of the conversation topic revolves around appraisal, annual rating, attrition, salary hike and blah blah ...
From business Newspapers to TV channels to common discussion forums; every thing has flavour of these terms.

Everyone has some or the other logic to justify his/her effort and their managers has BIGger logic to negate it. Some wins; some loose; some laugh; some cries; some act; some just think.

To my understanding (based on few yrs of Corp. exp), it remains a funny and debatable area which is always manipulated for Org's own benefit. I won't explore the debatable part but would rather look at the other side.

Lets be dressed in the costume for this 3 month long Spring festival which begins somewhere in February and goes until April end every year.

Nothing remains same during this period. HR comes on time; you get several webinar invites and mails with dozens of new initiatives such as how to improve the productivity. Some takes it seriously which results in increase of sales of baby product during Children’s day to New Year.

Suddenly, HR realizes, March has women's day and eligible employees get the surprise in morning - a balloon on their desk; few even find a rose below the monitor or chocolate behind the CPU. Creativity goes beyond visibility.

They conduct session and pretend to make you aware of the process which hasn't changed for last ten years. Every session appears to be interactive and transparent which encourages the open idea concept; so all the valid question are accepted as "Good Question!"

HR slogan during this Spring Festival - "Every employee is special"

Now comes the project leads and managers. Most the time they have one excel sheet opened on their m\c. This excel is not the usual technical one, this has so many special columns such as:

  • No. of unplanned leave taken (planned leave need not to be tracked as 
    being the last Qtr, leave is hardly approved – realization and year end closing)
  • No of times TM was away from their desk and monitor was not locked - 
    (Security violation)
  • I pinged on IM and got no response (TM left the desk without changing
    status properly - CSI problem). Managers are smart; they know some people
    just switch the monitor off rather than showing “I am Away” status.
  • How many times their phone rang even if it was some marketing call of type - 
    "Sir, do you have any requirement for personal loan?"

This is endless and such columns are always special as you can never argue about these with your managers.

Now, how come team members be left behind?
Apparently, everyone is excited (IT jargons for frustrated).
Searching for certification test dump, reading all those funny documents which they never even touched in last 9 months (don't quantify this, it just means previous 3 qtr).

People prepare as many documents as they can to contribute to some crap internal asset library which they never access by themselves.

All of a sudden, lights are seen glowing in the cubicle where it hasn't been since the last increment. After hours comedy is at its peak. If applicable, request for late night drop facility increases. Near by Chai Dhaba is flooded with Adrak-wali Chai order.

Finally towards the end of the season, arrives the dooms day. People get to know that their full year effort increased the wages by peanuts or decreased by substantial amount. Few realize, they should not have avoided the vacation or even the Imran Hasmi movie could have been considered than attending weekly conference call.
Some old resolutions are modified; some new resolutions are made.
Still few are not convinced and talks to Managers/HR.

Here is the few common retort from managers/HR:

  • You didn’t pick the call on 3rd Friday of the last month @ 9.59PM when we  
    had a serious production issue.
  • We thought of giving you even lower rating, but I argued with top 
    management for this rating.
  • You got better rating last time, so give chance to others; and we will send 
    you to onsite soon. We have already started the VISA process; be ready  
    with your documents. If you happen to be @ onsite, you are already getting  
    a currency which is XX times better than your base branch currency.

It goes on forever so enjoy the festival and remember the forwarded “Post Appraisal GEETA SAAAR” which you must have seen at some point of time…


Hey Parth,

Increment nahi mila, Bura hua
Salary cut rahi hai, Bura ho raha hai
Extra shift hogi, woh bhi buri hogi.

Tum pichhla incentive na milne ka paschatap na karo
Tum agle incentive ki chinta na karo
Bus apni salary main santusht raho

Tumhari pocket se kya gaya, jo rote ho?
Jo aaya tha sab yahee se aaya
Tum jab nahi the, tab bhi company chal rahi thee
Tum jab nahi hoge, tab bhi chalegee.

Tum koi experience leker nahi aaye the
Jo experience mila yahi mila
Degree leker aaye the, experience lekar jaaoge.

Jo system aaj tumhara hai
Woh kal kisi aur ka tha
Kal kisi aur ka or parso kisi aur ka hoga

Kyo vyarth chinta karte ho, kisse vyarth darte ho
Policy change company ka rule hai
Jise tum policy change kahte ho, wahi to trick hai.

Ek pal main tum Best performer
Dusre pal main tum worst performer
Appraisal, incentive etc. etc. mann se hata do
Vichaar se bhi mita do

Phir company tumhari hai or tum company ke.
Tum apne aap ko company ko arpit kar do
Yahi sabse bada satya hai
Jo ess satya ko jaanta hai
Woh review, incentive, gratuity aadi se sada
ke liye muqt ho jaata hai...

Yaad rakho all time IT Slogan - "Bottom line growth does matter"
 

 

Saturday, March 20, 2010

A Little Princess

 

girl_rain 

S
unshine is delicious, Rain is refreshing, Wind braces us up, Snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather ~ John Ruskin

No one would really deny with John Ruskin's word. But given a chance, I always inculcate some extra affinity for rain.  Perpetually, it remains a personal choice and one's experience with a particular weather. However, I wonder, anyone who fears rain has ever played, danced or even walked in the rain.

Thanks to the regular alarm which woke me up at 7 on this enchanting Saturday morning. The cosy rain did force me to stay a little longer in bed but finally I am up watching the rain calmly, with a cup of scrumptious Tea.

Looking out of streaked window with complacency, what a morning this is. A kid with her arms stretched, feeling the rain; letting the rain kiss her; letting the rain beat her forehead with its silver liquid drops. She is so engrossed as if rain is singing the lullaby for her. She appears to be 7-8 years old trying to feel the unvoiced emotions of the twinkling raindrops on her nose.

Slowly it is making me nostalgic, dragging down the memory lane but I want to stay here watching this little kid enjoying the soothing music of Mother Nature.

Have you ever observed the flowing rain water on ground when the flow from different directions merges into it? Such a display of trust; none of the silver drops seems to question the intension of flow or its destination.

Absolutely alluring to watch the unvoiced emotions of raindrops getting together forming the bubbles and releasing until they become overwhelming with their deluge of romantic declarations. Its seductive beauty is driving me crazy. Let me join the little princess; let the rain beat my forehead with its silver liquid drops.

इस पल में ऐसा लगता ज्यों
शांत ब्याथाएं सभी जगत की
यह पल ऐसा जैसे की सब
भूल गए खटपट जीवन की!!

इस पल में सब सुधबुध खो कर
मस्त बदरिया की लखते हैं
इस पल में एकाग्र हुआ मन
शोक सभी जग के कटते हैं!!

कुंठाएं सब भूल समय यह
अब्सादों को ढकने का है
यह अमूल्य क्षण शांत खड़े हो
बौछारों को तकने का है!!
 
 

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

What a News Sirji!


This morning when I opened a News site to quickly run through the headlines, I ended up reading the complete report.

If you don't want to read it, picture below can give you idea about the News. 


mns_airtel


This kind of headlines is not as shocking (or rather in theory, DISGUSTING) as the comments on it. Here, I assume people who comment on online news have at least a basic level of education (Maturity & Morality excluded) to decide what is right or wrong. More than 70% of comments agreed with Raj Thackeray’s way of acting to keep local culture intact.

When I tried to look into technical face of the news (I know Top brass from Airtel would have already started banging their head to implement this ASAP else they know the opportunity cost) 22 languages comes into mind.
Yes! The Govt. of India has given 22 "Languages of the 8th Schedule" the status of official language.

So if Airtel considers to implement Interactive Voice Response (IVR) messages nationwide to avoid any further attack by some from the million people (Apart from political exceptions, only language which has more than 1 Million speaking people can be part of 8th schedule) they need to record the message in few more languages.

Having said that, this solution is not going to work; as to break a shop one don't need to represent a language (fucker like Raj Thackeray can't even represent human being forget the language and culture.)

Well! Without digging into more technicalities, what if at the time of purchasing SIM, subscriber is given a choice to select the Language from available (record IVR in every possible language) and IVR can be based on the caller's chosen language and also this concept can be leveraged further.
How feasible this implementation would be? I have No IDEA Sirji. (Airtel can't expect the free detailed design document)

Now, looking at the business side, as per latest World Bank report, India stand
at 133rd position (out of 183) in the "Ease of Doing Business" across the
globe.
If you drill down to individual parameters, India has actually improved the most in "Closing the Business". At this rate, Thackeray can help to close one plant in one day.

See, he is any way progressing; it’s just that direction doesn’t matter for him.

For facts lover, India is home to more than 200 million mobile users, and service has reached the most rural of villages. Recent studies have shown that increasing cell phone penetration by an extra 10 phones per 100 people can lead to as much as a 0.6% increase in a country's GDP. I still need to compute how much can “breaking a shop” contribute to GDP.

Any way he is contributing to GDP. It’s just that direction doesn’t matter for him.

Back in 90's and some part of 21st century or precisely during Laloo's regime, if there was any state that occupied more space in News papers then it was Bihar.
Now Raj Thackeray has taken oath to occupy more space in News paper. Actually now in most part of the country things are not different. There are many to compete for the headlines.

Student in AP did suicide as he wanted separate state. Any way, few years down the line he had to fly down to States; then what purpose was he trying to solve.

Any way, he too contributed to population; just that direction didn’t matter for him.

These days, there are many such contributions to headlines from different states.
Any way we are making progress; it’s just that direction does not matter.

When I started writing this I was so perturbed by news, but now after writing all thru I am feeling - Tension not Sirji!
And some where towards the end I lost the intended direction; but does direction matter Sirji?

Any way our India is going Places; just that direction does not matter.
What a Progress Sirji!

Wish! we had one Language for entire country. It means much more than breaking barriers. Will this ever happen Sirji?


From someone who thinks he is part of Mumbai not Mumbai is part of him.