hiring and retaining

There has been a thread going on in the india-gii list about hiring and retaining talented coders in india. Here is the email that the original poster had posted

Over the past few weeks I've met with several people who are all
having the same headaches

1. Hiring talented coders
2. Retaining talented coders

The first is usually down to lack of talent (coders directly out of
college just don't have the "new " skills (for example) in things like
ajax, ruby, but have core knowledge of things like C, and what I call
"old" languages), and also salaries wanted, especially if you are
trying to sell abroad and compete with pricing abroad, i.e brazil,
russia, ukraine offer lower prices these days.  

My thoughts about this

When hiring freshers, I don't think you should look for what languages
they know. Instead you should
- try to gauge how much of the fundamentals they know
- if they (freshers) are self-learners

Point 1 can be checked by asking them about sorting/searching
algorithms or networking or process management (basically the topics
which are covered in their operating system course or their data
structures course).

Point 2 can be checked by seeing if they have contributed to any free
software project and actually asking them to show their code (it is
after all free software and there is no NDA).  If a fresher has worked
on an open source project, it usually means
- he knows about version control
- he knows about mailing lists
- he can work without much supervision
- he can work with a distributed team
- and most importantly, he can work with a team

In the email, the original poster had also mentioned this point

the big guns (tcs, infosys etc) hire like 10K users in a go, and its
seems that the prospects of getting a good wife/husband are directly
linked to the name of the company on the CV (again this maybe biased,
but am seeing it more and more).

WTF!! ROTFL!!

some thoughts on portable device

Almost 2 months back, I got myself an ipod shuffle. After using it for some time, I am totally in love with it. I can now understand why the Macheads sell out their souls to Apple - the bargain is well worth it .

I was thinking about why portable devices like ipod and mobile phones are so close to their owners and I came up with this list.

• They are truly personal. You can customize them (think mobile wallpapers, ringtones, playlists) quite a lot.
• The are small and portable (duh!)
• They can serve multiple purposes. A mobile phone can also serve as a watch, address book, radio, m3 player, camera. A ipod can also be used as a memory stick, FM transmitter and it can also fit in your car's music system.
• These devices become useful as soon as you buy them. You can start using a mobile phone as soon as you insert your sim card into it and you can start using your ipod as soon as you transfer music into it. Instant karma!
• They have long battery life.

This list is just something to keep in mind when I am designing my Killer App (TM).

Unnoticed bloggers

Hiren wrote this comment on my previous entry

I come across so many blogs which have good posts but the poor guys get unnoticed. They put in so much of effort and no comments. Two recent ones are:-

• http://sdas-photos.blogspot.com/
• http://www.spludgeit.com/blog/

I think this is best answered by this sentence from Scoble

But, Steve Gillmor has it right: this isn't a game of traffic. It's about sharing what you love.

Most of my blog posts have 0 comments, but that still does not deters me from writing. Once, I too had despaired of the '0 comments' phenomenon, but I was motivated to start blogging again when I read through the Those Cute Kids archives of Aaron. Reading through that, I thought "Wow! I too would like to have something like that" (where that means a record of the days of my life ), and you know what - it is not that hard to write a blog post everyday or at least every weekend. These days, my motivation for writing blog is to keep a record of the highlights or the lowlights of a day or sometimes to record something new that I learnt that day (or in most cases, that week).

Coming back to Hiren's point of undiscovered bloggers, I guess those bloggers are driven by their own motivations. Or it might be the case that they are writing for their own family and close friends. If their idea is to be an A-list blogger (hehe), there are gazillion of pages dedicated to that too.

Hora Thatch - Day 3

I got up early at 0500 (to avoid the loo-rush ). However, I got another treat (besides an empty loo) - the sight of sun rising over the Himalayan peaks. This is really a sight to behold. Luckily, there was only one other guy awake at that time and both of us enjoyed the sight without saying a word.

Our next camp was Hora Thatch. We left at around 0800 after breakfast. The climb was steep, but the scenery was beautiful. The route was through a jungle. While on our way there, we had to face some rain. It was then that I discovered that my rain sheet was too small. Luckily, one of the guys had an extra rain sheet and he loaned it to me for the entire trek.

We reached the Hora Thatch camp by 1600. I think this was the most beautiful camp - it was situated right in the midst of the jungle. The rain had started pouring just as I reached the camp and I quickly got into my tent.

After the rains subsided, the camp leader welcomed us and told us where we could find water. then he pointed to his left and said "For your nature calls, go at least 200 meters away from the camp. Don't go to the other side, as that is for the girls". So, from that point onwards, we had officially left civilization behind.

There was a canteen at the camp and the guy had a fire going beside it. It was quite cold at that altitude and all of us made a beeline for the fire. Speaking of cold, the water at that camp was freezing. It was the water which came directly from the melting ice. It was only by putting my mind over the pain was I able to wash my hand and face in that water. Most people refrained from touching the water, instead using tissue paper to clean their plates and their faces. We had dinner and I went to sleep in my tent. However, before going to sleep, I took a bottle of water and kept it with me, so that it would be easier to use it in the morning.