R.I.P. Randy Pausch

Its never tiring to hear an inspirational person talk, especially if one can see the reason behind his advice.

Stop. Think. Continue...

A significant chunk of our day (and thus our life) is spent doing "routine" things. By that, I mean, activities we are used to doing, and almost do them subconsciously. In my case, for example, brushing teeth, or washing the dishes.

I am almost always thinking about something else while doing the above activities. I thought about it, and as of now, feel that its a mistake. It will be nice to concentrate on what I'm doing rather than something else. So now the idea is to repeat the Stop what you're doing - Think if you can do it better - Continue doing it at regular intervals, to keep myself honest. My mind has a tendency to wander, so I am resorting to this.

Lets see how it goes.

Dharmaandh

Paradox of the month-

Ram bhakti (devotion) can lead to harmony among all religions - L.K. Advani

(For those who do not know, Ram is a Hindu mythological hero)

Money... get away...

I cannot see how acquisition of wealth can be the purpose of anyone's life. In spite of trying, I don't quite understand the rationale behind that. I think of it this way - I try to remember some of the best moments in my life so far. None of them had anything to do with monetary gains.

I unabashedly apply this thinking to corporations as well. I think the purpose of a corporation should be more than just making money. While many claim to have grand visions and missions, it all falls apart when confronted by the almighty $. Excellence is reduced merely to a word on their powerpoint presentations.

Anyway. Hope I make more sense the next time I'm tipsy.

Cheers...

Firefox - 3b5 has saved the day

I had all but given up hope from firefox. Newer versions were coming in thick and fast (which meant browser restarts) and each version felt slower than the previous one.

Enter Firefox 3 beta.

Its leaner, faster and yet packed with even more features.

The search-within-the-address-bar (as I call it) is simply superb. Its going to change the way I think while typing an address in the browser's address bar. To revisit a site, you just have to think of a word which appeared in either the hyperlink or the title of the page and firefox shows it neatly in a drop-down.

Try it today!

The problem with growth

Growth is generally equated with success for a company. But it doesn't have to be true all the time. Here are my top few reasons why.

Finding suitable talent

While growing rapidly, it is important to realize that the pool of talent is most likely not going to expand at the same rate. Now when there aren't enough suitable people available, It is easy to fall in the trap of lowering expectations from prospective employees just because there aren't enough good people available. (In the hope that the good ones will carry them through) While there is some merit to this argument, it is invariably stretched too far. In such a situation, if a company keeps hiring aggressively, it probably does okay for some period of time (until the lack of good results from these people manifests itself in the results). After that, the customers generally realize that they should be moving on. Maybe this is why some companies which rise meteorically fall at the same rate.

Imbibing the vision

The more the number of people, the harder it is to find people who subscribe to the vision of the company and whole-heartedly feel that they are a part of it. A more aggravated version of this problem is that the company becomes like a machine with many parts which aren't working in synchronization towards achieving a common goal.

Management overhead

This is probably the least of the worries, but cannot be ignored completely either. Many companies fail at effective project management. And if its happening for a company, it can only get worse when as they become larger in size.

Managerosis

managerosis noun :

A corporate disease characterized by the infestation of an organization hierarchy by Managers; most of whom add no value.