Change is Constant

Hi There,

It's been a while since I wrote a blog. Quite a lot has happened in my life in the last 18 months. I always believe only Change is Constant. I had been bugging with bugs almost 8 years in my career. Coming out of comfort zone to courage zone is not quite easy than said. I wanted to explore and I wanted a change. Since I have been in development for a long time working closely with the testing team thought testing would be the best bet for growth. "The grass is greener on the other side !". Had been in discussion with the management to find an opportunity in a testing team but in vain.

In my initial days of my carrer I worked a lot in modems. Infact the reason I got a chance to write a test in HCL is because of my mini project on xDSL modem which I had done in Crompton Greaves, Banaglore. Cleared the test and my first interview and got a Job in HCL and rest is history. Will be completing a Decade with HCL on 16th April 2010.

As said I had been working on fixing bugs on Analog and Digital modems. The first 18 months was a real struggle and I would rate it as my toughest part in my carrer . It was very difficult and survied that phase. My Cisco couterpart used to say me as "Modem Guy" and often she encourges me as "The only guy across the Globe to fix modem issues in Cisco". Those encoragement had pushed me to give my best. From my fifth cycle (third year) I started to perform well. Infact I had a healthy competition in our team on BCR (Bug Closure Rate).

When working on modem I used to loan from a person called MohanRaj Kumar, who is senior to me and was working in application development project. Whenever I loan and return back I used to make an entry in a register for tracking purpose. He had become good friend of mine and I used to say "Ungala polo nallavanga Cisco ODC-la yaarumae illa" ( No one is as good as you in Cisco ODC (Offshore Development Center)). I say this whenever and wherever I meet him :) Couple of times I remember Mohan asked me if I am interested in application development. Since I was in the system side I said I don't know Java and I didn't took his offer very seriously.

I was in my hunt for testing projects but it didn't come my way. I remembered Mohan words and I thought of checking with him for any opportunity in his project. He was then Senior Project Manager and was handling quite a bunch of projects. It was a quite a coincidence, there was a senior person (Technical Marketting Engieer) who was about to quit in one of his projects, he asked me whether I am interested in this role. And he gave me couple of days to think as it was an Individual Contributor role.

He gave me two options (for growth) one in Product Manager for the product. The project was running in Risk and Reward mode and the complete ownership is with HCL. And if didn't worked there is another option for me to manage the project. As the project was already being managed by a senior person he wanted to wait for few months to position me in any of the role. Do I need any compensation to eat Sugarcane ? (Karubbu thinna kulli-ya ? :) ) I said a Big Yes and got into that project.

A sea change for me, working in a system side (device driver, interface, interrupt, bugs) Now I am into a differnent landscape and all the above words are bad words expect the Bugs. Used I say "Without BUGS there is NO Indian IT industry" Thanks to all the 'So' called developers in the world (I had been part of that word as a 'Developer' but developed nothing but my belly :) for making India rich by 50+ Billons of dollors.

Life has started moving fast and I was learning of lot diversified things in my new project as a TME with little people management (this is a bad term and our mangement wanted to get rid off this term with something called Technical Manager). Things are going quite normal and there came the recession and lot of projects has be downsized by half and most of the testing teams got affected. If I been moved into any of the testing project I would been kicked off first !

Since I had been in R&R project was able to survive most part of the recesion period, but things were getting worse as the project profitability was not in great shape as my project resource cost was at the higher end. In the mean time there was a Program Manger position created by Krishan (Business Unit Head) in one of a Fix Bid project (so called Japan Project). Since there was too much of procuremnet involved in that project he wanted to position me in this project. I don't know whatprompted him to select my name for that role. (Special Thanks to the great and humble Leader !)

Mohan approached me and asked me about my interest in taking up the role (from project management to product management to program management..) Thought it could be quite interesting profile and I said a Big Yes to my Hero. Now into the Program manager role. The first and big assignment is to procure devices (reaching vendors, getting quotes, negotiation, raising capex, interlock with procurement team, mutiple follow-up...) Learning is endless and it was quite interesting and so far I have procured devices close to $1M to our project. Now I can write another blog on the capex process.

Program Manager role is not procuring devices but to keep track all that makes the project to go well and raise alarm when things are not at the right direction. Slowly I was learing the art and I was making myself to fit into the role. Next came a big surprise, onsite cooridnator huh... Since the project is for a Japan customer and there was a need for a strong onsite coorinator who knows cisco process well. I have been approached and it is an onsite (Japan) coordinator role. Again same sugarcane with lot of kooli :) I grabbed this opportnunity and flewed to Japan.

I have been in Japan for the past 44 days and doing my best for my project. Also I have been exploring a lot in Japan. A Sea Change in Short Time !

Change is Constant !

Regards,
-Kumar.

Breakfast - Oragnize your speech (Toasmasters Project II )

It was around 10 in the morning, I started to office.
On the way to office I filled the fuel tank of my bike.
Entered the office and switched on my laptop and
started the day by reading mails. I had time to fill
fuel for my bike, but I don't have time to have my
break fast.

The topic I am going to talk today is

"Breakfast"

Why we call the food we take in the morning as breakfast.
Yes everyone should know the reason, the time between
the dinner and the break fast is almost 10 hours ! Ideally
we are fasting for 10 hours so breaking this long
fast with a good food is called breakfast.

But do we all have breakfast, how many of us here skip the
breakfast. I see few hands. These folks are very good for
not breaking anything :)

There are lots of excuses for not having breakfast:

Lack of time

Not being a morning person

Trying to lose weight

Having forgotten to have it

A recent research confirms the frequency of heart attack,
sudden death, and stroke peaks between 6:00a.m. and noon,
with the highest incidence being between 8: 00a.m. and
10:00a.m. What mechanism within the body could account
for this significant jump in sudden death in the early morning
hours?

I have an Answer.

Platelet, tiny elements in the blood that keep us from
bleeding to Death if we get a cut, can clump together inside
our arteries due to cholesterol. It is in the morning hours that
platelets become the most activated and tend to form these
internal blood clots at the greatest frequency.

However, eating even a very light breakfast prevents
the morning platelet activation that is associated with
heart attacks and strokes.

Develop a simple plan to eat cereal (not TV serial :), along
with a grape juice or orange juice,and a piece of fruit. This
simple plan will keep your platelets from sticking together,
keep blood clots from forming, and perhaps head off a
potential Heart Attack or stroke.


So never ever skip breakfast . . .

"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life."

Social Networking..

Hi There,
Social networking is becoming a buzz word across the world. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and the count is going on and on... It is good in a way that we can connected to our old wines (friends) by geting in touch with one, and the chain takes you to find more people whom you lost touch for years. I have found few such friends and I am very happy about that.

Of late I learnt about few stuffs which I would like to share with you. The first in the lot is cloud computing. With the name (being the sotfware industry) I understand that we can give the processing power to the external resources (instead of doing all the stuffs with your own computer cpu) which is nothing but the Cloud (a interconnected servers). Google docs is one such example for a cloud. There are lot other Cloud servers available, http://www.eyeos.org/ and http://www.icloud.com/. Please try these sites and unlease the power of cloud computing.

Next on the lot is the Wimax technology. When I started to surf from home, the traditional way to connect the internet is via a modem. We know how fast the connection is and the way we connect, a serial cable from the modem to the computer, a phone wire to the modem. The phone connection reaches the PSTN (Public Switch Transport Network) and it goes on. There are lots and lots of wire involved for geting a 56Kbps connection to our home. Thanks to the DSL technology which helps the same infrastructure to scale up the speed upto 2 Mbps to home.

Lets come to Wimax now, think of a broad band connection with 54Mbps to home ! without any wire (http://www.clearwire.com/). Just your Laptop or PC with a Wimax chip is enough for geting the fastest broadband connection. There are two variants of Wimax, Fixed and Mobile. With mobile wimax you pocket pc or wimax enabled mobile phone is capable enough to view IPTV on the move. Wimax is going to be a great trend setter in the days to come.

I am ending this blog with another small piece of info. there is a site http://riz.gd which helps you to shortern the given url. Suppose if you want to send a big link to some one, you can shorten the link, I hope this might be useful.
Eg: Please see GuruGugan mini Album from Microsoft Live http://riz.gd/q7t694

Cheers,
-Kumar.

GG visit to HCL

GuruGuhan Visit to HCL. He took a session on how to draw :) His voice is sooo sweet ! I really enjoyed a lot. Just wanted to share it to the world...

What is going on...

What happened to the world...A year back everything looks so rosy. From the stock market to the real estate all are too marching ahead and people are making easy money. All in a sudden things are changed... Change is only constantly changing...

I am from the IT field and am almost going to complete a decade in HCL. In the field of IT working a company for a long time is something people in this field will laugh at. Especially in country like India job hoping is like changing shirts. US depression (recession) makes people across the world in deep deep depression.

So what next, people are geting axed. Folks in IT field don't know anything apart from software (some folks even don't know that...but still survived/surviving only because of speaking english). If they loose their job I don't what these folks are going to do..

I strongly believe things will change....when....how long....

Kumar Gunalan Blog

Hi there,

This is Kumar here...