A good read of some new maxims

Somehow found this site and been very happy about it.
http://positivesharing.com/2006/08/top-5-business-maxims-that-need-to-go

Pretty much what i felt always and what made be tell a friend at my BPO job once a quote by Stephen Covey .
" Treat your Employees as you want them to treat your Customers".Thats the only line i cared for in the books i guess.

Indian Companies really go the old stupid way and its so pathetic when the times of india
published no hikes in IT for next few quarters on front page and rediff says work weekends.
Heck man did they give us extra hikes as dollar was strong or 4 day week .
Then why all these stories now.
I ve been enjoying and relating to so much on the site .Like when my manager says to me ok great youve done good work..whatever you were assigned a great job but what more for the
company, we paid for your work what extra for the organization......and then the splendid question one keeps pondering is why pray why!!!

"Each individual should work for himself. People will not sacrifice themselves for the company. They come to work at the company to enjoy themselves."
- Soichiro Honda, founder of Honda

Wish some one tells that to many of our managers

The site has great articles

Like this which reminded how whenever we had stayed late we got a pizza and

did that lessen our anger well no not at all.
Or may be those boring team lunches and biryanis organized.
http://positivesharing.com/2006/12/why-motivation-by-pizza-doesnt-work/

My yrs exp in the service industry supports this totally
http://positivesharing.com/2006/07/why-the-customer-is-always-right-results-in-bad-customer-service/
I ve seen techs who went out of their way and time to help customers who were

a bit kinder and nicer.

Then this http://positivesharing.com/2006/03/how-not-to-lead-geeks/
esp the point about tools. How can you run a application which itself needs 256 MB and Visual studio on a machine which has only 256 MB RAM and then code test scripts fast. It sucks but people are expected to. Because we are so very adjusting.

The whole set of articles i find are excellent and great but it seems the only people who read them are us who know them by experience and not the managers and leaders who would rather know them but well.
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Last weekend read Benazir Bhutto's Interview in Times
It went like this
"The happiest years of my life were spent at harvard-radcliffe campus in the US.
I was young then , wore my hair loose and looked like Joan Beaz, and attended rock concerts in Boston."

Immediately after the above she says
When i retire , I'll have a less hectic schedule . I'd like to teach politics to young people.

I kind of wondered and wondered whyyyy
You were young and happiest in life at rock concerts and now for the newly young you recommend politics.....Its strange how radically one alters their perceptions...or is it that old theory of the happiness of the young being envied.

I am not the right person to know yet...i'm on neither side yet.

Some lil things

Weekends have been extremely tiring since a little over last month since i decided
to look out for jobs. You almost feel like giving it up the whole waste of
time....of the whole day for 15 to 20 mins of chit chat.But anyways i'd decided to give it a break so tired i was (ah the advantages of having some employment).......but then got a call and
trudged along.Nothing much happened beyong the regular nonsense i'm used to
but well a nice visual kinda stuck in mind.

Last year at nearly same time in the house where i stayed there were these
monsoon flowers and i'd been so happy to se them blossom randomly in the rain
and i kind of was happy enough to gather them nad take a snap of my vase with my then new cam.

This weekend a year later where i went for thr interview i saw similar flowers cultivated beautifully in front of the impressive huge glass building.Cultivated as wide borders in pink white and yellow these flowers of the rain and oh how pretty they looked.

Nothing in that huge state of the art building could match them .I almost was tempted to take a snap of them with my webcam but you never know who would question you so i refrained.

I mumbled to myself that quote

"The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy."
Well they won't....all these great things man built ...inspire awe, admiration and sometimes make one proud may be , but to feel that joy you need something that seems effortless ....its wonderful to stumble upon somethings that bring that happiness. There's so much to be said abou the tiniest things in life.

Reciprocating - ‘being Nice’

Is it necessary to like someone who is nice to you,
are you supposed to feel guilty when someone is being kind
and yet you are able to see what you dislike in that person….and never quite make yourself say he/she is nice and good .

How come one can like someone who's not particularly kind and nice to you and yet not have any good feelings for someone who's being all thats said to be good.

Why is is that it becomes like a unwelcome duty to like some nice people and why is it a welcome pain to like some people not so great to you.

Quite a time i dedicated to pondering on this.
The least i could come up with was , while being nice to me by a person, does make me want to reciprocate ,I honestly have my own judgements about people, and them liking me ,or being nice to me figures nowhere in there.

The point may be is i like people, to whom i can look upto and in some way, for being what they are in themselves and what they stand for, and then if i like that …,I then kind of would enjoy that , such a person is nice to me or my friend.

Else, for all their goodness i have a very badly ingrained tendency of striking down people i do not respect.I try not to but i comes through anyways i guess.

I may get along with all kinds of people and even will happily spend time with people who are nice to me and with me but to really admire and love someone i need to respect and like what they stand for as a person . if not i always feel i am simply reciprocating their niceties to me and feel guilty about my being not really true.

It is thats why i guess say on my blog quote lines
"You can't love anyone until you understand that you can't love everyone."

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P.S: pondering being over all i can think is my life's going nowhere or rather is it going down the drain.
Whatever not much i can do about it except say the obvious always
Hope for the best—- Be prepared for the worst.
But yeah the only good thing now is while the first part of hoping seems very bleak i'm totally off rose colored glasses these days…i feel so better for the second part…quite prepared to handle the worst.
Life's numbed me well.

Whats better ??

Life with innumerable options not knowing where they'll take you or may be not take you
or having just a couple where you know the direction if not the destination
or having no option at all and make a destination of where you stand presently.

I can almost argue for merits of each of the above and therein lies my dilemma.

For a mind which keeps changing (some call it reacting) to everything  perceived its a really hard to live with either of those options.

When you've really been tired option 3 seems so much better and then you can support it saying that quote - " Happiness is wanting what you get".

Just to wake up afresh the next day with that attitude of the first option that would be like saying
"Success is getting what you want. "
"Some would rather pursue happiness than obtain it."

And then in those days when you feel that something huge in the universe has actually conspired against you and you feel bogged down by trying to get what you want you so much prefer option 2.

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As of now too many possibilities loom …too less time…..no clear picture
It seems i have the choice…but do i , can I?
So all i tell myself are those lines by Carnegie
"Take a chance! All life is a chance. The one who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare ."

Lets see this time…….
Till now its been more like the one never goes anywhere is the one who took a chance….. a chance to stay.
Lets see …….

Some organizational and management crap for the record

The less i want to write about management and organizational crap the more it seems to be around in life.The last 3 weeks have been my most agonizing and irritating in quite some time.

In fact i was so upset that i almost wished to put up that brilliant mail by my sr manager up here or somewhere on the web and see how many people really would like to work for such a manager.Actually i beleive there will be quite many because there is no dearth of people who love the bureacratic way of working in an office or rather putting in the hours and not the work.

Management is all about having no principles(put beautifully as being open ) and double talk.How are you supposed to feel when a manager constantly walks into team meetings and says
" I am authorized to fire anyone ".
"We pay for you work you are expected to do more for the organization"why pardon...well everyone has that question but no one asks

"The company's revenues are dipping and so you will see quite a shock in the appraisals" by saying this is his encouraging people to work well or work at getting off the organization i did not get
My lead tells me see dear i have no problems with anything your work is great and all else is fine...but you see the sr manager is very upset about your walking in late...then she adds thoughtfully - even there are issues in team(now i know for a fact no one in the team complained...they just crack jokes and that is being used by managers)

Then she addsIf it was a work issue i could have explained saying you need more experience willl learn but what do i say for this.....its a silly thing and how do i explain it - you are single(oh yeah if you are single you should love nothing but your organization) ......dont even have any chores ......why cant you come on time.Anyways i could live with that....

But next day when a sr manager drafts a mail with the kind of plain threat about taking disciplinary action (i.e this is for walking in at 1 hr late ) what exactly must anyone do...well they should get back and put such people in their place and if my career did not have the precarious blanks and past career shifts no one and no one i know could have managed to threaten me like that.
I have often blogged about how i dislike charityin general and mail goes on about how the "organization is not a charity institue...and one should follow discipline as other people who walkin at 9 feel upset about people who dont"
Walking in at 9 esp when there is no need is discipline ???....
ahhh its for no reason i say life is unfair.the whole mails had no reason or provocation except that two people beleived that rather than wasting time chatting and playing TT at office one can walkin after a good sleep and yet finish all work better than anyone else on the team used to walkin an hour late.

Charity...by not firing me for walking in at 10:30 they think they are doing charity ...WOW.
Though i am not much into charity and did not get much chance in my current project i think i have being doing a lot of free social work for the organization esp in my previous projects staying late and all that....huh.

After writing such a crappy threatening mail to the team he walkin smilingly and talks of where the team party would be and we are supposed to be excited. Now thats professionalism.

When a colleague put in the papers after taking a hike the sr manager says " you've exploited me"....its soo amusing.Next we hear he's also planning to put in his papers as he has an offer from the Indian IT giant if he does not get a project here which sends him onsite.Such people talk of principles and we are supposed to be inspired.

The guy makes such jeers about local guys who are managers and love to have candidatesfrom their hometown but never thinks how openly its visible his preference for high profile / north indian gals.
Whenever i think that in the end you too have to end up as a manager you hate it being in the middle of such double talk.Well we tell each other at least while leaving we can speak during exit interviews but well no one including me is for it cause now companies have reference checks...another threat used to the hilt by managers....and then you never know when during the job hopping drama you meet him and his friends again.This is a very connected world....and so everyone stays mum and so they flourish.

So why am i here still here....
because everywhere else they like Perfect lies and i'm too scared to make up one.If my age were a factor i should have been a manager by now and
since i am not -- dig up is what they do at interviews.
everyone likes to speculate and its so much fun with a resume in hand.
Umm so why did you not do any work for four years ...what kind of reason.
Put in a fake there for four years your resume is perfect and so can be the pay...nothing else counts.You just have to hope that lady luck is on your side and the company is not in a image building mood wherein they fire employees for putting in fakes and since i know that lady luck and me are not on speaking terms i play it quiet .

I sometimes guess if i was a bit stupid or not good enough for the work i do then may be i would have gotten away but while i am definitely nowhere brilliant but being quite good at getting things done , most people like to speculate on my personal life as why else would a 1st class engg graduate almost a decade ago is having only near to 3 yrs software exp and is still not in US.

It is oh so dissapointing and frustrating for most to find nothing there.One of the guys on my team asked in his oh always being nice jokes ,u from that college.....so when did you pass out implying how many times did i fail...having a cute face ,a fancy car and classy humorous lines helps him anyday in this office .
Its with no reason that i say life is unfair but neverthless its ok after a 11 hr sleep almost everything seems fine to me.