The Top Ten Lies of Engineers by Guy Kawasaki

This another top ten list -’The Top Ten Lies of Engineers‘ by Guy made me smile and realize that it’s funny because it’s so true.

1. “We're about to go into beta testing.” This is a meaningless statement because it doesn't matter when you go into beta testing--what matters is when you come out of beta testing. (The only hard and fast deadline for coming out of modern-day beta testing is “before you run out of money.”)
In the good old days, “alpha” used to mean “all features are implemented though not necessarily working properly.” “Beta” used to mean “there are no more repeatable bugs.” Nowadays beta means “we've gone as long as possible past the shipping date that we promised our investors.”

2. “I don't know anything thing about marketing...” This is a lie of false modesty. The engineer is thinking, in totality, “I don't know a thing about marketing, but how hard could it be compared to what I'm doing? I should run marketing and engineering. I just hope that the marketing the MBAs come up with is worthy of my code.” However, don't worry too much about this lie because it self-corrects as the engineer misses deadline after deadline and comes to realize that he has bigger issues.

3. “I'll comment the code, so that the next person can understand what I did.” This is a lie of good intentions. Really, the engineer did intend to comment the code but as the schedule slipped, priorities changed. The question put to management became: “Do you want me to comment the code or finish it sooner?” Guess what the answer was. Luckily, the lack of comments usually doesn't matter because the code is so crappy that a total rewrite is necessary in a year.

4. “Our architecture is scalable.” This is the lie that I enjoy hearing the most. Typically, an engineer who has never shipped a product says this after creating a prototype in Visual BASIC. The whole conversation goes like this: “Google's architecture isn't as scalable as mine. They can support 25 million simultaneous searches. We will be able to easily handle a billion.”
Luckily, in most cases, the adoption of the product is slower than the CEO's “conservative” forecast, so scalability never becomes an issue. Yeah, those clowns at Google, Yahoo, Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, and AOL don't know anything about scaling compared to the engineer...

5. “The code supports all the industry standards.” This is almost a truth but for a short omission: “This code supports all the industry standards that I agree with.” The engineer has made a personal decision to ignore standards she doesn't like--for example, those promulgated
by Microsoft. It's no big deal--customers will never know...

6. “We can do a Macintosh version right after we finish the Windows version; in fact, much of the Windows code can be re-used because of how we architected it.” The truth is that version 1.0 of any software is an experiment. It can be a magnificent experiment, but it's an experiment nonetheless. Thus, Windows version 1.0 is held together by duct-tape. The Macintosh version is a copy of the duct-taped Windows version written by an engineer who just finished college and got his first Macintosh a month ago. How hard could it be to learn to program for a different platform? C++ is C++, right?

7. “We have an effective bug reporting database and system.” Of course, the assumption behind the design of the bug reporting database and system is that there are no bugs in the code, so there's not much to database and report. Generally speaking, if the largest number of documented bugs doesn't ever exceed 1,000, it means that the company isn't tracking bugs carefully.

8. “We can do this faster, cheaper, and better with an offshore programming team in India.” Rank and file engineers usually don't tell this lie; it's the CTO who does. Somehow we've got it in our heads that every programmer in India is good, fast, and cheap, and every programmer in the United States is lousy, slow, and expensive. My theory is that for version 1.0 of a product, the maximum allowable distance between the engineers and marketers is thirty feet.

9. “Our beta sites loved the software.” In twenty five years of working in technology, I've never heard a company report that its beta sites didn't like its software. There are three reasons for this: first, many beta sites are so honored to get pre-release software that they don't want say anything negative. Second, most beta sites haven't used the software very much. Third, most beta sites don't want to seem cruel by criticizing a company's new product. Doing so is as socially unacceptable as telling someone that his baby is ugly.

10. “This time we got it right.” The scary thing about this lie is that the engineer really believes it. Again. The problem is that “this time” occurs over and over again. I have great faith in engineers and believe that in the long run, they do get it right. It's just that in the long run, we're all dead.

Addendumbs (sic):
“This code is so bad it would be faster to write it all from scratch than debug and expand the current shipping code.” (Joel.)
"I like thinking about architecture, but I can code." (Glenn Kelman)
"It works on my machine." (Gaurav)
"Of course I can let go of the code and run the business instead." (Jason)
"Even my mom can navigate the screens." (Nitin)

Buying an "option on probability"

From an article in NYTimes on a patent application filed by Philips-

James Boyle, a law professor at Duke University, said that broadcasters offer a program knowing that only a fraction of the audience watches the commercials. Advertisers, he added, buy nothing more than "an option on a probability," and the viewer is no more obligated to watch every commercial than a driver is obligated to read every billboard.

The Art of Decision Making

A new topic for discussion in management journals and other publications is, surprisingly, on making decisions. Fortune International recently carried a cover feature on this theme in its 75th anniversary issue.
"Blink" is the title of a new bestseller attempting to analyse how some people consistently make quick and brilliant decisions and others not.
Of course, over decades, many theories and models have been developed to understand and facilitate decision making. However, I guess this new-found interest in this subject is probably because some of the best-trained managers and political leaders have apparently erred in their decisions in recent times.
One of the worst ones in recent times could be the decision of George Bush to invade Iraq. Hundreds of billions of dollars of shareholder wealth was eroded in the last few years by telecom czars when they placed bets on 3-G technologies.
Marks & Spencer, amongst the most successful of all European retailers till some time ago, has seen erosion in revenues for seven consecutive quarters despite having a number of chairmen/senior business leaders.
At the same time, relatively an upstart from India -- Mittal Steel -- is now in Fortune Global 500 and heads this very illustrious list when measured on performance in terms of returns on assets.
Despite the apparent error committed by Mercedes Benz in launching an outdated model on its debut in India, Ford managers -- in their wisdom -- did the same with Escort and have since been struggling to be counted as a serious player in the fast-growing market.
Tata Motors, despite many cynics, bet on Indica and built up a serious passenger car business for themselves in just about no time.
Pantaloon's mercurial chairman -- Kishore Biyani -- has been riding the crest of growth of modern retail through his lightning-fast decision taking that has left his competitors way behind.
As a consultant to some of the largest Indian and multinational businesses, I have the privilege of seeing from close quarters the decision-taking processes adopted by many of them.
I cannot share names at this time for confidentiality reasons, but in the next decade, I am confident we would have some very surprising names on the list of winners and losers.
What should be the right decision-taking strategy in the Indian context? In my view, the most important strategy should be to "actually take decisions".
We should proudly accept the fact that as per the most recent ranking of the top 10 economies of the world, India is at number 10.
While it may take 6-7 years for us to overtake the currently ninth-ranked Canada (at current economic growth rates for both these countries), it still implies that India can finally provide the opportunity to create multi-billion dollar businesses.
For this growing, young, and vibrant consuming class, the issue should no longer be about the sustainability of the opportunity but more about getting to market at the earliest with the appropriate proposition.
Likewise, the decision should no longer be on which opportunity to pursue, especially when faced with a plethora of options.
It should be more on just picking up any one that appeals most and then spending effort and resource on getting started very quickly.
Unfortunately, the track record of many established Indian businesses has not been so good in recent years. The textile and clothing industry is the most poignant example of having missed the post-quota opportunity that was staring at India for the last 10 years.
Construction/infrastructure is another area where by this time, many Indian business houses could have positioned themselves to take advantage of the very large projects that will probably now go to international players.
In retailing, I have gone through the pain of seeing dozens of promising business plans gathering dust in a number of corporate headquarters.
Having decided to take decisions, and take them quickly, the next step is to institute a process for arriving at decisions. While the decision-taking process has to be supported with data, information, and analysis, a line has to be drawn on how much information and analysis would be adequate to take an "informed" decision.
In most cases, it is possible to isolate the most important variables that can have a bearing on success or failure. A process must be put in place to prioritise the variables themselves, and then assigning team(s) to study these variables in a defined time schedule.
Then, decision must be taken to take a decision on the basis of information and analysis available at that point rather than procrastinating by asking for more information.
All decisions cannot turn out to be right, given the heightened uncertainty in the external business environment on account of a myriad factors.
Hence, boards must condone some errors as long as they are satisfied that there was no compromise by the decision taker on the process itself, and that the logic used to arrive at a conclusion was flawless.
HR managers have to start giving more importance to decision-making capabilities of their new recruits, especially at the senior levels.
I am not sure what tools are available to hone such capabilities, but if they do exist, companies must make an effort to put their leadership teams through such programmes.The next decade, most likely, is to be India's decade. It would be interesting to see who the winners and losers would be!

--Rediff

Ideal Indians...

We're Indians. We don't kiss. Kissing is what people outside India do. We just smile shyly at the people we love. Watch our many movies for proof.
We are all heterosexual. Homosexuals live outside our borders. We encourage our media to explore sexuality. We accept alternative sexualities, even though we are all convinced they do not exist.
Few of us undress fully while making love. Undressing is what people outside India do. We are content with a little wiggling and maybe a few post-coital cigarettes. Sex is, after all, a dirty word. We don't think about sex. It's never on our minds. We think pure thoughts at all hours.
We love cricket. It's because we're so good at it. It's because our cricketers pour their hearts into every game. Other sports are not worthy of our attention. Other sportsmen do not pour their hearts out into their games. Other sportsmen are not worthy of endorsing our brands of footwear, aerated drinks or car batteries. Our cricketers alone deserve our adoration. Our cricketers and our movie stars, that is. Our movie stars are intelligent. They study all scripts carefully and are always unwilling to propagate stereotypes. Our movie stars live clean, wholesome lives and are therefore perfectly suited to deliver clean, wholesome messages to the masses that adore them.
We are a patient, tolerant people. We accept all religions and tolerate all kinds of behaviour. We never riot. Rioting, too, happens only outside our borders. We keep the peace at all hours. We do not typecast other religions or provoke sentiments. Watch our many movies for proof.
All Indians are our brothers and sisters. This is why we respect all women. This is why women in our major cities can do as they like and travel, unaccompanied, at all hours. This is why our policemen are highly respected, for the protection they offer all women. We like women to have minds of their own. Women who lead their own lives need not fear humiliation at our hands. We do not brand them whores. Look at our many female film stars for proof. We respect them all. The ones who choose to do as they like on screen, as well as the ones who do not.
We have never felt the need to keep women at home, closeted or covered in any way. Bold women are never a threat to us. The idea of female sexuality is welcomed and holds no threat for our calm countrymen. We do not ask women to wear clothes we choose for them. We respect them irrespective of whether they're dressed in nine-yard saris or nine-inch mini-skirts.
Education is important for us. We respect our teachers. We encourage our sons and daughters to take up teaching as a profession. We pay our teachers well. We pay our teachers on time. We teach our sons that teaching is not just a job for women. We respect our system of education. We encourage our sons and daughters to get an education here, not abroad, because we believe in the system. The few who graduate abroad are encouraged to come back here, to make life even better than it already is for themselves and their countrymen.
We are proud of our culture. We uphold it every week. Our heritage is precious. This is why we protect it well. Our monuments are well cared for. Our museums are well funded. Our curators are literate and well paid. We do not allow people to encroach on sites like the Taj Mahal or the Qutub Minar. Graffiti is not allowed. Vandalism is a myth.
We treat our sons and daughters equally. We allow our daughters to marry when they wish to. We allow our daughters to pick the men they want to spend their lives with. We encourage our daughters to think for themselves. We believe they have the intelligence to make wise decisions. This is also why we encourage them to study further.
We love our country. We don't want to live anywhere else. We don't work towards the idea of leaving it and never coming back. Because we're Indians. Hypocrites, all.

--Rediff

I have to find what I love...

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says...

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005. I found it damn good, worth sharing it to you all.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life.But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started?Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him.So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected,but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you liveeach day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right."It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to dotoday?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want todie to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but some day not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The WholeEarth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of likeGoogle in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Will's Power

Sorry for coming back to my blog after a long time.. But.. Anyways.. Recently came across this poem which is just superb.. Which has got the potential of changing the way of your thinking..


First win, then go to War
-Sun Tzu, Chinese warrior and philosopher, 500 BC

If you think you are beaten, you are;
if you think you dare not; you don't;
if you like to win, but you think you can't
it is almost certain you won't.

If you think you'll lose, you're lost;
for out of the world we find
success begins with a fellow will
its almost in the state of mind.

If you think you are outclassed, you are ;
you've got to think high to rise.
You've got to be sure of yourself
before you can win the prize.

Life's battle don't always go
to the stronger or the faster man,
but soon or later the man who wins
is the man who thinks he can.

Remember that your only limitation is the one that you setup in your mind.
So go ahead and be the Winner.

Kuch jyada hi kool hai hum sab ...

As I was away from Delhi during last couple of weekends, and there was no time to relax, I decided to enjoy this weekend to my fullest. And this started with "Kya Kool Hai Hum" on friday night with some of my team mates. We went for night show. To my surprise theatre was completely packed (even in night show). Movie was in hindi but it was on the lines of American Pie. All vulgar jokes and any stupid thing which you can think of, it was in the movie. But the movie was light and can help you in recovering from any tension you might be having.

Another good thing happened was that, I came to know Bose: The forgotten hero was released on that very day. I was actually waiting for this movie to release for a long time. I enquired about the timings of Bose during the interval. I was surprised to know that only one morning slot was kept for the patriotic film. I returned after the movie and was eagerly waiting for next morning to go for my long awaited movie. I didn't ask any of my friends to accompany me, as initial responses I got were not in favour and after all it was a morning show. For this generation 12 noon is too early to wake up and that too during the weekends.

I reached Waves (name of theatre) at around 11.30 as I was not sure of getting tickets in last minute rush.But I got the tickets very easily. Now I knew why only one slot was kept for this patriotic movie. It was just the reflection of response of public who prefers commercial movies carrying some virtual masala. Finally I saw the movie. I was with handful of old people (60+ in age) in the huge theatre, who came to see the hero of their time. There were no couples in this movie. The same screen 0.3 was houseful during the night show yesterday. Though I liked the atmosphere (free of any kind of artificialities) and the movie, I was thinking about the priorities of the present generation. Regarding movie, Rahman's music was truly inspiring. His choice of the Rabindranath Tagore song, Jodi tor dak shune keu na ashey tobey ekla cholo re, as a sort of theme for the movie could not have been more apt. I felt that this movie was made for the common masses, as it was conveying nothing more that what you already know. But I think that there is majority who doesn't even know this. But it doesn't matter to this generation, Isha Koppikar's "I" should be capital, independence can breathe without a capital "I".

Abhimanyu aur Irade

As suggested by Shashi, I am posting poem Abhimanyu and Irade in devanagri script. If somebody not knowing hindi wants to know the essence of this, please let me know.

Abhimanyu aur Irade

Abhimanyu aur Irade
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Zindagi, Log, Samay
Sab milke kar rachte hain
Ek Chakravyuh.
Jis tarah fansti hai chandni
Gehre, kaale badloon ke beech
Usi tarah nigalna chahta hai
Kisi Abhimanyu ko -- Yeh Chakravyuh.


Lekin
Vyakti nahi Irade hote hain Abhimanyu.
Vyakti nahi Irade hote hain Abhimanyu.

Varna kab ka toot jata Abhimanyu chakravyuh mein
Kab ki ghul jaati chandani badloon mein.
Nahi toot jata Abhimanyu Chakravyuh mein
Nahi ghul jati chandani badloon mein
Kyunki Vyakti nahi Irade hote hain Abhimanyu.

Isliye
Mat tootne dena saans Abhimanyu ki
Tum dekhna
Chak tootenge ek din
Chand nikalega ek din
Yeh Chakravyuh sooljhega.
Yeh saara Chakravyuh pighalega
Abhimanyu ke parakram se.

Yeh Chakravyuh, jo aaj kehta hai - Aham Nityaasmi,

Kal hoonkarega Abhimanyu
Aham Brahmasmi.