Cracks in Software Industry?

I have received good number of mails, especially from the college students in the last one week regarding the health of software industry. Its seems there is lot of talk going on in the colleges and what I see is lot of misinformation is getting propagated. Let me address all those students, here.

When we discuss this kind of issues, we should not mix objective facts with the subjective opinions. The fact is that the BFSI (Banking, Financial Services and Insurance) industry in the US is facing rough weather because of what is known as Sub Prime crises. Its not that important to understand the problem in greater detail. But, it is important to understand that money is what flows across all kinds of businesses and if there is a problem at some corner, it impacts the parts as well. The intensity and timing may be little different.

The impact of this turmoil in the US financial markets has its impact on IT industry as well. It’s in two different ways.

One is direct: around 40% of the business of IT major companies in India deals with BFSI industry. So, these IT companies would surely get impacted. They may loose few of their projects or may not get good number of new projects.

The other one is indirect: As money is what fuses life into any business, problem in the securities market would impact lot of businesses. For example, if a company wants to expand its business by going for an IPO, it may find it little difficult now. So, expansion may be postponed at least for some time. There are several other these kinds of scenarios which basically slows down the growth. So, our IT companies, like any other related industry, may not get good number of new orders.

Now, panic is the response for this? This is my opinion: Certainly no.

This is part of what we call as economic cycles. Economies (world or national) raise and fall and raise and it goes on. When economy goes very strong, every one tries to expand, so we get good number jobs and salaries. Also, as every one is in the rush of grabbing more, we may also tend to ignore few fundamentals. When economy shrinks, every one tries to cut the cost, so we may loose jobs and may not get new jobs. That’s the bad part.

But, still we can see something good in it. When economy is going week, every one tries to for the "best" in terms of productivity, efficiency, performance, maintenance ... because we want best deal for whatever limited money we have. What it means? It asks for new ideas, new processes, new technologies and etc., Lot of "bogus", "mismanaged", "inefficient" companies gets weeded out. Only worthy players remain in the market. Lot of clean-up happens, which is good.

It depends on which part of the glass you are looking at. Are you looking at the half-filled glass or half-empty glass?

As a student, we should never bother about the jobs. That’s just one of the by-product of our learning. Just keep on learning. Learn technologies. Learn soft skills. Learn things that fascinate you. Enjoy learning. That makes you best in the breed. And you kind of people always get the due recognition. The opportunity comes and knocks at the door of only prepared minds. Prepare for the worst, you get the best. This must be the case irrespective of the good or bad phase of economy we are in.

One more fact is that, in Bangalore alone there are around 3,50,000 software engineers work for various companies.You can think of how many are there in India (I do not know the actual figure). We are hearing job cuts in terms of just few thousands. Sure, there is a problem, but panic is not the answer. Don't get panic and loose your confidence.

If someone says software industry is collapsing, that’s a bit of exaggeration. That’s not going to happen, at least, in the nearest future. Moreover, exactly opposite may happen. Look at what happened during the days of Y2K and Dotcom bust in 2001. It’s all part of life. Be prepared for it. With preparation, you can face any thing.

Let me repeat. Preparation is the key. Do your best as a student, the rest is taken care. For that matter, we are all, inside and outside of the colleges, are students. Isn't it?

Prioritization is the key

For the last few years, I see myself spending more time with people who are in the age group of 20-24 years. When I was at Cisco and Sudhari, most of my colleagues were fresh from college. Later when I was teaching at SITE, naturally I had spent good amount of time with the undergraduate engineering students. And now, as a training consultant, still I engaged more with the people of this age group.

I must say, these people are really wonderful. Many of them wanted to do something, but only few people know what is that they actually wanted to do. People usually ask me one of these two questions:

1. I wanted to do something really great. Suggest me what I should do.
2. I have lots of ideas, but the time is limited to work on them. And there are lots of contrasting demands. I am not able to focus.

While the first question should have a context based answer, the second question, fortunately, has an answer that fits into most of the situations. Let me discuss this point here.

First is that one should feel proud for having those many ideas or for having zeal to work on those many ideas. Naturally, time is in limited supply, for anybody. Even God has only 24 hours (if he lives on the mother Earth). How can we get maximum out of these 24 hours? Here is the one word solution: Prioritization.

One thing we have to remember is that we can not do all the things at once. We have to pick up of fewer number of tasks at a time, focus on them, complete them and then move on to the next set of tasks. The question again comes: Which of the tasks should be picked up? The answer is simple: Pick up the most urgent tasks which you can not delay any further. In fact there is nothing like a choice exists as far as urgent tasks are concerned. We are forced to take on urgent tasks, there is no other go.

Then if every one is picking up their urgent tasks, how only few of us are succeeding in completing them? Nice question. This is what I can say.

The tasks that are urgent need not be our most favorite tasks. We may get distracted to other 'interesting' things at the cost of the current work. This has to be taken care.

Here is the other failure factor: There may be a difficult task in pending state just because its not urgent. We may get nightmares whenever we think about that difficult task. Eventhough we work on other urgent tasks right now, part of the mind always goes around that difficult task. We get tempted to spend sometime on that task at the cost of the current work. It always leads to suboptimal results. Lesson to be learnt is that when you are working on a taks, be single minded. Complete it before you spend any quality time on anything else. We should not feel anxiety or irritation because of other other pending tasks. They will get their attention, once you complete the current work. So don't bother about them, now.

Having said that, I must say, we should actually make sure that no work slips into "urgency" zone. If we take enough care when that work was not urgent, it never gets into this firefighting zone. Spend some time daily on the important but not urgent tasks, as a habit. Activities like reading books, networking with people, getting reskilled and etc fall under this category. Couple of hours every day on these activities saves lot of time in future.

Here is the summary of what I wanted to say:

1. As a habit, spend 1-2 hours on activites that fetch long term results. They are not forced on you. So, you should have real commitment in working on them.
2. When some thing is really urgent, give maximum attention to it. Don't bother about the other things. They will get their due attention, later.
3. Always do one task at a time. Multitasking is good, but only when you are really good at it.
4. If there is lot of work, all of sudden, don't get irritated or stressed. Prioritize them and win one at a time.
5. Remain cool and have confidence in yourself. If you practice it at this age, it becomes part and parcel of your personality.

Music of Morning

I guess I am in heavens, right now. After long long gap, I got time and interest to listen to Kishore Kumar songs. Not only that, almost for two hours, in the evening, the whole family spent time in singing songs. I am not saying that we are good singers ... but we all like it. Its brings all of four more closer.

When it comes to taste, I found my younger kid comes very close to me. He also likes the songs that I like more, "Ye jeevan hain, is jeevan kaa", "mere saamnewaale khidikee main", "jhookar mere man ko", Mukhesh and Mannade songs of Anand, Kishore songs of Golmaal, Jesdaas songs .... he enjoyed very much.

A wonderful Sunday is about to conclude this way. Morning kids and I went for a walk around the lake in front of our apartment. When we moved into this place, Pai Layout on Old Madras Road, back in 2002, the lake was not this beautiful. Now lot of work has been done in terms of plantation and maintenance.

The pleasant morning coupled with cloudy sky, cool breeze, greenish surroundings, the cranes and several other birds in the lake, and trains on the other side of the lake ... woh! I can't ask for more than this.

As my saturday was spoiled in the traffic yesterday, we went for a weekly outing today instead. But, just to the nearest game zone in the Big Bazaar. I do not generally enjoy playing vedio games or other such things. However, I also played with my kids today. Frankly, I do not know the name of the game I played. But enjoyed a lot. Of course, enjoyed radio city and SFM too in the traffic jams . We took an hour to pass just 1 kilo meter :-)

Mmmm ... what else? Yes, let me talk about a surprising experience. Even though I have been in the technology field for more than a decade, it generally do not come to my mind that I belong to that field. Same thing with teaching. Eventhough now I am into that area, I never remember that I am actually teaching... I never received any greetings from my students when I was in the engineering college at Tadepalligudem last year, on teachers day. But, this time, many of those old students sent me greetings on the morning of Teachers Day. How can I express what I felt at that time? I have received many awards and rewards as a technology person, but never I felt this much of sense of fulfilment. In fact some of the participants of my just concluded training program also came to me (in Chennai) with greetings and gifts as well. We had fun time together chatting.

All the way, life is going through its sweetest phase ... the impact is like even the problems are also contributing to making these moments more sweet and memorable.

In a moment, I will have to leave for Chennai for a two day program over there. From Wednessday, for the first time, I will be handling a program at a Bangalore MNC. Let me see how this week would unfold.