ExpertDabbler

The best thing about Friday night is that it gives you a glimpse of heaven. It lets you feel the following two days are totally yours. That is never the case but still it is good to feel that way at least once in a week.

I know I did not update my blog. Several reasons though. All I wanted to say is long and for once POLARIS folks have decided “Lets squeeze prabukarthik a bit and see if he is up to it”. Coming days are going to be even hectic if the present weather conditions are any indication.

I know I am supposed to write about the three kinds of organizations. But let’s reserve that for later. When we don’t have anything worthwhile to write.

Last week I went to meet a girl in Kovilpatti. Very interesting experience.
Will write more tomorrow hopefully. Feel damn tired after a hectic day.

I came across an interesting theory of persons and organizations yesterday.
According to this theory, there are three kinds of people in an organization- jokers, clowns and buffoons.

Jokers – These are the Priyamvathas of the world. They know what they are doing. They know their value. They can just fit into any role or situation. You ask them to code device drivers, they are game. Ask them client side JavaScript, they are done as soon as you give your requirements.

They can also be counselors, agony aunts, agonizing children themselves. It depends upon who you are. Apart from that they have no real ambitions.
They derive their happiness by the company they choose to keep.
They don’t talk about their work much. They just do wonderful work and leave for the day.

Clowns – These are the people who just talk. Guys who make the sales pitch. People like prabukarthik. The original perpetrators of “Gyaan”. They have their mouths stretching from Americas to Asia Pacific. Ask them anything and they have a URL, an article or a story for an answer. Ask them to do something and they get jittery. They are creative with words but nothing else.
They can glorify anything. They can paint body shopping with words like “Resource augmentation”. What resource? Oil and Natural Gas?

These people think coders are jokers but ask them to write “Hello world” and they say ‘Why write Hello World mate?, I can as well say this when I meet somebody’.

Buffoons – The people who can talk and can walk the talk. Folks like Narayana murthy, Premji, Spielberg, William H Gates, Larry Ellison, Kamal Haasan etc.
These guys can talk philosophy for hours and can still do whatever they talk.
All the good project managers of the world come under this category too.
They know how to cover their ass and how to cover those who work for them when something goes wrong.
These people are good at giving PowerPoint presentations on Vedic literature and western erotica. Better still, can apply both the principles in their lives, often at the same time.
Suman and Kiruba might be there soon.

So ideally we should all try to be Buffoons.

But Where? That as soon as I reach office.

I had lunch at the Andhra Mess near our Office. I came out a determined man. I decided from now on, if ever I feel like taking Andhra food again, I am going to go all the way to Hotel Balaji Woodlands in Tirupati. No more the crap that gets served here.

I was pouring pigmented water as dish for my rice and that fellow had the gall to call that “Rasam”.

The tragedy is the patronage these hotel owners manage to get. It has less to do with their quality of food and more with the location of our Offices and the proximity of these mushrooming “hotels” near our offices.

Consider this scenario; My Office is located in the great IT Highway, a good 25 km from the city. It has a capacity of around 2000. Cognizant is just opposite to our office. It should host about another 2000.
Most of the employees travel from far off places in the city suburbs by Company buses. That means starting from home very early in the morning leaving little time to prepare and pack lunch. One gets tired of the Office lunch that gets served.
So, at least a few hundreds are bound to enter hotels like the one I had today. This crowd is sufficient for the hotel owners.

I would like to see a software professional, disillusioned with both the IT industry and the food that gets served in places like this, start a hotel business of his own near his former office and cater to his former colleagues and friends. That would be very interesting.