ExpertDabbler

Some folks classify it under emotional quotient. But let’s just stick to GQ for now. I need to do some value add, see!!

Unlike my IQ, my GQ is pretty decent. Last week I commented on a fellow blogger’s post which turned out to be as much as her post and felt guilty. Maybe I should’ve written about it in my blog and given a link.

But some days, rather most of the days, I tend to do some stuff and think about it later. Like the way I thought I should’ve taken the day off, after reaching office at a leisurely 4 PM. I thought I will be delayed but not to THAT extent. Eventually I met with some QA folks, had Kozhukattai and Veg. spring rolls (thought of avoiding it, but someone said vegetables are good for health :p) from the cafeteria enterprise owned by Radhika Sarathkumar and came back at 6.30 PM sharp. Thanks to flexi timings and some such funda, I will get paid in full for the day, but I did feel guilty for a moment.

My feeling bad quotient even extends to Wall Street firms. It’s bizarre to see events which used to happen in public sector companies in India in the seventies, eighties are happening to Wall Street firms now. These firms are almost on the verge of begging the Fed to give them some pocket money for the day. Bear Sterns was thrown $2 USD per share by JP Morgan and they gratefully accepted it. The Fed is funding the whole transaction (a body called BIFR used to do such similiar activities in India).
In another sense, this is socialism of the highest order as one great investor had pointed out. Carlyle capital is voting unanimously to wind up operations and Lehman Brothers is shedding jobs. I was one of the beneficiaries of Lehman’s offshoring of IT application and development services way back in 2003. BFSI segment is one of the major outsourcers of IT services. They still remain so for the most part I guess.

I used to tell my friends that my first home was part funded by HDFC and Lehman Brothers. I have moved out of that segment in the recent past. But I know several of my friends’ homes are still indirectly funded by the IT budgets of Citigroup, JP Morgan, Merryll Lynch etcetera. The trouble is, a lot of high end work for these firms involve working on complex financial products which one Mr. Warren Buffet calls ‘Financial WMD’. Whatever.

I think it’s good to feel bad or guilty occasionally.
For one, it shows how sensitive you are. Nobody likes an insensitive sob. But equally important is to remember the lessons and move on. Nobody likes a loser who harps on his past mistakes forever as well. Given a choice between a sob and a loser, I think young women might prefer the former :p.

Now, why did I write a post like this, spending my useless time and also forcing my readers to spend their valuable time??

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 10:05 pm and is filed under IT Life, outsourcing, Credit crises. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.