Project experience - Chennai Vs San Francisco

Chennai (CHE): Not attend after hours call from office, not a big deal. Next day you can go and tell no signal or do some adjustment.
San Francisco (SFO) : Not attend after hours call it becomes a big issue. At-least you should have enabled your voice mail. Should listen to the voice mail and expected to respond back.

CHE: Even though if you don't have work you cannot leave by 5.00 pm. Wait until the manager leaves or on the 8.00 pm cab, whichever is earlier.
SFO: Even if you have work you can leave by 5.00 pm and continue tomorrow. If you have to complete the work after 8 hrs, you can charge over time.

CHE: If you discuss or talk little bit extra in team meetings, colleagues may comment your attitude and criticize (by saying too much scene).
SFO: You need to talk more, ask more questions, clarify each and every concern you have, you can stop them, if you don't understand anything. The guy who asks more question considered to be the bright and intellectual.

CHE: If you had any late night issues you have to come to office next day (bit late may be).
SFO: If you had any late night calls you can work from home next day.

CHE: Work allocation and time allocation is dictated by the Lead
SFO: You can decide and negotiate the task and its time.

CHE: You can do your work and if you are reserved nobody cares.
SFO: You do your work and if you don't interact properly, it will create a big mess and it is considered as a biggest issue.

CHE: You know when your project is going to complete. (enough time is there to get next project)
SFO: You never know when you will come out of the project. (always be prepared)

Java creates unity in diversity

Japan Developer speaks Japanese at Home,
American Developer speaks English at Home,
Tamil Developer speaks Tamil at Home,
Chinese Developer speaks Chinese at Home,
Russian Developer speaks Russian at Home,
if all these Developers come to office and work in a project they speak (work on and understand) a common language which is Platform independent, Architecture neutral and also Country independent called Java!

IT jobs nowadays..

P - Personal Work at office
R - Read stock price, personal emails at office
O - Out of your seat often
J - Job search/inquiry with friends
E - Earn money
C - Copy and Paste
T - Time to leave when it is 5.00 pm.

Parota master called as Scrum master

If you have a 30 years of mortgage, encourage your team members to buy group lottery ticket $1 each and if your team wins the Mega Million, with your share you can pay your mortgage and enjoy your rest of life in Hawaii... ha ha ha...

Force your team members to speak in your mother tongue, if anybody doesn't speak, try to release him from the team... ha ha ha...

You can lead a team of developers for a WebServices project without having any idea on Java. Tell him in our days we use to code in C language, which is far better than Java, and this Java is not even allowing to update a Collection... argue with the developer C is better than Java.. ha ha ha...

You can tell the Spring developers, that you can create the front end screens using Spring ROO in ten minutes, exactly within ten minutes... ha ha ha...

Your friend will be a Cell phone architect, means always having cell phone stickied to his ears, will see some demo video on Spring source and explains it to his people who speaks his mother tongue and will act like the super star architect.. ha ha ha...

Your another friend is a Facebook designer, means he calls himself as designer/manager/architect everything and always on face book, twitter and gmail during office hours, he tells Eclipse doesn't support debugging like RAD.. he is the superstar designer of the team... ha ha ha ...

If somebody works hard and questions all this and doesn't speak your mother tongue, release him from the team saying budget constraints and that too give three days notice to him... ha ha ha...

God bless you with more and more wealth and happiness Parota

My recent experience in a project

மெய்வருத்தம் பாரார் பசிநோக்கார் கண்டுஞ்சார்
எவ்வெவர் தீமையு மேற்கொள்ளார் - செவ்வி
அருமையும் பாரா ரவமதிப்புங் கொள்ளார்
கருமமே கண்ணாயி னார்.

It may appear like this poem is not applicable for software developers, if some developer follows this poem in his life and work, he will be considered as an dump guy, not so smart etc, etc..

Always talk about others, compare others, criticize others, talk about yourself more and your accomplishment, read tweets, don't do your work in time, then you will be considered as a smart guy (developer)

But you may need to face the consequences later. So always follow the poem, follow the principle the outcome will be rewarding.

So called designers and architects i came across..

1. Say something stupid in the team meetings and backing it up by saying " just kidding.."
2. Reading tweeter during office hours and discuss those tweets with other team members in scrum room.
3. When they have a little work put on their headphones and concentrate on the work, if they doesn't have any work read tweets, facebook, rss and disturb others and invite other teammates for the discussion and if they doesn't join, tease them and say doesn't have team spirit.
4. Get all the completed artifacts and knowledge from developer who burns himself for more than 10 hrs everyday and send the final delivery mail to the business owners and other stakeholders as if they did everything.
5. Asking the team members to bring snacks every week, talk nice to them only on the day they bought the snacks.
6. Discuss various types of sweets, snacks and finding the Indian restaurants in google map for the weekend party during business hours.
7. Often go and meet Senior managers, Architects and update them as if they did everything and gave all the ideas to the developer.
8. If the developer gets angry, create a bad opinion about him with peers and senior managers.
9. Use office laptop to see movies online during weekends.
10. Get license and install all the costly software like RAD 7.5, Informatica Client, XMLSpy and never opened it during the sprint lifecycle.
11. Advice everyone and when it is unavoidable to write some code on java, use goto statements, continue statement and other C style code in java.
12. Never allow others to talk in the meetings.
13. Even if nobody asks brag about themselves their past achievements and todays leading customer websites are running because of their design ;-)
14. Use to have big friends circle to get them next project, forward their resume to the new client, and ask their friends to conduct the interview for them in case the management finds and kicks them out of their current project.

Me Chart and its significance

Me chart is a pictorial representation of one self, with short term and long term goals and ones mission in life. I learnt this concept from a Jaycees trainer, during a training session he want us to draw a Me chart, at that time i did not understand the significance of Me chart, i just created my Me chart and displayed him. He asked me to paste this chart on my house and wants me to look at it often many times in a day. I did paste on my house and started looking at it often, but never had much trust on this, time went on nothing happened, we vacated our house and moved to a new place (May 2005), i forget to paste my Me chart on my new house and i forget it once for all. I went to my native place, last month (Mar 2010), while cleaning my room i accidentally noticed my Me chart on my suite case and i opened it after five years, to my surprise i realized most of the things on my Me chart happened in my life and it continues to happen.
What is a Me chart?
Me chart hast four parts with only drawings or pictures on it without any single letter or character. Take a white chart and draw a horizontal and vertical line and split it into four quadrants, on the top left portion of the chart represent your name by drawing or pasting any picture, without using any single alphabet, on seeing the picture one should decipher your name, on the top right portion draw your short term goals without writing any letters, on the bottom left portion draw your long term goals in life and on the bottom right portion draw your mission in life, paste this chart were you look often and start looking at it everyday, i bet your dreams will come true within a short span of time. Have a try, it worked out for me, it should workout for you!

Things to know before starting from Chennai to USA

1. First and foremost is to know car driving. Learn car driving at India itself and if possible get an International driving license. Its both time saving and cost effective.
2. Bring with you a flat pin adapter to charge you laptop and mobile. Here the round pin what we use to have doesn't fit into the plug points.
   
3. Keep your email id as short as possible. Here you have to provide your email id for each and every thing and you need to pronounce each and every letter of your email id (eg. In case you have a email id like umamaheswaran@yahoo.com then you have to pronounce like this "U as in umbrella, M as in Mango, A as in Apple, M as in Mango, A as in apple, H as in Henry, E as in Edward, S as in Sam, W as in Whale, A as in Apple, R as in Rock, A as in Apple, N as in Nancy").
4. If you have kids bring along with you all their medical prescriptions, immunization certificates, you need them for school admission and medical checkup.
   
5. It takes a minimum of one month to understand the US accent fully. Get used to US accent by watching some movie or TV shows.
6. Bring along with you, your subject books and technical books. Here books are more expensive.
   
7. Its better to have scanned soft copies of your certificates, passport and visa. Otherwise you have to search for a scanner or fax machine, every time you want to send a copy of them.
8. Switching job is not easy, like uploading resume on naukri.com and getting the interview call next day morning and getting the offer day after. Here some employer has to hold your work permit.
9. Take adequate tablets and medicine for fever, head ache and if you are wearing contact lenses, buy adequate stock at India itself. Here you cant buy lenses without prescription, also they are expensive.
   
10. Learn to cook in case you don't know how to. Indian restaurants may be far from your hotel.
    

Enjoy your trip!