Experiences of a Code Cutter

2004-12-18T20:54:00.000-08:00

Hilarious ISB Interview Experience Scene 1 - I "thought" that the interview was to held in Taj Residency .. so i went there .. realised it isnt taj residency .. cursed my self about my sloppiness ... cursed myself that i became so happy reading the mail .. that i didnt bother to double-check where the interview is to be held. .. ran to taj gateway because interviews were being held there also ( learned from the forum ).. meanwhile i get a call on the mobile that asks .. where are u .. we are waiting in the taj oberoi. All this because i am terribly tied up in work , am getting married next week and running a bad temperatur ( Excuses ). Made it to venue a good 25 minutes beyond scheduled time. Perfect start to Phase 2. Scene 2 - The interview panel had Mr Ajit Rangnekar ( Deputy Dean, ISB ) and a member from the adcom and an alum. As expected , the first question , what punishment should we give you for coming late ? Scene 3 - Apart from the first few minutes , i thought i had a rocking time and was able to answer most of the questions to my satisfaction. But again .. it is like those interviews .. where you can never make out how you did .. the more you think about it, you think you could have improved on some aspects .. at the same time .. you are generally optimistic. Scene 4 - Total interview time 45 minutes , current affaris , explain job hopping ( 4 jobs in 4.5 years ), how would you sell a solution to a client , since i had something "Different" in the essays .. there was some amount of "leg-pulling" about the same. Technical challenges , managerial challenges , in fact so many areas that i probably dont recollect. Summary - You can't prepare beyond a certain point , It has to be natural , you might come prepared with a lot of answers to stock questions like "Why MBA" , "Why ISB" .. but there could be other questions that they ask , whose answers could contradict your "well prepared" answers. So be your natural self .. The folks on the panel were awesome .. because they were so friendly .. i could recover in 1 mintue from the "flustered state " that i was in. These guys rock .. Preparation - last week of bachelorhood .. so have been having major parties and saw swades the day before the interview and collated data from various forums and blogs about possible questions and interviews. Very minimal preparation Advise - Make a list of all the Taj brand hotels the route maps. Keep a vehicle handy , in case you want to roam around the different hotels like me. Apologies for the typos and grammatical errors .. have a train to catch in a few hours. Best of luck to all the folks having interview calls and to those who are waiting for them. Also all the best to folks who have finished interviews. rgds Chadra's Alter Ego

2004-12-15T22:00:00.000-08:00

Hi ,

Got some hits to the Blog .. whoa .. rocking ... you cant see .. but am actually doing the Victory Dance.

Jokes apart , Life is hectic now and have to juggle many things. On the professionall front , the project is entering into a crucial phase (= longer days in office ), Got an interview call from ISB ( www.isb.edu) for their interviews in bangalore this weekend , am getting married next weekend.

Feeling a bit positive since the application got shortlisted and the quality of applications from bangalore were supposedly very good ( ref- Yahoo groups - isb-pgp ). Also feeling positive that i am getting married. Have heard that marriage does add some maturity to human beings and does show new perspectives to life .. got to check if anything of that sort happens to me.

I have also realised that random ruminations wouldnt help .. so i have decided to cut down on the narcissism and focus on certain topics. I intend to focus on technology and also the cross between management and technology. Over a period of time , i intend to provide my perspective on some difficult questions like .. how to keep engineers happy. How to build teams .. that deliver .. and so on.

adios ... will post after a few more days.

rgds
chandra

2004-10-14T23:43:00.000-07:00

Ramblings of a confused "Cut/Copy/Paster"

Back after a long hiatus ... havent been blogging of late and apologies for the same. Lots of water has flowed below the bridge since i last posted. I am currently working in interwoven and am doing some really cool work on BPM solutions.

In the meantime , the MBA bug has come back with a vengeance and still in two minds to decide what i want to be ( and hence what i wanna do ). Technology .. does fascinate me .. but strangely i am suffering from this .. been there .. done that .. inspite of spending just over 4 years in the industry ... i am no longer passionate about technology as i was when i passed out of college.

Confused if it is my short term disinterest in technology which is clouding my decision of whether i want to try my hands at management and so .. on . The main urge is to scale the professional ladder .. go up in the hierarchy .. travel more ( reasons 1) forex conversion 2) success is identified with travel ).

Also complicating matters is my lack of clarity on what kind of a management job i would fit into .. i cant picture myself selling soap to the folks in small towns .. cant also picture my self auditing or doing stats for a living .. so .. can picture my self only as selling technology .. presales .. account management .. project management ..

More on this topic in a few days .. In case you think you are suffering from the same dilemma .. drop me a comment. If you have heard Police .... Message in a bottle .. aptly sums up the scenario .. "hundred billion .. bottles washed up on the shore".

amen

2004-02-10T02:04:00.000-08:00

Hi there ( to myself , since i seem to be the only person reading my blog. ) ,

Lots of things have transpired since the last post .. My professional life is staring down
the barrel since i have not been able to decide what i want to do .. It would be so great if we could just take off .. without having to bother about how we are going to pay the home loan installement for next month.

coming back to things that have happened in the last month

1) Lost a very good offer from Thoughtworks ( stupid me and I know one more person whom i can curse for this - my ex *** ).
2) Flunked in the GMAT exam ( in fact had such a nightmarish experince in the Verbal section .. that i cancelled the test ).
3) Got a valentine greeting for the first time in my life ( dont know if i need to rejoice about this .. i probably got it 10 years too late ).
4) Have had the following on my TO DO list for the past few decades years and i still have not developed the discipline to achieve them ..

4.1) Learn how to drive a car
4.2) Preapre for the GMAT
4.3) Learn how to play the guitar .
4.4) Paint my masterpeice .
4.5) Blog regularly ...
4.6) Become a better , more disciplined room mate.
4.7) about 100 more .... too embarassing to catalogue them ...

The positives that have happened are ...

1) I have taken life into my hands ... and booked another slot for gmat .. this time its gonna be me who win.
2) Started putting together all my pattern literature into one big Pattern catalogue with c++ , python and java examples .
3) Learning python .
4) Jogging .. every morning ... to vent my pent up frustration.
5) I have not been chanelling my energies in a directed way ... and that has made be perform below my own expectations at times .. this
time .. i know what needs to be done to ..

all these things .. have happened after a few failures .. actually coming to think ... failures can do some amazing things for you .. for one it might help press the "Pause" button and give you time to think about whats going wrong and how it can be rectified . Something like that happening currently .. shall keep ya posted about further details .

rgds
"your friendly , online , dna molecule"

2003-11-09T07:05:00.000-08:00

Hi Folks ,

back with my second post .. i havent checked my stats ... but looks like i am an onloner ( online-loner ). No one read my first post ... bah wahh ..... Shall make it a point to finish the first blog about Time Pass and Time vaste .

Decided that i wanted to make an conscious attempt to make a better post. I wanted to post my preferences and that sort of stuff so that people can understand what kind of a person i am, and in turn choose not to take the pains of going through the archives .

Favourite Current blog - Gyaan.blogspot.com ( This guy ramki is very honest and is currently a student at ISB (www.isb.edu ) and i have been tracking ISB for quite some time .. so the interest.

Favourite News paper - Any news paper that covers the local news about the indian city of hyderabad .. though i am currently working in bangalore .. as they say .. Once a hyderabadi , always a hyderabadi .

Favourite Company ( aka Dream Company ) - www.StrandGenomics.com ( current workplace ) , I have a love-hate relationship with this place , More positives than negatives . One place that i would love to be in if i were not working in strand genomics is www.thoughtworks.com . The guys in the indian office are very cool and have a culture that is just too awesome to describe in words .

Favourite Food = ( DOSA + MASALA + BUTTER ) + WATER MELON JUICE + EVERYTHING_THAT_MY_MOM_AND_MY_SISTER_IN_LAW_AND_RAMESH_COOKS .

(RAMESH - my current roomie , is an awsesome guy .. i hate the fact that he drinks occasionally and smokes .. but as human being he is gem of a person. )

Favourite Pet - My dog , rocky ( i am trying ... and shall someday get myself to love dogs. My Dog is up for sale , in case you are interested ).

Favourite Drink - Thanda Pani , Nimbu pani , Water melon juice .. and Think it is quite Cool to not like COLAS.

Favourite Album - a certain vande mataram by a certain rehman. ( oops .. excuse my "musical" ignorance ... but was vande mataram remixed by someone called bankim chandra chatterjee ). I heard a slower and boring version of vande mataram recently.
I tried to pull a satire .. but have serious roots .. if the youngsters in my parents generation had deeper indian roots than me and my generation.

Favourite Nothing - Time

Favourite Everything - Time

Favourite Currency - What a dumb Post .. obviously the American DOLLAR . All Indian software engineers have the American Dollar as their favourite Currency .

rgds
Your friendly DNA .. You know what

2003-11-07T01:57:00.000-08:00

Up and running at last. This blog is by far the best proof that i am very lazy. Had this url "blocked" a long time ago and today ( about 3 moths later ) i am doing my first post.

The punchline is .. " Experiences of a Code Cutter " . While the first few posts will be random and going off in arbitary directions .. .. hopefully i should have some "blogging sense" and a "cohrerent blog" in place by the third or fourth post .

Two things that i am very passionate about are "Timepass" and "Timevaste" . To illuminate the lesser mortals about the same. Timepass is the pristine ( dont know what this adjective means ) art of finding less important tasks and jobs and making it a point to do them before your supposedly important jobs. As we grow up we fed up on notions that others have been fed as they have grown up . The net result is that everyone is following or doing something because some gentleman / lady at some point of time was taught to do some things before the other .. oops i am touching recursion ( not my turf ) ..

As a net result we are following old , archaic notions of importance and priority . This has created enough ground for me to state my first law about TimePass .

1) Timepass is the pristine art of using commensense and personal priorities to do things that you want to do before tasks that others want you to do in such a way that they ( the dirty bad people around you ) dont notice any thing wrong .

example = while i do this "beautiful " post , i do an ALT-TAB so that the dirty bad world thinks that i am staring dreamily into the IDE ( www.netbeans.org ) looking at code thats supposed to solve a a critical business function ( marketing speak ).

continued in next post .. you will need some time to full grasp the implications of the above post.

rgds
your friendly , neighbourhood DNA molecule