Unlikely Idols

Or ideals or whatever... Working as I am, somewhat linked to information technology and fairly strongly linked to intellectual property, Bill Gates has been a villian in some way or the other. If you look for stories, there are endless ... how he took DOS, made some changes and called it his own, how Windows is full of bugs and is unweildy but just had a large market share so we're stuck with it... Enough and more. But when you're not looking, suddenly you find the person.

He was in India some time ago and was interviewed with NR Narayan Murthy. NRN and Infosys have been compared to Bill Gates and Microsoft due to some parallels in creation and functioning. I now believe that the comparison is favourable to both. As I said, earlier, Bill Gates was this big bad mogul who was continuously making money off a bad product. In the initial stages, it couldn't have been his fault. If anybody else was enterprising enough or had a good enough product, they would have come up anyway. The market itself was developing so it probably would have been difficult for Microsoft to monopolise anything. However, once it was somewhat established, claims of anti-competitive activies seem well founded. It appears from trial transcripts that part of their business strategy was suppressing their rivals.

But now, Bill Gates seems to have moved beyond that. By some quirk of fate, today I read something that makes me think that he's still the inventive geek who's excited by a new idea and somewhat depressed by the behemoth that his organisation has become. The first is a snippet of an interview that he gave to Wall Street Journal where he admitted to watching stuff on YouTube. Outrightly a crime in itself. A crime which the Microsoft Corporation has exerted international pressure to stamp out. One that still concerns them in China. And Mr. Gates is guilty himself :) Must give him pause. I believe that now he sees greys. When Microsoft was growing, there was black and red. Do what you need to to stay in the black. Now, it would be tremendously hard for them to fold up immediately. They've reached the status of an IBM or whatever was their main target when they started out. They're the big guys now, all the little innovators are lining their sights up on MS, hoping to be the David in this battle... as undoubtedly MS was when it started out.

Forgive a minor digression... do you think that when a little guy starts out, he sees turning into his enemy as success? Google was a young entrepreneurial bunch who were exciting and fresh. They had a great idea and wanted to beat the pants off the MSs and Yahoos of the world. They have, and now have become one of them. Do they think that's success? They're no longer on the other side, trying to get in, now they're working to keep people out... Will consider this much much later.

Back to MS. I believe that BG (got tired of typing his full name, don't know him well enogh for Bill and can't really call a person Gates, now can I?) has turned a corner. Till now it was about how well MS is doing, how much money he's making, what's the latest project etc. But now I think he's slowing down. He's realised that the future of MS is more than just his life span. It's more also, than the people he's groomed to run the company the way he would. The Gates Foundation, that was always active in social work, has begun a committed effort to improving the standard of education in America. Another post sometime may be about how America's greatest wealth at one point was its intellectual capital and now they find that most of it is imported. So they run the risk of everybody suddenly going home. Where would that leave the US? In a rather sorry state. What's the obvious solution? Find talent in schools, make it worth a student's while to stay in school and go to college and... basically contribute to the economy rather than be a daily wager.

In those terms, MS and Infosys have shown tremendous value generation both for themselves and their country. Infosys to a much less extent in cash, but a rather large extent in good will... and MS may be the reverse :)

So now, BG seems focussed on moving his country forward in some concrete way, without joining politics. I believe that in some ways, joining politics will be a step down for him. In a country where lobbies are strong and available, he doesn't need to get personally involved with that. What he does need to do is to make people use their mind... and not just those that work for him. Which brings me to the second thing I read... though it sounds like a rip off of Spiderman, "I believe that with great wealth comes great responsibility, a responsibility to give back to society, a responsibility to see that those resources are put to work in the best possible way to help those most in need." Three Cheers for BG!!!

Why? Cause this is the way I see it as well. Those that come up in society have been given some breaks and opportunities. It's their duty to see that society receives something back. I don't suppose I can explain it coherently but I definitely believe that if you have more than you need, then you're blessed and you've a duty to see that in some way, you help those that don't have what they need. In India... it's not difficult to see those who have nothing, but somehow, we're just not there yet.

It's morning and all's well...

There's an interesting sense of well-being today. I have some work but it's not going to kill me cause I've enough time to do it. Some new furniture is to be delivered today. New is a term I use loosely cause though it's new to me, one piece is my mother's and another belonged to somebody else for a long time. The latter is a frightfully expensive chest of drawers that my mother absolutely loves and that I've grown somewhat fond of. It'll serve a purpose and I'll be glad to have it. But as I said, it's frightfully expensive.

I also ordered a new fridge yesterday. I've been promised it today, but I'm also certain that there's no way it'll be delivered today. I've been looking for this fridge for a long time, refusing to buy it sight unseen, but yesterday this shop near my house convinced me that it was worth it. Since I've been looking, I know that there's no stock in the city and that this chap's promise of delivery today will not be met, but I'm intrigued :) I'm also excited.

So I'm going to work hard and then run off as early as possible to play house :)

Twists and Turns

Last week was interesting. I didn't have too much work so had time to ponder and muse and other such interesting past times. One of my colleagues had announced her decision to quit and strangely, about two weeks ago, had several hush-hush meetings with senior team members. Turns out they made her a reasonably fabulous offer to stay. It seems fabulous to me cause they've offered her a transfer to a foreign location with slightly different scope of work and more money. Is she the brightest penny in the team? Not really, so why this special treatment? I'm not completely sure. It seems that it's largely a case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease.

When I heard this, I was quite worried about my colleagues as the promotee is one of the most junior and some of the more senior ones, I felt, deserved the break more. Additionally, the promotee would be doing work that's currently handled by my colleague who believes she works the hardest. So I wondered how it would affect her. But another colleague said that the 'hardest worker' was offered the same position before but had turned it down. So I was no longer concerned about her and this morning spoke with the 'more senior' colleague. She was actually very cool about it and happy that the promotee is still with us. She realised that all her trauma over the past few months was not reaching the right ears and she'd need to fix that. So there we were, all hunky-dory till the 'hardest worker' discovered that the promotee's been promoted. It seems to have pissed her off. Her first reaction was of slight shock followed by an assertion that there won't be enough work. I'm not sure whether it's insecurity, because they did make her the offer first right?Did she just turn them down the first time for the sake of form?

Ah well... Whatever will be will be. The promotee won't be reporting to the hardest worker and probably will be competing but what the hell... It's not my bonfire. I'm fairly certain that it will be a bonfire though :)

The Upside of Anger

There's a movie named this... I've seen bits and pieces but not enough to figure out why it's called what it's called. One other blogger whom I visit (mainly cause he rants violently) says that pain lets you know you're alive. I agree upto a point. Pain lets you know you're alive by making you wish you weren't. Anger on the other hand, can be a very positive emotion. It makes you want revenge. To show the world that you are better than they think you are.

Am I angry? Yes, in several ways. There's no rage involved, no intense anger that would make me say and do very extreme things but there's simmering discontent. Simmering strangely. I'm a little miffed with one of my colleagues who believes that she's the hardest working of the bunch. Yeah, sure, of course she is, but why be insecure about it? She actually feels bad if others stay in office longer than her. I never complain about the hours I work because I usually pfaff and then catch up in the evenings. If I did my work properly during the day, I would be able to leave at some reasonable hour of the evening. But on the days when I do actually need to work late, I'd like not to have to defend my need to stay late. I'd like not to feel like a usurper of the 'Hardest Worker' title. I don't ask about pay hikes and the like. I understand that people like to believe that they're achievers. Sure. And they are as well. I'm not a rising star, I'm a plodder. I'm happy to do my work contentedly and go home. And till now I didn't do the same work as my colleagues (being somewhat specialized) and so egos weren't an issue. I could have opinions on the work they did but they weren't important opinions since I didn't have the experience that they did. Now, sometimes I feel like there's a competition on. There are others that do the same work but thanks to some sort of 'favouritism' shown by certain superiors, this one colleague seems to see me as her competitor. I don't enjoy competition. I don't particularly care either way. I'm always worried that I'm going to make a gigantic mistake. This doesn't really help. I'm kinda glad I got all this out here, cause I've to work with this girl. I've to be nice to her even though sometimes I don't feel like it. I like my colleagues but don't really want to be all their friends. So venting here means I'm normal with them.

Apart from this, a friend's brother recently committed suicide. He went missing a while ago and his family was very upset. Now they know that he'd committed suicide soon after he went missing and since he had no identification on him, his family had no idea. They're very happy to blame his girlfriend. Who can really tell? What his family saw of her didn't impress them much. She's a young girl who had a boyfriend who disappeared one day. Maybe he did genuinely have some grouses against his family which he couldn't tell them and she tried to get him to break free? Then she would be a bitch as far as the family is concerned and now that he's no more, it's all her fault. Maybe she's stupid and has railed at them from time to time. Maybe she did give him stress. But I've done that to SO. Told him he doesn't have the guts to stand up to his family for me, that they're more important to him than I am, etc. If one day, in a blue funk, he decides that he's had enough of this life... I could be looking at a jail term. I don't know this girl. She could be all the family says and more, but I don't believe it's all that simple.

And that's what I mean by the upside of anger. If SO were to leave me, for whatever reason, including that I'm a sick dog, I would get very very angry and live to prove him wrong. Who said? The best revenge is living well. You can hurt me, but you can't make me less. I will be upset and a lot of other things, but I wouldn't end things over SO. Callous what?

My friend's family is in such a mess. They've been missing the boy for 3 months and now they know where he is. But they don't know why. Everybody is blaming themselves thinking that they could have done more. They don't know, but they believe that the girl is not thinking that. They believe that she could well have another boy friend by now. They believe that she may have decided not to marry their boy, or that she was two timing him, because of which he decided to end it all. Maybe it's true, but it strikes me as strange that a grown man, with a job, who's had girlfriends in the past, found it necessary to lie down in front of a train. What would have driven him that far?

I've been sad and depressed and all, suicidal even but never had the guts to do anything about it. And even if I did work up the energy, not a chance that it would be train related. It angers me at several levels. The waste of a good, young life. Not even by some accident or quirk of fate or ill health, but because he chose it. The anxiety that his parents are now going through. Why? What was so horrible that he couldn't tell anybody? Not his parents, not his brother, not grandparents. Was it one part of his world playing him off against the other side of his world? Would that be enough to want to end it? Surely you could talk to one side or the other? Like SO's told me that at some level his parents come first. I can like it or lump it. I guess if he didn't want to tell me that, he could have told his parents that I come first, and they'd have to like it or lump it. Maybe he really didn't want to do either of these and saw no way for his life to improve. Wow. That's quite sad.

I guess the anger has dissipated quite a bit... enough for me to lead a normal life. Still... I wonder why people do wht they do.