Many things have happened since my last post. I have moved from my Blogger blog to my own domain . I share with some friends here in Pune. And yes the “.com” in the domain name is there just in case we want use this webspace for commercial purposes.

The blog platform has also changed from Blogger to WordPress. Why? Well i couldn’t migrate my old blog template along with all the widgets. Since anyways i would have to create everything from scratch, i thought of giving WordPress a shot. Lets see how that goes.

Besides that, what else is happening in my life?
I made it to the US of A safe and sound on the company’s expense. I had to convince the Consulate folks really hard (twice that too) that:

1. My weight wouldn’t add significantly to the average BMI of the US .
2. I would tip even the pedestrian  who waves and greets me (while startling me nonetheless). Startling? because from where i come from if  you are walking down the road and some one greets its only because he wants money from you i.e beggar or mugger .
3. I will not complain about the fact that  every time you buy something, you get a whole load of tiny coins (cents, pennies, quarters etc).  Yes! if it costs $9.54 . You get back .46 cents .
4. Also being from the rash drivers’ city, i will not drive at all . Although the law of the land permits me too.
5. I will not stare at couples’ making out in public view, rather i will not stare at all at anything except other desis who for some reason stare back.

The first word of advice i got before landing was “Vegas girls are not cheap!” . This was from an Ameeerikan in the flight.
This could mean so many things at so many levels.  I decided not to get into the specifics.

Now, Bay Area California (where i am put up) has as many Americans as Koramangala has Kannadigas. Thats right . Not a lot.  East Asians, Europeans, Indians( and its friendly neighbors) etc.  We have Indian Stores, Chaat Houses, Paratha houses, Chinese markets and so on. At my first day at work, i was psyched to see so many East Asian folk around each with totally different English accent.

Now, if you have been reading my blogs on a regular basis,  you would know i am disaster prone.Why am i disaster prone? Well let me put it this way; if i wasn’t such a screw up, the blog would not have existed.
Now that i have invested some money in this blog (domain names, web spaces cost money), might as well screw up and write about it.

I am digressing, so coming back.
The first accessory i decided to buy for my DSLR was a tripod. I got pretty good one at Radioshack.
I experimented a bit with it and got this lovely pic . The other side-effect was that i turned one of the knobs too tight and the entire camera mounting mechanism came off in multiple pieces.

Although, this realization of broken tripod did not happen immediately. The coming weekend we went for dinner and after that our local colleague took us up a hill to a place from where we can see the entire valley.

Now this hill was secluded, dark and totally empty. The road was narrow. We took some quick pics with the SLR mounted on the tripod and rushed into the car. (since one is not expected to halt a car in such an area). As we were going to the next point, i was fidgeting with the tripod and the entire assembly came out. I was totally pissed.

We reached the next point, now i had to click the pics without the tripod which was also ok. After moving ahead i started searching for my camera bag which had the another lens.
It was no where to be found.

Damnit!!! I realized i had forgotten it at our first stop spot. We rushed back . People in the car speculated whether someone would have picked it up, or in these times an unattended bag can mean different things. Some even went to the extent that probably a car ran over it.

All i was doing, was counting the money i had spent on that lens.  As soon as we can to the spot, one of us spotted something unshapely lying on the road and concluded that the bag had been run-over. But instantly , on the right we saw the actual bag.
It was safe and sound.
I guess i was lucky to get the bag and lens back. The next day i went to Radioshack got the tripod replaced promptly.

Yes folks, the adventures have began ! Keep on the lookout for more…

• Firstly, preparing your resume. Remember the KISS funda. Keep it simple stupid. I have seen a lot of resumes which have an overload of information; which confused more than informed me. The main thing is that one’s resume needs to inform not confuse. Customize your resume for the company to which you applying i.e  highlight the work you have done which relevant to the profile they are looking for. Mention relevant skills-sets.
  
  
• Highlight Awards/special recognitions/papers/patents who you have got/published/filed. Put this at the very first.
  
• Don’t mention tools like gcc/gdb or even cvs/svn/clearcase etc. If you have done C coding you surely have used gcc/gdb etc and no one cares abt which code mgmt system one has used.
  
  
• Don’t misguide or provide inaccurate information in resume. I have interviewed people who claim to be “developers” or “maintainers” and give an impression that they have done a lot of coding but are in fact doing most maintenance/bug-fixing kind of work.
  
• You will easily get caught when the interviewer starts digging deep.If you have done bug-fixing, say bug-fixing. 
  
  
• Also don’t lie about your known expertise/skill-set. eg. One candidate i interviewed mentioned C/C++ as known languages. When further probed he said he learnt it in college and never professionally worked on it. That was the end of his interview.
  Mention skills sets acquired while working professionally or even on college projects.
  
  
• Also interviewers don’t care about you hobbies/interests.
  
  
  
  
• Old adage but worth repeating: If you don’t know don’t lie. You are surely going to get caught. Its better to say that you don’t know or haven’t work on it so don’t know it.
  
  
• Brush up on your basics. Although we understand/know most of the basics, we tend to forget them over time. Brush up ! Read your college reference books or other books that talk about the basics. This is the single most important advice
  
  
• Typical questions asked are “briefly describe yourself”, “explain what work you are currently doing”. Come prepared with these answers especially what work you are doing currently. Interviewers will check how deeply you understand the current product/system on which you are working.
  
  
• When asked to solve a particular problem, like writing a C program / solving a puzzle; take some time to think properly and use the whiteboard (incase of face to face) or use paper sheets (for telephonic interviews).
  This is stating the obvious, but people try to solve problems in their mind; then lose patience and although they could have given the right answers; they screw up.
  I have done it in the past and seen people doing it.
  
  Real incident: Once, during an telephonic interview i asked the candidate to solve a certain C problem, he thought for a while; got impatient and asked me to move to the next question while his brain processed the current problem in the background.
  I was ROFL ! I wanted ask if he had a dual-core brain!
  
  
• Don’t interrupt the interviewer with questions about the work/company etc during the interview. Once the interview is done, typically the interviewer will ask you if you have any queries. If not then you can tell them that you have some questions. Don’t hesitate in asking about the type of work/general info abt the company but only at the end.
  
  
• Lastly, if you mention you worked on a certain technology or have knowledge about certain concept. Make sure you know it in and out else don’t mention it at all.
  eg. If you mention something like IPSec or RTOS and don’t really know it properly, then its quite a turn-off and your chances of going ahead are close to nothing

]]> http://cheezo.dumpstack.com/2009/06/interview-tips/feed/ 3 http://cheezo.dumpstack.com/2009/04/testing-again/ http://cheezo.dumpstack.com/2009/04/testing-again/#comments Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:53:00 +0000 cheezo http://cheezo.dumpstack.com/blog/uncategorized/testing-again/ Testing….

During the self-righteous act of virtue, i have come across a lot of different personalities and their behaviors.

I-believe-in-time-wrap: When the signal counter shows 20 seconds or so pending. Most folks have their engines turned except these species. They start honking and honking a lot. Is that really going make the counter move any faster? or have you Mr Einstein discovered that honking loud ( in turn make everyone deaf) can actually make time wrap or will it cause the signal counter to become zero?

Another behavior exhibited by these species is to keep accelerating the engine. Thats the other way to make time fly.

There-is-no-signal: Remember the famous dialogue “There is no spoon ” from the Matrix. These species apply the same funda to traffic signals. There are no signals. People standing here are just a bunch of idiots. Come; stand; look around for cops; zoom past.

Left-turn-is-always-free: Another species believe that the left-turn/U-turns is always free to take. They will honk and honk until all standing in their way are forced to take the turn.

Sleeping-Beauty: This species is the entire opposite of the first one. They occupy the first or second rows . Even when the signal turns green, these folks are looking in some other direction or talking on the mobile and are completely unaware that standing at a signal doesn’t mean that time has stood still.

What-are-lanes?: These species don’t believe in the concept of lanes just like the “There is no Signal” species. Standing in the right lane, i can cut across to the left. Standing in the centre lane, i can take the right lane suddenly and obviously glare at everyone honking.

What are indicators?: A sub-species of the above, don’t believe in showing indicators and just take the lane/turn they want to . This is true especially for women and such.

I feel, we need indicators just to say we are going straight.

What are zebra-crossing?: Another non-believers are these species. They move their vehicle way beyond the zebra crossing or on it itself . Its not a white-stripes-on-black-road for show or to beatify the city.

The last
When-the-signal-turns-from-green-to-yellow-zoom past: These species believe that once the signal turns yellow from green, its means raise your accelerator and zoom past. If its car, then try to zoom past; get stuck in the middle; while the other signal starts; look like an idiot; while the other species from above think what am idiot.

Wait, is the signal yellow or orange? I will never know… i just zoom past!

Is it right to change your job during an ongoing recession ?

An easy answer is “There is never a wrong time to do the right thing!”. But this is oversimplified. A common myth that people fear is the Last In First Out myth. The employee will be the first to asked to leave. I have seen a lot of forwarded mails from so called expert Economists who warn about this.

When a company decides to hire during an ongoing recession, it means that the decision to do so is very well thought over one. The reason i say this is because, hiring folks and laying them off within months is very bad management. This shows that particular dept. in bad light and obviously a lot of tough questions from the higher management would have to be answered.
Also, a lot of companies have a complete hiring freeze. Not even if the best candidate comes along, would he be recruited. So the one in need would need to try very hard to justify the need to hire to the higher level management . Also the higher management would want to shuffle work among existing employees instead of hiring new folks. Hence, if such a company is hiring chances are that they really need you. It could also lead to some challenging and interesting work/responsibilities for you. Here is an excerpt from the above links:

But a recession can be an excellent time to take a new job, provided you’ve done your due diligence, says Sam Gordon, a recruiter with Harvey Nash Executive Search. “Firms that are recruiting in a downturn are doing so because the roles they have to fill have a major importance to their organizations,” he says.

Such strategic roles are unlikely to be cut if a company has committed to investing in them in spite of a downturn.

Another thing is that your current job is not entirely secure anyways. Hence, if your job was not challenging enough or you were doing repetitive work, chances you haven’t learnt a lot. And if you are fired, you are stuck.

Also, the screening process for available positions will be tough. The companies would look for the best fit not just-good-enough fit or ok-but-not-sure fit. So brushing up knowledge is surely not a bad thing to do.

Earlier, i was convinced that one way to beat recession is to go get a degree or such. But after reading this very interesting insight , i rejected that thought. Some excerpts from it :

Most jobs are better than they seem: You can learn from any job.
When I worked on a French chicken farm, I thought I’d learn French, but I didn’t, because I was so foreign to the French farm family that they couldn’t talk to me. However I did learn a lot of other things, like how to bargain to get the best job in the chicken coop, and how to get out of killing the bunnies. You don’t need to be learning the perfect thing in your job. You just need to be learning. Don’t tell yourself you need a job that gives your life meaning. Jobs don’t do that; doesn’t that make you feel better? Suddenly being in the workplace doesn’t seem so bad.

Applications to the military increase in a bad economy in a disturbingly similar way that applications to graduate school do. For the most part, both alternatives are bad. They limit your future in ways you can’t even imagine, and they are not likely to open the kind of doors you really want. Military is the terrible escape hatch for poor kids, and grad school is the terrible escape hatch for rich kids.

Graduate school forces you to overinvest: It’s too high risk.

Lastly, obviously one should just follow their heart it always know whats right.

Yes, its easy blog about such things . Easier said than done right?
I am blogging about it after following my heart and changing my job during the so called recession.

The camera slowly zooms out . It shows another fun group.

In life its rare to be part of such a fun group. I am lucky that i am part of one such;

fun, crazy, and most importantly borderline insane.

hash-hash-adda(##adda) is the FreeNode irc channel where all of the above(and some more) hangout.

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Courtesy: Image: Pallavi, Caption: Chirag,Hemanth