School 2.0

I've just started School 2.0. Its' been a few years since School 1.0 was complete, after four years of undergrad studies and another two years at the Electrical Engineering Department at IIT Bombay. And no matter how hard you might have mugged up all the texts for that Numerical Methods course in your grad studies, you do get rusty if you haven't been in touch for a while. And so I decided to use some of the spare time at work to go back to School. Well, the spare time is courtesy the end-of-year project closure formalities, which means that we do not have much concrete work to do right now. I felt this would be a good opportunity to get back in touch with the basics. So I'm currently studying applied probability theory and stochastic processes. And helping me out with it is the excellent course material from the Masachussets Institute of Technology! MIT has an excellent initiative called the Open Courseware (OCW), where lecture notes, assignments and exams and solutions are uploaded for the courses offered in MIT. The material is real good, and I would encourage everyone who hasn't already checked out their site to do so. 

The 'Annual Story-telling competition'

Yesterday, we had at work, what a friend jokingly put as the 'annual story-telling competition'. In other words, filling up our annual performance appraisal workflow. Yes, it's *that* time of the year again! Amongst other things employees are required to fill out their key achievement during the year, the targets achieved by them, their strengths and key development needs (a euphemism for weaknesses, I guess ;) ), and their career interests and development goals. Employees also had to fill out a section where they had to fill out specific events which showcase their creativity, initiative, and a host of other 'skills'. Now filling out your achievements is something like drafting a patent application, if you ask me. You have one idea and you dress it up until it sounds like it's the next big thing of the century! Similarly, you might have only a couple of 'achievements'; But now putting down only two of them can't be good, can it?! You've been planning to buy that new car with the increment you're supposed to get! (Of course, in these times, it's good enough if you keep your job, and do not take a pay-cut, forget about an increment.) So you fill in the details of the 'story'. So for instance, if you implemented a research paper, you might put it as: 

• Designed and implemented a new method to significantly improve the accuracy of phoneme recognition. 

Heck! Did you, now?! Now, your boss might have a different take on that. He might consider the fact that you got any work done at all, as a fair and just 'achievement'. 

Well, but wait! There's more to come. You might have been the fifth author in a research paper that your group published (OK, there were six contributors - here's a nice link about author's list in papers), where you were responsible for drawing diagrams and proof-reading, but you definitely

• Co-authored a publication submitted to some of the most well-known conferences and journal. 

Note, that you delicately avoid mentioning whether it was accepted or not! You can't be blamed entirely, the date for announcing acceptance falls *after* submit the appraisal! Touche. 

The next section deals with your strengths - and weaknesses. Now, here's where you get to blow your own trumpet - or saxophone, or bugle, or any of those instruments in the opera - officially. So suddenly new strengths sprout overnight like the bean-stalk that grew overnight in the Jack-and-the-bean-stalk tale. And you mention both technical and soft-skills. So, you suddenly develop excellent presentation and communication skills, effective leadership qualities (if you're coveting that corner cubicle) besides strong analytical skills and being a technology wiz-kid, generally. And then comes the most important part - your career goals. Here's where you say that your boss deserves a promotion. Hell, NO, you aren't batting for him. But if your boss doesn't get that promotion, you wouldn't get his cubicle, will you?! So you put in your short-term and long-term goals. Of course, over a period of five years, you'd want to be managing a team of five people (who, just like you do now, will be cursing their boss and finding faults with just about everything he does). So you write: 

• Long-term goal: To lead a team of competent engineers with a strong focus on developing new products for the company. 

Ah, competent engineers. Tch-tch. A good friend of mine wanted to 'work with a strong and encouraging technical mentor to develop my technical skills', as part of short-term career goal. Ahem. The mentor has to be strong technically, and encouraging to boot! Of course, this was edited subsequently. About your key development needs - weaknesses - you need to put in how the company should spend big bucks so that *you* get that big promotion the next time around! Hehehe ;) Now isn't that exciting?!  

That was just a tongue-in-cheek look at 'the annual story-telling competition'. We all do exaggerate a little bit when it comes to this part. So a little 'story-telling' is fine, I guess. But 'weaving a fairy-tale' is not! I think this is just capping whatever you've done over the year. After all, your boss isn't blind to what effort you've put in - or not- during the year. Of course, just putting in long hours, and effort is not going to be enough. Somewhere, you also have to be a nice person. No one wants a high-performing jerk around. Well, they might put up with them, but that's just about it. 

Update: Here's another excellent post on the same topic. 

The Pursuit of Happyness

A colleague happened to remark today - if the work's good, the boss is bad, and if the boss is good, the work happens to be bad! The discussion we were having was a typical workplace discussion about work, bosses, projects and so on. But her remark got me thinking. It's true with most of us, isn't it? As professionals, it seems to be our destiny that we can only have one thing - either a good boss or good work. Seems like a case of 'You can't have your cake and eat it too'!! And so, it seems like while we can pursue happiness, we can't (always) expect to actually lay our hands on it. If you ask my take on this colleague's remark, I would say that of the two I would choose good work. Bosses, good or bad, are people, at the end of the day... Like you and me.... It takes all kinds of people to make a world! And bad bosses just end up teaching you about managing difficult people. Now in a corporate environment, bad work is bound to come your way at some point of time, but doing good work is finally what gets you noticed finally. Not only in your organization, but outside as well. And however philosophically one might look at it (no work is truly bad, there's a bright side to everything, blah blah), there's no denying that having work that's not proving to be any value addition over a long period of time, is going to harm chances of further growth. To sign off, how do you know if you're really doing 'good' work? Or what's the definition of good work? A friend of mine had this to say: "If you open the Times Ascent, and see the (kind of) work you are doing figuring in the work profiles, you're doing good work!"... Neat, I would say...

Winds of change...

And so it's time for a change... I'm talking about a change of jobs... Friday was my last day at Siemens, and I'll be joining Samsung from Monday. The two years at Siemens were a lot like Life - a mixed bag of experiences. I must say I learned a lot in these two years... As I look back at those two years, I feel that yes, He indeed gives one what one needs, not what one wants. The real world is a place infinitely more complex than University, and He gave me what was necessary to deal with this world. To deal with different kinds of people - it takes all kinds of people to make a world! To deal with situations when things do not always go your way. But most importantly, to have a positive outlook irrespective of the challenges Life throws at you. Sometimes, you do not realize the significance of the goings-on around. But I'm a great believer in Destiny - whatever happens, happens for a reason. There were times when I thought, "Man, why am I stuck with this lousy work?", or, "Definitely, this is not what I'm here for!". But as I look back upon such times, I feel that those were the times that shaped me. I guess when we are fresh out of University, we all have very lusty ideals, about the kind of work that we'd want to do. And when the script doesn't play the way we want it to, we start feeling disappointed, or frustrated, or both. But then, everything has a place of its own. You just have to slug it out. And be patient. Yes, I think that is a virtue which is the most important in this world. And my first job taught me that. Finally, I think a part of learning is to learn How not to do things as much as how to do them right! Well, I've made my share of mistakes on the job. Each of them taught me something. Success is what you get when you achieve what you set out to do. Experience is what you get when you don't.... I'm looking forward to start a fresh innings tomorrow, learning from the successes and experiences of the last couple of years....

Cheers!