Tag: tt

GoI and Careers

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

When talking with some colleagues at work, I realized that they are working on a supposedly ambitious project – to categorize all the possible jobs and opportunities for people in India. It struck me that this has already been done by the U.S. Labor department; and very well executed at that. In fact that site is often cited as the basis for a lot of research that goes into the space of work and careers.

This got me thinking, if Uncle Sam can do such an awesome job of documenting all the career spaces, then why can’t Mother India do the same? A few googles and some clicks saw me come to the Directorate General of Employment & Training, Ministry of Labour & Employment, Govt. of India website. It’s in a mess … I know. A usability nightmare and it takes someone with grit and determination to make sense out of the plethora of content strewn on the website. I was suddenly appreciating content rich sites in a whole new light.

I did not start this post with the intention of bashing the government’s websites, so I will not. I urge you to go through some of the sites that I have linked in the post if you are in the IES industry. The Central Institute for Research and Training in Employment Service (CIRTES), is one such initiative that needs to be commended. It’s not in the same structure and format as the U.S. Labor department, however it’s a start. The Government of Maharashtra also has a website for employment which is a similar model to Naukri, do check Rojgarwahini out.

All in all, my view that the Government of India is not doing anything to sort out Labour problems of the country has been shattered. It feels good to be wrong :-)

Good going India!!

1984 to 2010

Prasad Ajinkya6 Comments
1984

We are in the process of formalizing our IT and Electronic Access Policies. In this process, often the team drafting the initial proposal finds it pretty easy to switch to the Orwellian mode of 1984, wherein Big Brother is always watching.

Although the intent of these people often stems from the fact that they desire to protect both the system and it’s users, but that sometimes requires that extra bit of control. However, it becomes extremely difficult to tell the need for control from genuine to paranoia.

Further, due to some unforeseen events happening in the recent past, these rules are doubly strict ensuring that the past mistakes of a few have to be borne by the entire team. Only to ensure that something that happens out of the blue should not happen again (and rightly so!).

The problem at hand is how to ensure that people are enabled to work and co-create with each other, but are still protected from any malicious ill will that might exist outside (and even within the system). How can Big Brother start co-operating instead of watching?

One clear method is to assume that all people are good and need to be enabled. The other is to work closely with them step-by-step and layout a simplified process and get the end-user buy-in on each of the steps. Till that happens, Big Brother will continue to exist … we are watching you!

Predicting Business Cycles

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

Back in August 2006, I had written a post on Dot Com Bust 2.0, sadly rediff BLOGS has a bad way of storing posts (week-wise instead of it being individual posts) passed away into oblivion.

Revisiting that post was an interesting exercise, an excerpt –

Do we see history repeating itself? A sudden surge in this Dot Com 2.0 demand, people are already teeming in to cash-in on this new opportunity. Do I start off a firm of my own and try to do the same. Is this risk / venture enough to sustain me through the impending bust? During my induction at TechMahindra, there was a fellow from the top management who was wizened enough to predict that the next bust is going to come in the year 2009. We laughed it off back then, I am not laughing now. Maybe, the dot com bust might relapse, and why not? Fortunately, IT in India is not just about web development anymore. We will pass through this. But will my dream of starting off on my own do the same?

Full marks and respect for that top executive.

Rise of Nations: Militia Rush

Prasad Ajinkya12 Comments

When I first heard about the idea, it sounded crazy. Crazy enough that it might just work!! Now kids, dont try this at home, you need a special set of conditions for this to work. You for one have to be Turks (since this strategy uses the Turks powers to the fullest). If your target happens to be Lakota (well you have hit the jackpot then!!)

Notice the above screenshot (its the 7th minute), what the Turkish player does is focus on booming, he builds many villagers (since they are cheap and fast), and gathers a decent amount of resources. With the surplus villies, he scouts for ruins. He ensures that he does Mil2 before he hits Classical age (that way not only military researches are cheaper, the siege is also available). On hitting Classical age, he builds not one but two siege workshops (since each workshop gives 2 free siege weapons for the Turks).

He also has ensured that he as a tower built, in Classical age, he researches Militia, which as we know is an extreme defensive tactic to fight an invasion.

(Contribution from Ameya Mane)

Build a senate and research Despotism. That way your villies get a +2 attack bonus. Also build a university in the background and have one scholar at least, this is your back-up plan in case you fail to retain the capital – in which case now you can safely boom.

Now, the money move … he gathers all his villagers and converts them into militia. That as his defense for his siege engines, he launches an attack on the hapless capital of his enemy. 7th minute, 4 siege engines … that’s fast.

Like all rushes, this move also depends on knowing beforehand the location of the capital and scouting.

Automating workflows

Prasad Ajinkya3 Comments

So you are stuck with submitting lots of data over and over again through a long web-based forms … sigh!! Wondering whether this can be automated.

OR

You have entered into this community based competition where people register and vote on different entries (you see a lot of these competition these days … crowdsourcing the judgement to the community … another brilliant way out of making judgements!!), how do you win when your entry is hopelessly late and others are way ahead??

Well you see, all of these are workflows, and especially on a web environment they can be automated. The IT industry already does this, through regression testing. When they have to test and re-test the same thing over and over, they finally realized that an automated testing tool needs to be built which can do this task. Plus, we want to do this for free, right … enter open source.

I was tinkering with the open source regression testing tool, called Sahi and I realized the beauty of this application. Consider these scenarios –

  • A friend has participated in a competition. It is a crowdsourced competition where users register and vote for their favorite entries. Hmmm … all you need is a set of valid email-ids and voila!! From 500 votes to 2500 votes in no time!!
  • You are part of a web development team and in charge of testing all the minute details. The changes in the scope are coming left, right and center … you have to keep on testing the application repeatedly. Well, now its a one time thing!! Create different scripts for each functionality, and voila!!

Basically, if you are creative enough, and wherever there is a need to do something repeatedly, you can use this tool. Also, be on the lookout for captchas, I dont think it works with them.