Masters of Computer Attitude – 2004

Hi proffesionals! we r the new breed of the Genext!! Students of one of the best insti's of India -> TIET, Patiala.we proudly call ourselves The Mighty Tietans (read as Titans). Born intelligent and energetic we dwelled ourselves into passionate and funky grads possesing a wide vision and are generally spotted distinctly among the crowd. Be it studying, performing on the stage, participating in games or any other extra-curricular activities, we just have to be THE ONE. and beat it or not... it sure feels lonely at the top. But Hey! we love being all-rounders. Our logo is "THRUST FOR KREATIVITY". We have not limited our thinking and most importantly our studies to just getting a good placement, getting higher package, BUT we want to offer a new dimension of kreativity to this world. We rather wish to be the “Vishwa Karma” architecturing the present world for the would be coming’ GenZ, so that it could explore its maximum potential.

we don't just live life at tiet campus, we experiance a new high every moment. we dare do what others shudder at the very thought. sleeping at 4, late riser, offering 'jal' to 'Surya Devta' in well.... Ohhhh sun is almost up!! attending classes without having bath,(Deo hai na Bhai), breakfast on the way to campus with paranthas and toasts in hand. along with study doing a lot of masti in lectures.. using fellow tietans as chat messengers for delivery of chit mails. going for a Date (on rickshaw) to Gopal or CCD , taking panga's with friends at cafeteria, cup of tea at arun tea stall (of course with 'kash' yaar!), in evening jogging on track with gf, woh saari-saari raat mobile par, pedon (trees) ke paar kisi se baatein karna (in this context 'm not talking about myself ), woh garma garam paranthas, maggi with cofee in nite mess, doing the ritous and very special 'kambal kutt', apni gf ko saara saara chapter mobile par karvana(number is free yaar! - Spice hai to life hai!!). these are the things which one seldom forgets and we are in the transit of experincing much more exhiliriating moments. We are at the peak of our lives and this is really a great experience, which is very difficult to express.

The 'S' Factor!

First things first… I’m not superstitious and neither do I live in a hypothetical world, but sometimes life’s little experiences make you wonder ……

One such experience has been with the letter ‘S’. When I look at my past, I found many incidents related to ‘S’.

In 4^th semester I worked on 4 projects. They failed, couldn’t be completed or didn’t serve the purpose for which they had been undertaken. To start with, my very first industrial project, which we got from ‘S## S####’, working in ST Microelectronics. I consider this project as a failure as we were unable to implement at hardware level, though the software was complete.

Next in line was my project in Embedded Systems under the guidance of ‘S####### S####’. As luck would have it, this project though through with its design and software implementation, was a complete failure.

My project on JMF brought some new hopes for me and my team members, ‘S#######’ and ‘S#####’. And once again we hit the dirt, as the final outcome was entirely different from the one proposed.

Of all, the one that matters the most, was the dream project that I had in mind when I came to Thapar with a distinctive vision. Project’s title was Shoulder Surfing. Working day and night it took me three months(19^th Dec to 23^rd March) to complete it. Inspite of being complete in each and every aspect, it didn’t serve the purpose for which it was intended for. For me , it was a big shock.and once again the people though indirectly involved were ‘S####’ and ‘S#####’.

This one, though a bit personal, but still has been quite influential. After tracking her for a long time, I finally approached ‘S#####’(pursuing her master’s in Software Engg.) during one of our insti’s fest’s, Saturnalia. And guess what …… she said ….. yes?……. Or no?…… abey yaar, woh kuch boli hi nahi.

It might seem a bit out of place, but I incurred losses in Stocks too, during that period….

Along came holidays and it was time for masti, so I started working on the theme ‘why Indian IT companies couldn’t achieve in 25 years what Google achieved in 8 years’. In this regard, I approached companies like Infy, TCS, Satyam & NASSCOM as well and also provided them the solution in the form of ‘ASCENT’(refer my earlier blogpost). But none of them seemed to be interested. On the very first day of fifth semester, I got response and compliment as well from ‘S###### B###########’ working as a Chief Consultant (Information System) in Siemens.

I appeared in 5-6 companies for my placement and finally got selected in Siemens.

Why Indian IT compnies couldn’t achieve in 25 years what Google achieved in 8 years?

In the above table, you can very well see the huge difference between revenue of top 3 Indian IT companies and the Google. Now, have a glance at the years, in which they forayed into the Industry, the same difference‘ll look quite large.

-Sometimes what happens that in search of something good/excellent or for finding the solution to a given problem, we ignore the very fundamentals. There may be some other reasons for the above raised point, but here, I‘ll discuss perhaps the most basic one.

Who is Responsible?

There’s something going wrong in our educational institutes from where companies recruit people. Let’s first see what Faculty and students are doing, then we‘ll try to know about their behavior and attitude and finally how we can change the way they are working.

Traits of faculty: giving personal preferences, Accepting gifts (bribe), paper leakage, sexual harassment, taking emotion driven decisions. In short, totally lack of professionalism.

Traits of students:

• By hook or crook: To gain personal benefits, ready to do from anything to everything like giving bribe, cheating in exams/lab-evaluation, result manipulation and many more to name a few.
• Risk Avery people: When working on some idea, there are always some associated risks, which people don’t want to take. Is it viable to expect innovation from Risk Avery people?
• Want to settle: People work only to that extent which is sufficient to get them settle in their lives. On broad brush basis, it means doing 20k plus job, owning a car, a good place to live, children studying in public schools. Someone has rightly said, “Keep looking. Don't settle”.

As miracles don’t happen every time, a significant change in their behavior is not foresighted. So, even after getting the job, they will keep on doing similar kind of activities in companies as well.

What does it mean to Indian IT Sector?

There is no dearth of intelligence in India but we don’t like to work (or don’t work to that extent which is actually required), rather we are involved in nonsense/cheap/unethical acts. Innovation couldn’t come as such and this is the reason why none of the Indian IT Company could achieve in 25 years what Google achieved in 8 years. Companies boast of their processes and standards like Six Sigma, CMM, ISO9xxx but I doubt either they are ignorant or intentionally ignoring these ground level realities.

Initiative taken by infosys

Campus-Connect: it’s a program being run by the Infosys in different educational institutions to impart knowledge of different computer subjects. This is aimed at achieving the goal of producing industry ready recruits who are well rounded and quick learners.

A Good initiative has been taken by Infosys to give moral boost up to the freshers. Recently they announced to further put 4mn$ in this program.

What industry looks for?

We can have state-of-the-art infrastructure, hi-fi technological setups and many more but the most difficult thing to have is GOOD PEOPLE.

People

• Who innovate.
• Who have the courage to compete with world’s behemoth companies like Microsoft, IBM and the Google.
• Who work from their heart and soul and want to contribute to the Industry.

Are our educational institutions really generating Industry Contributors? I don’t think so.

(No doubt, we have IITs, IIMs and some more world renowned institutes). NASSCOM should provide a common platform, where executives from different companies work together to bring some sort of revolution.

Ascent

The need of the hour is to bring a sea-change in their attitude. This can be done only if their outlook is widened and transformed and the thoughts are chastened. Work is worship and sincere work will truly help us to reach to the desired heights-hence proving the word Ascent.

It’s a human behavior focused program to generate Industry Contributors. It recommends to create one communication channel between companies and faculty and makes the other stronger one, which is already there between faculty and students. Let’s see in detail how it works.

Conduct counseling of faculty (to be done by a team formed at NASSCOM). Take them into confidence, peep into the weak points of their personality, help them to do away with their negative attributes and make them realize what they are doing and what they are supposed to do (self realization).

They (Faculty) are the people who communicate with students regularly, so they‘ll have to play a very vital role for the successful implementation of this program. They need to do practice before they preach. It requires a total catheterization and deodorization.

They need to create such an environment which encourages students to think, to work, to innovate, to do something good for the industry, leaving cheap acts, stopping manipulation and above all behaving like professionals in true spirit.

All concerned parties need to be actively involved. Initiative to be taken by companies, supported by management of different educational institutes and finally implement on faculty and students.

Challenges Ahead

• Because of ego and status, Faculty members may not like to hear (or accept) anything negative against themselves.
• As the age of human beings increases, their habits become more and more rigid, consequently the tendency to change human behavior decreases.
• It’s all about bringing change in the people’s mind, which can’t be done in a flash of light, so it‘ll be a very time consuming process.

Conclusion

This whole program needs to be designed so carefully which guarantees minimum resistance from faculty side. I think we should involve a team of psychologist to design this program as they are well aware of the human mind, their behavior and they will certainly help companies to do some significant work in this direction.