Of late, there have been a few inquiries about how to hire me coming in on my email.
After answering in almost exactly the same words five times , I thought it best to just write a blog entry till I get around to putting up a "professional" web page.
First let me tell you why I may NOT be the right person to hire .
I am NOT the right person to hire(heh! i bet no consultant tells you that up front ) if (each of the following is derived from one or more offers i turned down)
- you are looking for massive numbers of people to "offshore" work to .I work alone or with a small number of people.I do NOT (repeat NOT) run a body shop! Don't ask me to "get me 50 people in 2 months"
- You want an existing enterprise application maintained/supported
- You want some one with deep knowledge of Microsoft Technologies.I know next to nothing about Microsoft Tech
- You want experts in Chip Design/ Hardware Design/Electronics.
- You want rock bottom rates because the work is done out of Bangalore(I met a few people who wanted me to work for them free of cost! When you are a consultant you meet a lot of crazy folks )
- you are a body shop looking for one more "body" to export
- you want me to be a Project Manager AND have ISO/CMM processes in place
- you have a project in which all the creative work is done in the USA and folks in India "extend" it
I
may be the right person to talk to if one or more of the following apply
- You are trying to run a startup product company and are looking to form a small team of sharp people
- you have very tough requirements and need people with deep knowledge of algorithms,concurrency, language processors or applied artificial intelligence
- you want people to work on maintaining /extending gpl ed or other open source software
- you need people comfortable with mathematics and programming
- you are looking to build a web based non enterprise product or service .
- You want some time limited mentoring in Agile Processes . (the "time limited" part is very important if you are an "enterpise shop" . I am not available to write Banking Software !)
- You work in "non standard" languages like Python or Ruby (or these days, C ! ) or even more exotic languages like smalltalk or Lisp or Erlang or Forth.
- you want to create top quality software.
I am fully loaded till about the middle of November 2005 and cannot take on any work till then.
If you are still interested in hiring me please write to me at magicindian AT gmail DOT com and we'll take it from there.
4 comments:
Impressive!! I c real fire in ur words. Man,u shud b cloned many times and sent one copy each to the 50 states of the USA !! May be that wud convince the Americans that India is not always the land of cheap, dollar nd green card obsessed "Desi"s.
btw, Are u married ?;-)
Smitha,
I was not trying to be "fiery".Just trying to make a list of the types of work I am or am not interested in so people don't have to waste time trying to recruit me for inappropriate projects.
As for sending 50 of me to the USA , i think that would be overkill! I like America ! I wouldn't want to inflict 50 of me on Her !
And no I am not married ;-)
Ravi,
ive been reading the archives in ur blog and wrt this latset post, i find that u have strongly delineated what u wud like to do and what u wudn't.
It is only reasonable that if a person says that he prefers A to B, then he shud have had a taste of both A and B. If not, the statement wud be insincere.
I have seen that u have on many occassions made disparaging remarks abt the Service industry and also the general state of the indian software industry.
can u pls write briefly abt ur professional life? What all projects/domain/technologies u have wrked in and what u look forward to ?
above all, what is it that motivates u and keeps the fire going? frankly every kid passing out of college, walks into the "industry" with a lot of fire that slowly dies off, and then they become zombies. How have u been able to keep the fire lit ?
ur writings are truly inspirational.
Smitha,
Hmmm this is a bit embarassing . I am by no means particularly extraordinary and there are many many people in the industry much more talented than I am.
That being said, here is a nutshell version of my industry experience. I started out writing scientific software, then worked on one of the first payment processing systems in the world,(which is where i was introduced to Unix).After that I worked in various service companies doing fairly standard enterprise development,including a stint in the USA .
The best of these were Thoughtworks and Aztec in that order .(the worst shall remain unnamed ) .In Thoughtworks, i met a lot of fantastically talented people(and am still in touch with many of them) and there I discovered the limits of enterprise software and found i wasn't happy doing web->db->web data munging.
After about 2 years in Thoughtworks I got an opportunity to work as an independent consultant doing product development and that is what I have been doing for the last year or so.Right now I am working on a project at the cutting edge of AI using multiple "exotic" langauges (erlang, lisp, c and ruby to be precise).
In the future, I hope to contribute substantially to the Open Source software movement,complete a PhD (if anyone lets me in after seeing my truly pathetic academic score) and just maybe, write a book .
As for "keeping the fire burning",I actually like programming .I would still be programming if there were no Industry to support it as a way of making a living.
Also let me clarify, I am not against the Indian Service/Outsourcing Industry in general . I am against the top heavy processes and the foolishness that thrives in many companies and the pseudo "hep" that comes with inflated salaries.
As my friend Rajesh pointed out in another post's comments, eventually we will pay a very heavy price for being content to be the "cheap people" .
Anyways the "ravi is cool" thread has gone on long enough methinks :-) .Believe me there are a lot of people way more knowledgable and "cooler" than me in Bangalore .I just have fairly decent writing skills.
IF I may ask what are you doing , where do you work and how did you come across this blog ?
Preferably, write to me at my email id
rather than commenting here :-) .
Post a Comment