Tell me about yourself

The past one month or so saw so many events and buildup to those events that it seemed like an entire year.
One of the reasons for this misaligned time length perception was the dreaded HR interview.  From the hallowed area of placement office, word seemed to spread that preparation for the HR interview would be crucial during the placement season.

The more meticulous (and jobless) inhabitants now sought "suitable" answers to more than 100 possible HR questions. The ones with more diversified activities, though primarily directed at finding a "good" job - chose to work on a set of two or three questions. Then there were others for whom job was a backup plan, so they just tried to answer the single most difficult question - "Tell me about yourself."

When I heard this question for the first time, I was amused. Why should such a innocuous question be dreaded so wildly. But, as it turns out, there is more waves associated with this question than the acoustic ones.

Few pointers to let you know why this question is important:
1) The interviewer needs sometime to go through the resume. If you point at things that (s)he needs, then the work of both you and the interviewer are simplified.
2) Will you fit well into the company culture?
3) How are your past experiences relevant to the job you have applied for.

But most importantly, the interviewer wants to know DO YOU KNOW ABOUT YOURSELF!
When people are self aware and take conscious decisions to pursue something - they are more likely to succeed and do well. And at a place where there is little to choose between the caliber of different applicants, the interest in the pursued field determines the chances of success.

Its easy to believe that one could say that one is passionate about something despite not being so. But the trouble here is that passion is transparent. Unless you are George Clooney, you will not be able to demonstrate the passion as well as someone who is genuinely interested.

Being self aware also helps in answering unexpected questions, then you have to answer honestly, simply because you haven't prepared any answer. Here your true interest will be reflected.

So if you are sitting for placements in the coming days, then please do ask yourself about yourself - why you chose what you did, why you want to do what you are choosing and how will what you did help you in what you are choosing now.

In the response to this question, you just have to convey two things:
1) Your passion
2) How your past will help you perform better at the position applied for.

Best of luck to everyone reading this post. May the force be with you.

Cricket as an educator in India

Cricket is by far the most followed game in India. While watching the game last week, I realised how much learning can and is imbibed (though unintentionally).

When the game is well balanced, the whole nation is busy dividing numbers by six, substracting numbers, finding the number of ways to get to a certain sum in atmost certain number of variables - which are constrained by being non-negative and less than equal to 6. Even problems like assigning weights to different players and devising ways to maximise the rewards (runs) in a set of discreet steps.

Other than improving our mathematical skills, It is also responsible for improving our language skills. It accustoms us to "foreign" accent. (Who does not like to enjoy Geoffrey Boycott describe events in his wonderful style) Besides, there is our own homegrown Navjot Singh Sidhu - with his wonderfully crafted one-liners, He has added more of the creative imagination to the Indian masses than any other single source.

Cricket in itself adds to one and a half of the three R's (Read, wRite, aRithmetic). It helps people come up with things to say - hence the half of writing. Maybe its time government introduced cricket watching and playing programs in its schools. It will both help kids learn and keep them interested in school.

PS - The idea for this post came to me when I was talking to my friend Abhishek Gandhi.

Express your disgust at child abuse

Tulir is organising a rally against Child Sexual Abuse. Join us at Marina beach, 4:00 pm on 15th Nov.

Here is their post.

Join us at a Rally against Child Sexual Abuse

Nov 15, 2009

Gandhi statue to Labour staue, Marina Beach, Chennai

4.oo pm.

Sexual abuse of children is frightening, often unimaginable & an abhorrent crime. Deafening silence is the hallmark. While it's the moral obligation for adults to ensure children are protected, we remain silent. More often than not for plain selfish reasons. The discomfort caused if acknowledged, the denial that our children can be sexually abused, family reputation at stake, sheer naiveté. Then there’s the quietness of the children. Because of the manipulation, ignorance, fear.

A silenced vulnerable child & a silent non-protective environment-working to an abuser’s advantage. Since usually victims are their relatives, neighbors, students, friends etc.

While in India we are just beginning to acknowledge the existence of abuse, Tulir has the belief & audacity of hope that it won't be long that larger community realizes the prevalence, dynamics & subsequent impact. The sabotage of a child’s right to a childhood. The often less than optimally led lives as adults.

A a society’s integrity & worth is not based on whether cases of sexual abuse exist. Instead it's based on the acceptance of the possibilities & proactive steps taken to respond in a timely & appropriate way to ensure that its children may benefit from its caring & foresight to truly have the right to be safe all the time, everywhere. After all, there is no excuse for child sexual abuse!

Artificial markets are just that

First up, Asterix (and Obelix) turned fifty this week - and this line goes out to its creators for giving us such a wonderful hero to look up to. If its not known to the reader (or is not conspicuous by the name of the blog) I am a fan of Obelix. So I was re-reading their series and read this particular story "Obelix and Co."

In this story, Caesar send one of his economists to the Gaulish village to disrupt normal life there. This chap goes and buys Obelix's menhirs at exponentially rising prices and turns the village into a unit producing menhirs and hunting boars. The menhirs don't have an existing market so extensive marketing and brand building is used to create a market for them. But competition lowers the prices and trade unions force policy changes for even more entrants. The profits decline while menhirs are being bought at exorbitant prices. It causes a credit crunch at Caesar's.

Lessons to be learnt from the story -
1) Artificial Markets are Artificial. Only if you serve a genuine want of the customer, do you have a chance when the novelty of the product/idea goes out.
2) Relaying on predictions when the artificiality of the market is not recognised can be dangerous. Augmenting your inventory on rose-colored predictions which don't take into account competition and customer sentiments is as huge a folly as any one else.
3) If you don't have a niche, you wont survive. The competition will always catch up. the head start that you had might not be good enough in most cases - more so in the manufacturing sector than the services sector. The customer must be able to look at the product and say - hey, I want this brand. Not I want this product -any brand will do.

Fascinating how much one can notice when one is not looking!

Reader's digest files for bankruptcy

A sad news indeed.
I remember being a fan of RD as a kid. But it has succumbed, to the rise of internet, more than recession. Print media has been struck real bad by the free content on th enet.

And there is no looking back. I dont think there is anyway that people can be coaxed into reading, and paying for, something that they can read on the internet for free.

The younger generation, the ones who have seen computer from an early age, are often more comfortable reading off the screen than from a printed version. Add to that the ubiquitous nature of free content, you know that the print media is fighting a losing battle.
The only way print media can tide over to the profit side is by providing content on the net. Right now, most media houses have free content on the net.

But this is not sustainable - because it requires the same amount of effort to produce content for the net, as it does for printing. The first thing that media houses must realize s that popularity is not revenue. You might be the most popular news agency on the internet - but that does not give you anything. Sure, you can find some advertiser on the web - but arent there too many websites vying for the same set of advertisers? The law of diminishing returns sets in very soon in such a market.

The only way out for the media houses is to have a free and a premium section, where the free section drives the masses . And the premium section catering to specialized news requirements.

A just society

I have heard a lot of noises about people not getting enough opportunities, someone getting an edge due to his/her parentage, division of society based on caste and religion. I hereby proposed a different setting of a society where everyone eats what (s)he earns.

1) Every kid - no matter what so ever - is taken into a state-run residential school. This school is funded by the taxpayer, and has caretakers besides teachers and support staff as employees.

2) Every kid goes to a fully funded (by the taxpayer, again) college. The entrance to which is by a test. The discipline of study is chosen by the kid him/her self.

3) Everyone works for a living. and all the money accessible to him/her is that what the person and his/her spouse has earned.

4) Invalids, and too-old-to-work people are taken care of by the society.

5) All the money after the death of the couple goes to the society. The only inheritance of money is after the demise of a spouse, it goes to the other person.

I wonder why such a society has not been institutionalized yet.

Energy services companies and financing energy efficiency initiatives

Here is another one for the NERD magazine.

An Energy services company (ESCO) is “a company that provides energy-efficiency-related and other value-added services and for which performance contracting is a core part of its energy-efficiency services business”.

The revenues of these ESCOs are tied to the amount of energy they help their client to save. Most of the ESCO projects have a payback period of two years and typically they help reduce the energy costs by about 20 to 25%.

As an estimate, India's potential energy savings are in the tune of 180 Billion kWh annually. That is about 36% of our total consumption now.

ESCOs have a big role to play in the BRIC countries by increasing the economic viability of accelerated growth. In 2007-2008, Indian ESCOs had an annual revenue of US $ 18 million while during the same time, Brazil had an annual revenue of US $ 280 million - about 15 times larger.

ESCOs take up energy efficiency projects where they take up the charge of a plant, invest in the required infrastructure and charge the client according to the energy savings achieved. They act as a energy efficiency consultants as in they find ways to streamline the operations to reduce energy costs.

One problem that EE projects face is their financing. The fact that these projects are auxillary to the strategic plans of the institutions. In contrast Industrial restructuring projects are more planned and tend to have a higher thrust from the managers as they are directed towards the company's long term goals.

These energy efficiency projects are distinguished from industrial restructuring projects because most of the IR projects are aimed at improving the units' overall market competitiveness by process changes and product modifications. These often need larger investments and have longer payback periods. These projects need a strategic thinking by the managers about the the units' competitiveness in the changing market conditions. Improving energy efficiency is not the major reason for this activity and neither is it the most desired outcome.

EE projects on the other hand, don't change the process, neither do they change the product. It only concentrates on increasing the energy cash savings and not about the impact on future market growth of the product.


Of late, IFC has taken up some initiatives to fund purely EE projects. As banks have started understanding the short payback time that these projects tend to have, a lot of tailor-made funding options are coming up.

Random signals and parameterization

During my internship at IBM, I was working on a process of verification of hardware implementations by injecting signals into the design under test. Here the verification engineer has to be smart enough to guess the potential breakdown points of the hardware and inject those signals. To further test for robustness, random signals are injected. For another level of robustness, partialy random signals - biased towards the "guessed" potential breakdown points.

The whole idea when applied to life, seems to make so much sense that I was startled when I first thought about it. To test other persons' reaction, dont we drop hints suggesting things that we are not sure of the reaction from the other person?

This same thing, in a different setting sounds so much like a pre-product launch market survey. "Have a look at the need to be catered to(hardware) - Guess the ways which the market may respond in the way we want it to(guess the potential breakdown signals) - Give the market some products that hover around the previous guesses, see how the market reacts(Random signals biased towards the guessed potential breakdown points) - All this is done before the final product (chip) is launched into the market"

Fascinating, how concepts learnt in one sphere of life can be used in other spheres as well.

Smart grids and the concept of Distributed Generation

Here is something I wrote for the NERD (Notes on Engineering Research and Development) magazine. This magazine aims to motivate Indian students to write about their field of interest and research. It has got contributions form all the IITs plus a few from Indians outside India.



Distributed Energy generation typically refers to a multitude of small generators instead of having one huge generator that takes care of the entire load.

A smart grid is defined as one which integrates advanced sensing technologies, control methods and integrated communications into the current electricity grid.

So whats so different about these modern grids as compared to older grids? - The major difference is the fact that it is designed to deal with both ways power, rather than the traditional design where the grid just gives out power.

Comparing only the power delivering part, at the transmission level today’s grid is efficient, smart, intelligent. Its at the distribution level that there is a difference. At the distribution level and at the customer level, there are opportunities for automation, intelligent appliances, advanced data collection networks. This in part is because there was no need previously as there was little demand matching done. The Smart Grid makes it possible to integrate large scale intermittent generation through demand response.

The typical components of a smart grid are :-

1) SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), PMUs (Power Management Units), FACTs (Flexible AC transmission systems), Advanced Conductors - At the generation, transmission, substation levels. These things help in maintaining the power quality, reliability and efficiency .

2) Substation Automation. - Helps in resource utilization and demand matching.

3) Distribution Automation, MicroGrid. - Enables synchronization of distributed generators.

4) Advanced metering, Demand response, and distributed resources - at the customer end.
- Helps in demand matching at the consumer level. Ensures correct pricing as there is power both in and out of a building.(As the building also has a generator, when it is producing more than it needs, it sells power to the grid and when in deficit, it buys from the grid.)

So what does it achieve?

1) Reduce peak demand by actively managing consumer demand: The ratio of available appliances and equipment that can respond to both consumer and grid operator priorities continues to grow. Because these grids can manage power both out and in the grid, it will reduce the need for power, especially during high-use periods. like hot summer afternoons when the cost of producing and delivering power is extremely high.

2) Balance consumer reliability and power quality needs: Although some uses of electricity require near perfect reliability and quality, others are almost insensitive to these needs.
For eg- A device working on a resistor heating up or a motor rotating, does not really care a lot about the quality. But a device using electronics, needs to care more about the quality of power in. It cant afford to have a lot of frequency changes or voltage sags or swells.

Similarly, there can be some critical loads that need a very reliable power - Like a server or some central controller type thing cant afford to go off.

A smart grid will be able to distinguish the difference and adjust power reliability and quality accordingly at an appropriate cost.

3) Mine energy efficiency opportunities proactively: A smart grid will furnish consumers and utilities with accurate, timely, and detailed information about energy use. Armed with this information, one can identify ways to reduce energy consumption with no impact on our safety, comfort, and security.
This would mean that just be managing our demand and supply better, we can reduce the total amount of energy required. This will help us gain some understanding and insight into how our energy use affects our environment, and economy.

4) Improve overall operational efficiency: A smart grid is automated, and smart sensors and controls are integral to its design and operation. This will help the grid operators to easily identify, diagnose, and correct problems, and will even have the capabilities to anticipate problems before they happen.

5) Seamlessly integrate all clean energy technologies: Clean energy is so central to the idea of sustainable development that it cant be left behind, especially by a modern technology.Roof-top/side-wall solar systems, wind farms, small community hydro-plants and storage devices will become a fundamental part of the grid. These clean energy technologies will generate not only energy and power, but perhaps more importantly save on the fuel consumption.

More popular are the ones more talked about

Just read this interesting article which says that people look for common grounds to talk rather than talking about the better things. This is in a way a reiteration of "Matthew Effect" (The rich get richer, the poor get poorer).

But this research being done in the social domain, could mean a lot about the way marketing is perceived. The gurus knew all along that it works, but to be proved that it does work is a different thing.

Understanding this concept can help a lot in marketing, especially on the web. If somehow one could get their product to be discussed on the "right" forums - it automatically starts generating traffic. If you pay a battery of people to discuss your product on twitter, and it features on the twitter search list, it is very likely that other people will start discussing it - as it will seem like the "IN" thing. Or if you can get your product discussed on slashdot or technorati, it is very likely that it will be discussed beyond that as well.

In fact this love for likeliness is seen in at the school and college level : A popular guy/girl is talked more about, and he/she gets more popular. If a group of 5 people start saying out loud that a certain dress is cool, the whole school gradually comes to accept the same as cool. So it can be used in adolescent marketing too. FMCG markets typically have a huge chunk of the demand coming from teens and just-left-teens . To be able to project the product as cool, they need to be able to make an impression at school, colleges, FaceBook, MySpace - and in all likelyhood, it will catch up.