My parents made it very clear when they visited that they did not share my love and appreciation for this country. Perhaps it was Gurgaon's fault. They never visited Mumbai or Kolkata.
One day as we were doing errands in Gurgaon, my mother turned to me and asked me why I would want to live in such a shithole. I paused. How do you explain India in one sentence? It's not possible. I looked out the window as my parents discussed the trash, dirt, filth, pollution and I noticed the women walking along side the road.
"I think the women are a primary example. Look at the clothing they are wearing. Bold, gorgeous yellows, golds, reds, brilliant greens and purples. They're like birds of paradise. You need the paradox of filth to match the incredible beauty that is India."
They may not have understood, but it's the truth. Without death, life would have no meaning. Without despair, one cannot appreciate pure joy. India to me has the ability to go to such extremes, one or the other - there's simply nothing in between. Well, except places like Gurgaon.
Maybe it's because I was trained as an artist - I "see" things, even regarding common objects that most might not notice. The misspelled sign, the Sikh rewinding his turban, the paanwallah cross-legged in his lean-to booth... The woman in the slum carrying washed vegetables in a basket on her head while wearing all her jewelery... henna tattoos... women hiding their faces behind veils, men with bright red hair... suits and ties in August in Kolkata... the kites circling my building, cows transforming my street into a parking lot... stray packs of dogs... someone practicing their sitar... India sings to me in a way no other country ever has. Each round of a corner on "Asian Way" on the way into work in Kolkata was a discovery. Going to the liquor store or a cigarette walla is an adventure here. Of course it's also frustrating, slow and absolutely maddening, but India really couldn't be any other way, could it?
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Answer to a Reader's Question
I got this question for from one of my readers.
"Do you see any change happening to the management mindscape in the post-Satyam, post-Wipro World Bank ban scenario in Indian companies... given the top-heavy management styles?"
Here's my answer:
There's a famous quotation "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." It's only if company management wants to change (and it's a HUGE change) that you will find a change in mindset. And it has to be a holistic, top to bottom approach that is communicated clearly, succinctly and features consequences for not adhering to the new mindset. It's not necessarily about numbers, but overall ethics, long term vision, and typically, with all the passive aggression I've witnessed here, it will take very public humiliation of the first few firings for people to get it. There also needs to be mechanism in place to enable people to bring forth ideas and be allowed to fail.
That's sort of why people like me get hired in this country. I'm used to being a change agent and it doesn't make you popular and that's tough for a lot of people including a lot of Americans. You have to take risks. You have to be willing to fail. And you have to lead by example.
Because I have so much background in the trenches of web-related marketing, management and production, I have done all the jobs that are part of any project except for actual back-end programming. I've done linking, I've done SEO, SEM, web content writing, UI design and testing, I've done the project management, client interaction, HTML build-out, domain management, web site testing, analytics, you name it. I know EXACTLY how much time a task should take. I know what quality looks like. So when someone comes to me and says it will take two weeks to add the google analytics code, I'm going to be pissed. It took me less than one hour to add it to a 50,000 page web site. If someone tells me it will take two weeks to give me three mockups of a web site redesign, I know that doesn't need to take more than a day. If someone says it's going to take them a week to create a CSS for a site, I'll probably want to throw something at them. I can understand giving yourself some wiggle room in case of browser issues, etc., but this is ridiculous.
When I arrived here, we were severely understaffed. We had a lot of SEO people (and I was assured they were very good and all were assistant managers and managers with no people doing real work.) There was one really bad designer (with a tech degree, not design) and one writer going out on maternity. We had quite a few sites to drive traffic to. In the meantime, HR wanted an overhaul of our own corporate website.
Here's an example of leading by example. I had reviewed the meta tags on one site and the keywords we were focusing on were: "Free Online Casino", "Online Casino" and "Online Casino Games". The Title tag on the home page said, "Download Free Casino Games, Casino Software, Casino Games No Download, Big Jackpots". I wanted extremely dense, short titles that also integrated our branding. I asked the manager to change it to "Free Online Casino Games at Casino". This implemented all three keyword targets exactly and the brand. During the first week after the request, I designed, wrote content, developed the HTML template, built out the pages, produced a custom Flash intro, SEO'd and fully tested our corporate site, then launched it live. By end of day Thursday, it was complete.
Following up on the casino site, the meta tag had not been changed. This is called passive aggression. I'd ask, "When will the tag be changed?" and I'd get the answer, "Today only, Madam." Yet I would come in every morning and check. Today only again. Since I didn't ask while I was working on the other web site, they simply disregarded the priority I gave it. I finally stood over him and made him change it now. "Abhi!" After the next google crawl, we started getting search engine traffic on the desired keywords and an increase in PR for our home page. This is a constant battle.
I expect perfection from myself and I fail, but I get as close as I can. I expect others to want the same in themselves. I take great pride in my work and I expect others to do the same. I expect the same in my fellow managers and deal directly with them when I'm not seeing it, but not in front of their people. That's a serious no-no here. I get that, but if you're not running your team by example, maybe I WILL start talking to you publicly about it. If I need your team to finish something you stay and oversee their finishing the project. I would do the same in mine. I expect people to hit deadlines with what was promised.
Picasso said, "Your work is the ultimate seduction." I think a lot of families here push their children to be professionals, like accountants, engineers, doctors, and lawyers, when their children's temperaments and interests lie elsewhere. What do you think Shah Rukh Khan's parents must have said when he came from school one day and said he wanted to be an actor? I'm sure they thought he could never get a decent bride unless was a manager in an engineering company. Some people were meant to be poets; others, dancers, and not everybody is suited to Internet Marketing. That said, a whole lot more people are not suited to mentoring staff.
And that's the whole difference. My philosophy is that I don't MANAGE people, I MENTOR them. I want them to get as much from me as I get from them. I can show them new ways to do things, ask them questions that make them start to see the long term goals, help them be more creative and not afraid to fail. I'll take the trash out, and I'll say please and thank you to the guy who sweeps the floors and clean the bathrooms in my office. He provides a service. I appreciate the fact that he does it so I usually don't have to, and that's not typical thinking in my experience in India. There are very strict layers of management that works like a waterfall - top down, do as I say, ask no questions. I prefer more of an iterative management style. Ask a question to my boss, "What do you think about doing YZ? I'd like to test it." Then I'll put together a team, get feedback from all the stakeholders... will this affect sales? programming? design? warehouse? database admins? etc. The people at the lowest level, the ones that repeatedly interact with dissatisfied customers, fix bugs, analyze 404 errors, they talk to others in their fields which I'm not necessarily privy to. They're more specialized in those areas than I ever will be. But by listening to their views, we get more ideas. At the management level, it is my job to finalize the strategy and tactics, then go back upstairs to the boss, getting his/her feedback, then going back downstairs to the team, and repeating this as often as it takes to make the best product possible, with a reasonable time to market at the best quality possible.
At this point, it's only the beginning. The CYA (cover your a$$) process begins - analytics, ROI... if it fails, I take responsibility; I implemented it. I don't launch unless I'm proud of it, but if I am forced to do so, I'll do my best with what I am stuck with but I'll be vocal about what's not right. I'll revisit that project as often as I can to add/enhance/replace. Nothing is set in stone on the internet nor should it.
Overall, unless Indian management teams can begin to let go of the bureaucracy, and the idea that ethics, quality, service and long term vision are an integral parts of building a world class company, they will always lose to someone who can build it harder, better, faster, stronger. Eventually.
One other thing, the million dollar idea can come from an intern, or the youngest customer service rep. You never know. But expecting people to move their ideas upstream? Only salmon can do that.
Later, peeps.
"Do you see any change happening to the management mindscape in the post-Satyam, post-Wipro World Bank ban scenario in Indian companies... given the top-heavy management styles?"
Here's my answer:
There's a famous quotation "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." It's only if company management wants to change (and it's a HUGE change) that you will find a change in mindset. And it has to be a holistic, top to bottom approach that is communicated clearly, succinctly and features consequences for not adhering to the new mindset. It's not necessarily about numbers, but overall ethics, long term vision, and typically, with all the passive aggression I've witnessed here, it will take very public humiliation of the first few firings for people to get it. There also needs to be mechanism in place to enable people to bring forth ideas and be allowed to fail.
That's sort of why people like me get hired in this country. I'm used to being a change agent and it doesn't make you popular and that's tough for a lot of people including a lot of Americans. You have to take risks. You have to be willing to fail. And you have to lead by example.
Because I have so much background in the trenches of web-related marketing, management and production, I have done all the jobs that are part of any project except for actual back-end programming. I've done linking, I've done SEO, SEM, web content writing, UI design and testing, I've done the project management, client interaction, HTML build-out, domain management, web site testing, analytics, you name it. I know EXACTLY how much time a task should take. I know what quality looks like. So when someone comes to me and says it will take two weeks to add the google analytics code, I'm going to be pissed. It took me less than one hour to add it to a 50,000 page web site. If someone tells me it will take two weeks to give me three mockups of a web site redesign, I know that doesn't need to take more than a day. If someone says it's going to take them a week to create a CSS for a site, I'll probably want to throw something at them. I can understand giving yourself some wiggle room in case of browser issues, etc., but this is ridiculous.
When I arrived here, we were severely understaffed. We had a lot of SEO people (and I was assured they were very good and all were assistant managers and managers with no people doing real work.) There was one really bad designer (with a tech degree, not design) and one writer going out on maternity. We had quite a few sites to drive traffic to. In the meantime, HR wanted an overhaul of our own corporate website.
Here's an example of leading by example. I had reviewed the meta tags on one site and the keywords we were focusing on were: "Free Online Casino", "Online Casino" and "Online Casino Games". The Title tag on the home page said, "Download Free Casino Games, Casino Software, Casino Games No Download, Big Jackpots". I wanted extremely dense, short titles that also integrated our branding. I asked the manager to change it to "Free Online Casino Games at
Following up on the casino site, the meta tag had not been changed. This is called passive aggression. I'd ask, "When will the tag be changed?" and I'd get the answer, "Today only, Madam." Yet I would come in every morning and check. Today only again. Since I didn't ask while I was working on the other web site, they simply disregarded the priority I gave it. I finally stood over him and made him change it now. "Abhi!" After the next google crawl, we started getting search engine traffic on the desired keywords and an increase in PR for our home page. This is a constant battle.
I expect perfection from myself and I fail, but I get as close as I can. I expect others to want the same in themselves. I take great pride in my work and I expect others to do the same. I expect the same in my fellow managers and deal directly with them when I'm not seeing it, but not in front of their people. That's a serious no-no here. I get that, but if you're not running your team by example, maybe I WILL start talking to you publicly about it. If I need your team to finish something you stay and oversee their finishing the project. I would do the same in mine. I expect people to hit deadlines with what was promised.
Picasso said, "Your work is the ultimate seduction." I think a lot of families here push their children to be professionals, like accountants, engineers, doctors, and lawyers, when their children's temperaments and interests lie elsewhere. What do you think Shah Rukh Khan's parents must have said when he came from school one day and said he wanted to be an actor? I'm sure they thought he could never get a decent bride unless was a manager in an engineering company. Some people were meant to be poets; others, dancers, and not everybody is suited to Internet Marketing. That said, a whole lot more people are not suited to mentoring staff.
And that's the whole difference. My philosophy is that I don't MANAGE people, I MENTOR them. I want them to get as much from me as I get from them. I can show them new ways to do things, ask them questions that make them start to see the long term goals, help them be more creative and not afraid to fail. I'll take the trash out, and I'll say please and thank you to the guy who sweeps the floors and clean the bathrooms in my office. He provides a service. I appreciate the fact that he does it so I usually don't have to, and that's not typical thinking in my experience in India. There are very strict layers of management that works like a waterfall - top down, do as I say, ask no questions. I prefer more of an iterative management style. Ask a question to my boss, "What do you think about doing YZ? I'd like to test it." Then I'll put together a team, get feedback from all the stakeholders... will this affect sales? programming? design? warehouse? database admins? etc. The people at the lowest level, the ones that repeatedly interact with dissatisfied customers, fix bugs, analyze 404 errors, they talk to others in their fields which I'm not necessarily privy to. They're more specialized in those areas than I ever will be. But by listening to their views, we get more ideas. At the management level, it is my job to finalize the strategy and tactics, then go back upstairs to the boss, getting his/her feedback, then going back downstairs to the team, and repeating this as often as it takes to make the best product possible, with a reasonable time to market at the best quality possible.
At this point, it's only the beginning. The CYA (cover your a$$) process begins - analytics, ROI... if it fails, I take responsibility; I implemented it. I don't launch unless I'm proud of it, but if I am forced to do so, I'll do my best with what I am stuck with but I'll be vocal about what's not right. I'll revisit that project as often as I can to add/enhance/replace. Nothing is set in stone on the internet nor should it.
Overall, unless Indian management teams can begin to let go of the bureaucracy, and the idea that ethics, quality, service and long term vision are an integral parts of building a world class company, they will always lose to someone who can build it harder, better, faster, stronger. Eventually.
One other thing, the million dollar idea can come from an intern, or the youngest customer service rep. You never know. But expecting people to move their ideas upstream? Only salmon can do that.
Later, peeps.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Another American Soon-to-Be Expat Blog
A married couple and their three small children are just about to leave the States and will be arriving late January. Remember what it felt like just before you left? That feeling of anticipation mixed with fear and trepidation?
http://areason2write.wordpress.com
Check it out. I sent her my links to groups I know of in the Delhi area for expats. If you know of others, add a comment. I'll be sure to join and post them as well.
Enjoy. :-)
http://areason2write.wordpress.com
Check it out. I sent her my links to groups I know of in the Delhi area for expats. If you know of others, add a comment. I'll be sure to join and post them as well.
Enjoy. :-)
Monday, January 12, 2009
Management Style of Satyam
I've been reading up on the debacle facing Satyam, one of the trailblazers that essentially started the outsourcing industry in India. B. Ramalinga Raju, one of the co-founders, took a big risk to get John Deere, a large American farming and construction equipment manufacturing company, on board as his first customer. Since then the company has not grown at the same pace as other outsourcing firms, like TATA, Infosys and Wipro. This has a lot to do with the fact of Mr. Raju's management style, a style that I have witnessed numerous times since arriving in India.
In an earlier post, I discussed the amount of deference and kowtowing that is expected from their employees' behavior toward them. I also discussed the bevy of oily yes-men who typically surround these executives. The executives make decisions regarding substantial change in their organizations only when forced to do so. Mr. Raju's behavior seems to have been making a typical short term decision (very common here) and wanted the board to make two acquisitions in two construction companies, both run by his sons and in which he and the co-founder also owned a considerable stake. This is by far, not the most egregious error made by a CEO, but it displays the lack of ethics typically found at the upper level of management.
One of the bosses I've had here had no issues with using copyrighted content from competitor web sites to build his own. He had no issues with going out stealing the entire UI and design of their sites, either. It was more critical to him to get sites launched without understanding the consequences of those actions in regards to organic search engine optimization, something that was quite critical in that particular industry.
Another boss refused to make any upgrades to a site left so far behind in style that it looked like the personal web page of someone working for the PTA built in 1995, with hokey backgrounds, popup advertising, blinking graphics - you name it. It took 6 months to get rid of the popup ads, and changes to the interface have just recently launched (over a year).
These firms have very clear hierarchies, and one must work with each level to move on to the nest level to get things done, if you want the job specified correctly. The way it works is that as a VP, Group Leader or middle manager, you need to talk to one of the owners to approve a new project. And most people don't do their homework. Sometimes a boss hears a buzzword from someone and says we need to do "blank" right now. The boss has no idea what it exactly is or how it may impact on all goals that each department is working toward. Many times it is doomed to fail.
One thing I don't see done here is empowering Marketing to take their rightful place in the hierarchy and enable them to continually evaluate the marketplace and develop strategies and tactics to maintain and increase market share and maximize profit potential. Marketing needs to establish a need and a concept for fulfilling that need in the marketplace in order to drive sales. Marketing needs to do research on that need to assess the universe of solutions currently available. Marketing must answer a very important statement: "To really succeed, you have to do things your competition won't do, can't do or hasn't even thought of." Only then can you start the new project specifications.
Marketing is all about differentiation. It's about branding, reputation, and quality, too. Brainstorm a series of ideas to address the statement above. Ideas can and should come from anyone in the company, from the lowliest office boy to the owners of the company. This can't happen here. Once you have those ideas, meet with the other people involved who work in other parts of the business. Talk to the designers. Talk to the programmers. Show them current competition, show them your ideas, and get feedback. Then and only then, the product specifications should be developed.
These specs should take about a week to write, especially if you have met with all the stakeholders previously. Then develop the timeline for production and QA. Have the stakeholders agree to the timeline. While the project is in development, each group can work pretty much in tandem. Designers develop designs based on the UI from the product spec. Programmers develop the backend code that snaps into the back of the graphics. Copywriters develop content. Marketing plans out the launch. Most web-based technologies like widgets, social proofing, etc. should only take a few weeks to produce an alpha version which all stakeholders review. Quality issues should be addressed, while marketing distributes beta invitations. When the product is ready for beta, let everyone know about it by any means possible. In the internet world, that means publishing every week until full launch. And full launch could be months, even years (how long did friendster stay in beta?).
Upcoming trends are microblogging, customization, and localization. Our attention spans have been decreasing year after year. Software development, which is the backbone of the Internet, has to be done with an eye toward what the user thinks they need and what they want. It shouldn't be a buzzword an owner hears at a conference, and projects shouldn't be implemented by programmers without feedback from marketing at the very beginning of the project. I've seen resource-heavy projects spend six months sitting around, never completed, while short term, highly viral projects languish. I have watched projects completed and launched, independent of Marketing, that were just awful because no one asked Marketing if the visitors need it or even want it, nor did they interact to develop a simple and professionally designed interface. DBL (Dead before launch) situations occur all over the place.
Satyam suffered from the control freak style of management, short term vision, and a serious lack of ethics. When you are considering joining a company here in India, ask about the company structure. As about Product or Project Specifications. If they don't have them, don't even consider working there. If they do, ask how much time it takes to get a project from spec to launch; ask for an example. Ask them how many times does a typical product spec change before launching. As about team sizes and turnover rates. This can provide you with valuable insight into the company and its management style and help you make a wiser move up your career path.
In an earlier post, I discussed the amount of deference and kowtowing that is expected from their employees' behavior toward them. I also discussed the bevy of oily yes-men who typically surround these executives. The executives make decisions regarding substantial change in their organizations only when forced to do so. Mr. Raju's behavior seems to have been making a typical short term decision (very common here) and wanted the board to make two acquisitions in two construction companies, both run by his sons and in which he and the co-founder also owned a considerable stake. This is by far, not the most egregious error made by a CEO, but it displays the lack of ethics typically found at the upper level of management.
One of the bosses I've had here had no issues with using copyrighted content from competitor web sites to build his own. He had no issues with going out stealing the entire UI and design of their sites, either. It was more critical to him to get sites launched without understanding the consequences of those actions in regards to organic search engine optimization, something that was quite critical in that particular industry.
Another boss refused to make any upgrades to a site left so far behind in style that it looked like the personal web page of someone working for the PTA built in 1995, with hokey backgrounds, popup advertising, blinking graphics - you name it. It took 6 months to get rid of the popup ads, and changes to the interface have just recently launched (over a year).
These firms have very clear hierarchies, and one must work with each level to move on to the nest level to get things done, if you want the job specified correctly. The way it works is that as a VP, Group Leader or middle manager, you need to talk to one of the owners to approve a new project. And most people don't do their homework. Sometimes a boss hears a buzzword from someone and says we need to do "blank" right now. The boss has no idea what it exactly is or how it may impact on all goals that each department is working toward. Many times it is doomed to fail.
One thing I don't see done here is empowering Marketing to take their rightful place in the hierarchy and enable them to continually evaluate the marketplace and develop strategies and tactics to maintain and increase market share and maximize profit potential. Marketing needs to establish a need and a concept for fulfilling that need in the marketplace in order to drive sales. Marketing needs to do research on that need to assess the universe of solutions currently available. Marketing must answer a very important statement: "To really succeed, you have to do things your competition won't do, can't do or hasn't even thought of." Only then can you start the new project specifications.
Marketing is all about differentiation. It's about branding, reputation, and quality, too. Brainstorm a series of ideas to address the statement above. Ideas can and should come from anyone in the company, from the lowliest office boy to the owners of the company. This can't happen here. Once you have those ideas, meet with the other people involved who work in other parts of the business. Talk to the designers. Talk to the programmers. Show them current competition, show them your ideas, and get feedback. Then and only then, the product specifications should be developed.
These specs should take about a week to write, especially if you have met with all the stakeholders previously. Then develop the timeline for production and QA. Have the stakeholders agree to the timeline. While the project is in development, each group can work pretty much in tandem. Designers develop designs based on the UI from the product spec. Programmers develop the backend code that snaps into the back of the graphics. Copywriters develop content. Marketing plans out the launch. Most web-based technologies like widgets, social proofing, etc. should only take a few weeks to produce an alpha version which all stakeholders review. Quality issues should be addressed, while marketing distributes beta invitations. When the product is ready for beta, let everyone know about it by any means possible. In the internet world, that means publishing every week until full launch. And full launch could be months, even years (how long did friendster stay in beta?).
Upcoming trends are microblogging, customization, and localization. Our attention spans have been decreasing year after year. Software development, which is the backbone of the Internet, has to be done with an eye toward what the user thinks they need and what they want. It shouldn't be a buzzword an owner hears at a conference, and projects shouldn't be implemented by programmers without feedback from marketing at the very beginning of the project. I've seen resource-heavy projects spend six months sitting around, never completed, while short term, highly viral projects languish. I have watched projects completed and launched, independent of Marketing, that were just awful because no one asked Marketing if the visitors need it or even want it, nor did they interact to develop a simple and professionally designed interface. DBL (Dead before launch) situations occur all over the place.
Satyam suffered from the control freak style of management, short term vision, and a serious lack of ethics. When you are considering joining a company here in India, ask about the company structure. As about Product or Project Specifications. If they don't have them, don't even consider working there. If they do, ask how much time it takes to get a project from spec to launch; ask for an example. Ask them how many times does a typical product spec change before launching. As about team sizes and turnover rates. This can provide you with valuable insight into the company and its management style and help you make a wiser move up your career path.
Another Crazy American Expat in Delhi
This person, originally from Wheaton, IL (just next door to Aurora where my son and I lived for four years just prior to moving to India) also has a blog. You might want to take a look. The writer posted photos of a wintry Chicago that made me homesick but happy to be free of all that snow...
Read it here: http://goradesi.blogspot.com/.
Enjoy :-)
-- Jeanne
Read it here: http://goradesi.blogspot.com/.
Enjoy :-)
-- Jeanne
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Gurgaon Totally Sucks
I can't stand Gurgaon. It's such a wannabe Western city without any infrastructure. The only way to get a cab is to call on the phone and reserve one. There is no information on any possible public transportation, the roads all look alike and have no signage, and there are these hideous malls everywhere. I can't figure out the buses, and I'm not sure how to catch an autorickshaw. None of them speak English so I can't ask them if I can hire them to take me from point A to point B like they do in Mumbai, or if they have specific routes like they do in Kolkata. It's just not a friendly place. Even the beggars here are nasty. They'll bang on your windows and spit at you if you don't give them money. Very aggressive. And I thought the beggars in Kolkata were bad... The ones here are like gangbangers on crack compared to Kolkata.
There's a ton of construction going on, a metro being built, and the roads are in terrible condition. The frameworks of buildings under construction are on every street, the access roads torn up for new drainage pipes. I have no idea where a post office is. No idea where to buy packing materials to send out a package. Everything has to be done with a local accompanying you - you'll never find the place even if you have the address.
Whenever I want to spend time with friends we end up in South Delhi or somewhere around CP. There's nothing to do out here except shop or go to the movies, and there's no green spaces to let the dog run.
I've lived here since June and I STILL don't have proper cooking gas installed in my home. My electricity goes out at least ten times a day, even with a backup generator. The building complex where I live is poorly built and barely maintained. My landlord and his local representative are completely unresponsive. My apartment has two bathrooms and both of them are never working at the same time.
The servants hired by the company I work for haven't lasted more than a month at a time. One of them was responsible for letting a large piece of wallboard fall out of his window and it crashed through the back window of a car fourteen floors below. It could have killed someone. The owner of the car wanted 20,000 rupess to pay for the window. My go-to guy at the office came over and negotiated it down to 4,500. He kept saying that I was an American and I could certainly afford to pay. I think this same servant is responsible for the death of my cat as well. He kept leaving the door to the flat open, and my cat got loose and was killed by stray dogs that roam outside the building. The servant that I found through another expat was hired at an exhorbitant price. (Rs. 18,000/mo - more than twice the amount I pay in salary for link builders in my office.) She just gave her notice today because she wanted another 2,000 rupees for conveyance - that was on top of her uniform fees, holidays, two weeks paid vacation, and medical bills.
We get complaints from our neighbors all the time. They claim we throw our garbage out the windows, we make a lot of noise, that our dog causes a lot damage, they're always gossiping about us. I told someone that I lived at Princeton Estates and he said, doesn't that place remind you of the movie "The Grudge"? Yeah, it does. There's a weird vibe to the place. Another expat said he doesn't like coming to visit me because Gurgaon feels like it "isn't supposed to be there... looks out of place". Even the security guards are nasty.
My son says "Gurgaon is a city in denial about itself". My parents thought it was awful too, when they came to visit. They never even bothered to leave the house because there was nothing of interest to them here. Though many residents think it's paradise but I'm still searching for an oasis in this desert.
There's a ton of construction going on, a metro being built, and the roads are in terrible condition. The frameworks of buildings under construction are on every street, the access roads torn up for new drainage pipes. I have no idea where a post office is. No idea where to buy packing materials to send out a package. Everything has to be done with a local accompanying you - you'll never find the place even if you have the address.
Whenever I want to spend time with friends we end up in South Delhi or somewhere around CP. There's nothing to do out here except shop or go to the movies, and there's no green spaces to let the dog run.
I've lived here since June and I STILL don't have proper cooking gas installed in my home. My electricity goes out at least ten times a day, even with a backup generator. The building complex where I live is poorly built and barely maintained. My landlord and his local representative are completely unresponsive. My apartment has two bathrooms and both of them are never working at the same time.
The servants hired by the company I work for haven't lasted more than a month at a time. One of them was responsible for letting a large piece of wallboard fall out of his window and it crashed through the back window of a car fourteen floors below. It could have killed someone. The owner of the car wanted 20,000 rupess to pay for the window. My go-to guy at the office came over and negotiated it down to 4,500. He kept saying that I was an American and I could certainly afford to pay. I think this same servant is responsible for the death of my cat as well. He kept leaving the door to the flat open, and my cat got loose and was killed by stray dogs that roam outside the building. The servant that I found through another expat was hired at an exhorbitant price. (Rs. 18,000/mo - more than twice the amount I pay in salary for link builders in my office.) She just gave her notice today because she wanted another 2,000 rupees for conveyance - that was on top of her uniform fees, holidays, two weeks paid vacation, and medical bills.
We get complaints from our neighbors all the time. They claim we throw our garbage out the windows, we make a lot of noise, that our dog causes a lot damage, they're always gossiping about us. I told someone that I lived at Princeton Estates and he said, doesn't that place remind you of the movie "The Grudge"? Yeah, it does. There's a weird vibe to the place. Another expat said he doesn't like coming to visit me because Gurgaon feels like it "isn't supposed to be there... looks out of place". Even the security guards are nasty.
My son says "Gurgaon is a city in denial about itself". My parents thought it was awful too, when they came to visit. They never even bothered to leave the house because there was nothing of interest to them here. Though many residents think it's paradise but I'm still searching for an oasis in this desert.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
"I Want My Fifteen Minutes Back."
I was always interviewing people at my first position in India and also here, when I was working the day shift. I was always disappointed in the quality of staff HR was coming in with. I warned my managers that I was going to ask for my 15 minutes back if they wasted my time with a stupid interview.
If you want to work for me, these are the things I look for in an Internet Marketer.
1. You need to write excellent casual English. You can't work in a dotcom serving a global audience and be an internet marketer without excellent writing skills in English. I don't care how lyrical your poetry sounds in Bengali. It's all English, all the time. I will typically send you an email to schedule to phone interview. Your response better be clean - no SMS texting style emails.
2. A crisp, clean, consistent and well formatted resume or CV. I want to know what you accomplished at those other companies. What were the goals, how long did it take you, what size was the team. What your role was in accomplishing those goals. I don't care about whether you like cricket or long walks in the sand. Just your job. If I see typos, grammatical errors, inconsistency in tense (worked, works, and will work in same sentence), you're finished. Your lack of attention to detail doesn't impress me. Don't cut and paste from other people's online resumes either. I'll notice it and Google it and see who else I really should hire.
3. If you want to be an internet marketer, (or are planning to work as a specialist of some kind - like designer - within the marketing department) you need presence on-line. I will Google you. I'd better see you on more social networks than just Orkut. If you don't have an active Facebook and Linkedin account, I'd be suspicious and put you in the "maybe" pile. This, more than your MBA, means a lot - that you get it. Twitter and any new mobile technologies will attract me even more. I want to see references. I will read those profiles completely. I will check the dates when you joined. I will notice the number of contacts and the quality of those connections. I will read the comments you leave to others, I need to see that interaction within social media.
If you're looking to do SEO, I'd better not find forum posts where you're pitching your web site to link farms or hit-builders just to jack up meaningless traffic. I want to see the keywords you worked on, the competition, where you finally ranked and how long it took to get there.
If you are a content writer, I want to see at least three samples of online content. I will test it with a plagiarism tool. If I like it and our in-person interview goes well, I will ask you to hand-write another piece here in my office. Be prepared. If I tell you that you'll probably be working on real estate sites or gambling sites, or whatever, do a little research the day before.
If you are a linker, you need to be able to tell me what the different types of link exchanges are, how they work together, and why PR and authority have value (or why you think they don't). You need to tell me the process you go through to get links, and what the expectations should be for a particular industry, if you've had experience linking in the past.
If you are a web designer, don't let me catch you downloading free web templates and passing it off as your own. Just like the content writers, you will spend an hour in my office designing a photoshop mockup of a web site. If you have UI and site architecture experience, I may ask for even more examples. BTW, and this is a huge pet peeve of mine: web designers have a background in DESIGN, not computer applications. You should have a really slick portfolio on line. If you can't make me jealous when I see your work, don't bother me at all. I'll want that hour back.
Bottom line, I like a small team that works efficiently as a team. The more HR-related tasks I have to do, the more I am kept from doing the important work that meet company objectives. To me, and most Americans, we identify ourselves by our jobs. The first question we ask in an introduction is, "So, what do you do?" It's that vital to us. More than what our father's name is. More than what our backgrounds are or whether we're married or single. Keep that in mind next time you're interviewing with an MNC or just happen to end up interested in working for a company whose marketing department happens to lead by an American, especially this American.
If you want to work for me, these are the things I look for in an Internet Marketer.
1. You need to write excellent casual English. You can't work in a dotcom serving a global audience and be an internet marketer without excellent writing skills in English. I don't care how lyrical your poetry sounds in Bengali. It's all English, all the time. I will typically send you an email to schedule to phone interview. Your response better be clean - no SMS texting style emails.
2. A crisp, clean, consistent and well formatted resume or CV. I want to know what you accomplished at those other companies. What were the goals, how long did it take you, what size was the team. What your role was in accomplishing those goals. I don't care about whether you like cricket or long walks in the sand. Just your job. If I see typos, grammatical errors, inconsistency in tense (worked, works, and will work in same sentence), you're finished. Your lack of attention to detail doesn't impress me. Don't cut and paste from other people's online resumes either. I'll notice it and Google it and see who else I really should hire.
3. If you want to be an internet marketer, (or are planning to work as a specialist of some kind - like designer - within the marketing department) you need presence on-line. I will Google you. I'd better see you on more social networks than just Orkut. If you don't have an active Facebook and Linkedin account, I'd be suspicious and put you in the "maybe" pile. This, more than your MBA, means a lot - that you get it. Twitter and any new mobile technologies will attract me even more. I want to see references. I will read those profiles completely. I will check the dates when you joined. I will notice the number of contacts and the quality of those connections. I will read the comments you leave to others, I need to see that interaction within social media.
If you're looking to do SEO, I'd better not find forum posts where you're pitching your web site to link farms or hit-builders just to jack up meaningless traffic. I want to see the keywords you worked on, the competition, where you finally ranked and how long it took to get there.
If you are a content writer, I want to see at least three samples of online content. I will test it with a plagiarism tool. If I like it and our in-person interview goes well, I will ask you to hand-write another piece here in my office. Be prepared. If I tell you that you'll probably be working on real estate sites or gambling sites, or whatever, do a little research the day before.
If you are a linker, you need to be able to tell me what the different types of link exchanges are, how they work together, and why PR and authority have value (or why you think they don't). You need to tell me the process you go through to get links, and what the expectations should be for a particular industry, if you've had experience linking in the past.
If you are a web designer, don't let me catch you downloading free web templates and passing it off as your own. Just like the content writers, you will spend an hour in my office designing a photoshop mockup of a web site. If you have UI and site architecture experience, I may ask for even more examples. BTW, and this is a huge pet peeve of mine: web designers have a background in DESIGN, not computer applications. You should have a really slick portfolio on line. If you can't make me jealous when I see your work, don't bother me at all. I'll want that hour back.
Bottom line, I like a small team that works efficiently as a team. The more HR-related tasks I have to do, the more I am kept from doing the important work that meet company objectives. To me, and most Americans, we identify ourselves by our jobs. The first question we ask in an introduction is, "So, what do you do?" It's that vital to us. More than what our father's name is. More than what our backgrounds are or whether we're married or single. Keep that in mind next time you're interviewing with an MNC or just happen to end up interested in working for a company whose marketing department happens to lead by an American, especially this American.
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