Have you ever seen folks who admire other folks for their work, their focus and their commitment and wonder why they don't have any of it?

Have you ever seen companies who like to give examples of other companies that are hugely effective and wonder why they themselves are not as effective?

Have you ever seen vice-presidents, directors, managers and team leads talk about how some team in a different company that they knew built an amazing service in three weeks and how their team takes too much time or is never able to get anything done?

Word of advice:

Whenever you see the discussion of this sort, the person who starts a discussion is probably the reason you, your team or your organization is ineffective.

No, I don't mean that the person who starts this conversation is necessarily a bad human being, stupid, evil or any of that.

Maybe he is just a nice manager, trying to get his team to do more and make them as effective as the 'other team' he has seen somewhere else. Maybe he is getting bogged down by other nice managers above him who are trying to get the team to do more and make them as effective as the 'other team' they saw somewhere else. Maybe he is just getting bogged down by a nasty client.

But then, having said that, the fact remains that he is in-fact making the team ineffective.

Chances are, that this gentle-man who started the discussion in the first place, is making the team ineffective by pushing them and making them work harder. I have personally witnessed managers taking great pride in discovering the fact that their teams are staying late to get things done. David Heinemeier Hansson from 37Signals has excellent advice regarding the topic of staying focused and getting things done, when he is asked a question at a conference. 

Question: I am in front of my computer ten to fourteen hours a day. I am supposed to be writing code. But I find that, I spend a lot of time getting distracted, surfing the web, trying to keep up with rails. Did you have any similar problems? What advice can you give to developers to keep on track and what motivated you to crank down and crank out a product?

Answer: I think the problem is you are trying to work fourteen hours a day. Who the hell gets anything productive done for fourteen hours a day? Try working five hours a day.

If you only have five hours a day to spend on something, you'd focus your time a lot better.

We've just gone down to four day work weeks. We are trying to work just eight hours a day. The amount of productive time I get out of that... two hours... three hours? I think people are just not willing to accept the fact that you can't, in a creative endeavor as programming, work for fourteen hours a day. It's ridiculous!

If you could just get three great hours in per day, you would get a ton more done.

To be honest, as a developer, I have been guilty of this too. If you are managing me, all you have to do is tell me that the sky is falling and we 'really-really-really' need something by this weekend and chances are you will find me rip off my shirt, move to my super-hero uniform and jump right out of window flying in my funny super-man underpants.

We as programmers, even the best of us, are sometimes just as guilty as our managers, when it comes to nurturing the belief that if you are pressured to close fifteen non-critical bugs by merely announcing to you that they are critical and that they have to be done today, you will actually end up staying all night and closing every single one of those bugs the very same day.

The next time the sky is falling try working less for a change. Get in just about three to five hours of focused work a day and keep opening the IDE every single day. Next time when you get an email in the middle of the night make your own judgment call on if the issue is really critical or if it can wait till tomorrow. If it can wait till tomorrow, logout.

Work less, stay focused and if you find yourself moving into a constant firefighting mode for fifteen hours a day and you cannot get shit done, learn how to say no, logout and get some sleep. The same applies for your team if you happen to be leading one.

Maybe you, your manager and your organization is trying too hard.

Slow down.

Chances are that you will be much more creative, much more innovative and much more productive.

I wish you good luck.

A small project in a tiny little nook of your organization fails but the universe continues to function exactly as is. A close friend has a bad breakup but decides to move on with his life. A cockroach loses its home and decides to move into your hotel room. You have not been able to do any real concentrated work for days. On the face of it, these are utterly insignificant events of your life that no-one gives a rats ass about.

Ok wait... maybe you care. Maybe your mom does. Maybe your friends, colleagues or acquaintances do. But that's about it - you tell yourself.

Then when you sit in front of the monitor thinking of what to write about, you see nothing but insane white electrons staring back at you. You feel like those days when you were asked to answer a question you were totally clueless about.

All you hear is silence.

The sound of crickets chirping deep inside your head.

You whine.

You just missed fifteen things that you could have written about in the last seven days. 

You just missed fifteen new perspectives.

You just missed out on fifteen new conversation any one of which could have brought purpose or meaning to your life and your universe.

And did you realize what the problem was?

As much as you might have heard me telling you that one of the biggest problems about writing on the internet that young and budding blogger often forget, is that no-one cares about you, your blog or your product, to be honest that is not the biggest of the problems keeping you away from blogging consistently and achieving ultimate success in one easy step.

The real problem here is hugely different. The real problem here, just in case you have not yet realized it, is that you, yourself don't care enough about any of these events, experiences and moments that are shaping your life,  even right now as you read this.

TEDxCalcutta speaker and a movie director Ashoke Vishwanathan first introduced me to a rather philosophical concept of movie making which also applies to blogging. During his talk, he explained the concept of the hyper-real in movie making:

This is what we call the hyper-real.

If you walk into a rock concert, where say Madonna is singing. Because the auditorium is so big you require giant television screens and on those giant television screens you will see images of Madonna.

Now when you attend the rock concert, are you watching Madonna singing or are you watching yourself watching Madonna singing. You are actually watching yourself watching Madonna.

While most folks scratched their heads at this remark, what Ashoke was really talking about was your ability to step out and watch yourself participating in your own stories. Do you even have the perspective to notice that the stories are happening all around you? Do you have the ability to step out, watch, learn and then tell these stories to the world? Do you even care about these stories?

Do you just see a cockroach getting squatted, or do you see a tale or errors unwind itself with you playing the central role? Do you genuinely and truly think that a train trip can change your outlook on life?  Do you genuinely believe that programming is art, science and passion all rolled into one and that depressed programmers should be smacked out of the profession and asked to join a different profession? Do you have an enemy?

Do 'you' truly and deeply care about anything?

Do you even have strong opinions on anything?

Do you believe that the life that you live, the work that you do or the experiences that you have are informative, funny or remarkable enough that you feel the urge to move your buttocks off that couch and share them with others around the globe? If you don't care, don't you think, asking your audience to give a shit, is asking for too much?

If you do care enough, you won't have a difficult time finding a topic for your next post, because that is the only thing lying between you and the next meaningful conversation you are going to start.

I look forward to reading it and as usual, here is wishing you good luck.

Multiplitaxion Inc, had multiple offices around the world. When the news of a particular office-head in a different city resigning came in, I shrugged. My life was not even touched by the news and I could not have cared less.

When the news of a new office head getting hired within a month of the older one leaving came in I shrugged again. I couldn't have cared less again.

When the tales of the new branch-head who for the purposes of this post, we shall refer to as Fred, taking charge started coming in I wanted to shrug again and get on with my life, but then, these tales were, for lack of a better word, spicy and interesting. So I didn't shrug.

To be honest, I mostly behaved like like a young college going teenage girl, who finds pleasure in the hottest gossip in town. With my ears pressed hard on the source that was brining us the hottest news about this new branch head of one of our branches, we had found a source of free entertainment. Our ears were wide open for every new tit-bit of information about this new branch-head and what he did today.

Its called learning what not to do in management by watching other people f@#ckup. This new branch-head of a small office based in a small town had a small problem. From the very day he joined office, he realized that there were things that he had to change and he went all out to make these changes.

New rules were formed. New policies came into existence over night. We felt sorry for the folks working in this particular office and at the same time had hilarious laughs when we first heard the rule that you were not supposed to listen to songs, even on headphones, inside office because that was considered using of company time for your own personal use.

The guy was making a new rule or policy every couple of weeks. He truly believed that he was shaping an office into discipline and order both of which he believed had been neglected by the older branch-head.

From these series of dramatic episodes in one of our branch offices, we learnt as much as a fresh management book would have taught us. But then, of all the things that this set of dramatic episodes taught us, one of the most important things I personally learnt was something that most folks learn when they have their first breakup during their teens.

Now, if you have had a bad breakup in your life you probably know this already. If you had a breakup that was so bad that you actually had to seek advice from a close friend or a shrink, this is probably the advice they gave you too, but I am going to give it you again.

Ready for the super-breakup-tip? Huh? Huh? Huh?

Wait. It. Out.

That's right. The times following your breakup are usually very risky for getting into another friendship or relationship. That's the time when you usually end up picking the worst of partners. Which is why when you have a bad breakup, anyone with a sensible mind will tell you to stop looking for someone and to wait it out. Be single for a couple of years. Live life. Focus on your hobbies. Do things you always wanted to do. Have fun. Don't rush into another relationship.

You know what? Now, as it turns out, if you happen to run an organization, this rule also applies to you. When the best of your organization leaves, you usually see the Human Resource department swimming through resumes and getting back to work so that they can hire you what they call - quality resources - to replace the ones who are leaving. All I have is two words, which describe this exercise rather appropriately:

Bad Management.

That's right. Looking for 'quality resources' when the best folks in your team start leaving is just about the stupidest thing that you can do. It's like looking for the best girl you can find when your girl friend breaks up with you. Newsflash. It doesn't need a rocket scientist to tell you that you are going to make some really stupid mistakes.

Yet, this is exactly the mistake Multiplitaxion Inc made when they went out looking for a new branch-head and hired Fred.

What Multiplitaxion Inc, should have done, was simple. They should have 'waited it out'. They should have seen to see if someone in house steps up to take the responsibility. Waited to see if the office really needed a so-called-head to run it properly. They should have waited to see if the smart team that they had hand picked after countless rounds of interviews would step-up and take the responsibility.

And then if they really needed a 'branch-head' they should have sat tight and waited till they found the right person. Instead, they decided to replace the old branch-head with Fred as quickly as  they could and triggered a series of dramatic episodes which were no better than confusing painful relationships that folks often get into after a breakup.

As for Fred, he practically f@#cked up the entire branch in the short one year during which he headed it and then ended up getting fired.

Now, years later, every time I get a couple of resignations on my team and people come up to me all worked up and worried, asking me what we are going to do, asking me what our 'hiring strategy' is going to be or how we are going to replace the 'quality resources' that just left us, I smile.

Then I tell them that I don't like the idea of getting into a relationship immediately after a breakup and I tell them that we are just going to wait-it-out for a couple of months and see what happens.

Maybe someone from the team will step up. Maybe, we will realize that the person leaving wasn't all that critical after all. Maybe we will not need a replacement. Maybe we will. But then we have time on our side and its better to wait it out and make a calm decision rather than rushing to make a stupid hiring mistake that you end up regretting for months.

The next time the best programmer in your team or your alpha-geek resigns and others walk up to you asking you what your hiring strategy is going to be, go ahead, ask them if they ever had a breakup and what was the advice their friends, family or shrink gave them after the breakup?

Wait. It. Out.

Observe what happens.

Things have a strange way of working themselves out.

I wish you good luck.

As far as most minds are concerned, the very words 'computer programmer', 'geek' or 'nerd' usually does not tend to conjure up an image of the most physically fit human beings that walk this planet. As a computer programmer myself, I have never really paid active attention to my health, exercise routine or a healthy life style. Old acquaintances back at school often referred to me as 'bill gates'. Well, what they meant was, this bill gates:

Honestly, being called out for being skinny every once in a while or the element of physical appearance somehow never seemed important enough to move to a stringent exercising regiment and then sticking to it. I hardly ever thought that I would be consistently or actively thinking about health leave aside, exercising and writing a series of blog post on it.

Things That Move A Nerd And Getting Him To Give A F@#CK.

During my life, a decent number of well-wishers have asked me to pay more attention to health and exercise. 'Its good for your body', 'its good for your mind' and 'it will make you feel good' are some of the most common reasons that have been sited.

What most folks forget however, is that when you are selling a life-changing idea that needs solid commitment to a geek, selling him physical appearance, the idea of 'feeling good'  or the concept of well-being is not going to do it. The geek as it turns out, does not care enough for that stuff. At-least, he wont admit that he does, even if he cares about these things. He likes his dark cave and his interactions with his compiler.

He just won't buy your 'it will make you look and feel good' argument.

What the geek needs is a challenge or a problem that he can connect to. A problem that is worth fixing. A problem that is engaging and consuming as a software program. Something that he can connect to. Consider this thought process from John Walker:

I'm an engineer by training, a computer programmer by avocation, and an businessman through lack of alternatives. From grade school in the 1950's until 1988 I was fat--anywhere from 30 to 80 pounds overweight. This is a diet book by somebody who spent most of his life fat. The absurdity of my situation finally struck home in 1987.

"Look," I said to myself, "you founded one of the five biggest software companies in the world, Autodesk. You wrote large pieces of AutoCAD, the world standard for computer aided design. You've made in excess of fifty million dollars without dropping dead, going crazy, or winding up in jail. You've succeeded at some pretty difficult things, and you can't control your flipping weight?''

Through all the years of struggling with my weight, the fad diets, the tedious and depressing history most fat people share, I had never, even once, approached controlling my weight the way I'd work on any other problem: a malfunctioning circuit, a buggy program, an ineffective department in my company.

Michael Lopp in his article on The Nerd Handbook describes one of the examples that can really move a nerd to address fitness. He explains:

Make it a project. You might’ve noticed your nerd’s strange relation to food. Does he eat fast? Like really fast? You should know what’s going on here. Food is thrown into the irrelevant bucket because it’s getting in the way of the content. Exercise, too. Thing is, you want your nerd to eat healthily so that he’s here in another thirty years, so how do you change this behavior? You make diet and exercise the project.

For me, exercise became the project ten years ago after a horrible break-up. When the project was no longer the Ex, I dove into exercise every single day of the week.

There were charts tracking my workouts, there were graphs tracking my weight, and there was the exercise. Every single day for two years until the day I passed out in a McDonald’s post-workout after not eating for a day.

Ok, so time for a new project. Yeah, nerds also have moderation issues. That’s another essay.

Significant nerd behavioral change is only going to happen if your nerd engages in the project heart and soul, otherwise it’s just another thought for the irrelevant bucket.

For someone like me, the idea of being called fat or the idea of a break-up is not compelling enough to get my ass off the couch and start running, but if you can appeal to my brain and convince me with objective and scientific facts which tell me that getting up and walking five miles a day will help me write better code, you have my attention.

With me the idea of exercise every day started rather recently with a realization that the ADHD that I often joked about having and never even bothered to get tested or formally diagnosed, was starting to impact my life and was preventing me from working on things that I always wanted to work on.

The open source timesheet entry system that I started, my announcement of working on a book and my announcement of starting to write technical posts were just some examples of incomplete ideas that have not yet seen the day of light purely because I could not generate enough focus or attention that these activities deserved. To be honest, there are a zillion more ideas that float in parallel and create a turmoil in my head.

After a while these things get painful to deal with.

This was clearly a problem needing a solution. It was time to do some serious geek-type-research using the same information tools that I use when I sit down to research a new topic when I am going to blog about it. One thing that kept coming back in all the research that I read about and all the material that I came across was that cardio-exercises have concrete and scientific benefits at improving your attention span.  

Strangely enough, it was these scientific researches I read about (which I might do another blog post to talk about) that I could connect to the most. And then, one fine morning, on my way to office, I got off the bus a couple of miles before office and walked. The nerd in me had voluntarily and seriously started giving a f@#ck about this workout thing.

In the end things are fairly simple. As programmers we tend to build some fairly complicated systems and work on some fairly interesting problems. We are often in a war on multiple fronts, where chances of losing are way higher than chances of winning.

But we adapt, improvise, and work.

Consistently.

If you can build complex software that works reliably in a production environment and not police or panic even when the sky is falling, figuring out a fitness regiment that meets your need, clears your head, helps you focus and keeps you mentally fit, should not be all that hard, if only you can get the nerd within you to give a f@#ck.

How you get the nerd within you to give a fu#@k however is a whole new problem that you are going to have to deal with yourself. For me, it was ADHD and the fear of not being able to work on things that I always wanted to work on. For you, it could be something totally different. Whatever it is, the sooner you can convince the nerd within you to get his ass off the couch and run a few miles consistently day after day, the better off you are.

I wish you good luck.

Fred is an asshole. Having said that, when talking about Fred, the people who report to him are hugely reluctant and scared at using that word to describe him.

During my consulting days at a client, who for the purposes of this post we shall refer to as Multiplitaxion Inc, the people who work with Fred seem constantly stressed out and unhappy.

Then in a conversation with one of the testers in Fred's team I stumble upon the reason why Fred is commonly perceived as an asshole by everyone who works with him. I am told that Fred "uses his logic to classify everything that he sees in black or white".

Using your logic and seeing things in either black or white, is usually your first step towards prickdom. It is your first introduction to the problem of other minds and nudges you to believe that everyone you are talking to is either a lying scumbag or a mindless zombie.

Consider for example, a tight situation in your project.

A situation where the sky is falling.

Your team are really trying hard to get a the data transformation feature rolled out to a client as quickly as you can.

You walk up to your manager to tell him that the data transformation service is going to take about three weeks to build.

He looks at you like you just dropped a dead rat on his table.

You cringe.

What follows is a 'logical' argument where he uses pressure and intimidation along with simple logic to question you why you think parsing a simple file is going to take three weeks.

You know why it will take three weeks to build but suddenly you find it difficult to explain the reasons articulately. Your throat dries up a little. There is strange awkwardness in the moment created by the intimidating look he is giving you. You fumble something to the effect that the file is not a structured CSV file to which he responds that we have formatted non-structured files in the past rather quickly. You respond that this one is complex. He questions you why.

Very soon, before you know it, you are playing the cat and mouse game where he is the cat and you are the mouse. It feels like you are defending yourself rather than having a real pragmatic discussion on timelines. It feels like you are being cornered. You know deep down inside that the file is complex but you suddenly start finding it really hard to explain why it needs your time and attention.

What your manager is busy doing, is finding out if you are are lying scumbag or it is genuinely going to take three weeks. As far as he is concerned, these are the only two possibilities that can exist. Things are either black or they are white. Not to mention of course, that he is starting with the assumption that things are black and that you are in fact a lying scumbag, unless you prove to him otherwise.

The reality of things however, lies somewhere in the middle. Chances are that the file parser will take about two weeks to write and about a couple of days to test. Chances are that if you are done early you will also ship early. Chances are that you are not lying, just keeping a couple of days because you know that shit happens when you least expect it to happen.

Things are neither black nor white. They are a totally different color and any other color to your manager means black. He has already stern investigation, cross examination and deposition all rolled into one.

You have proved yourself in multiple projects and multiple assignments. You have demonstrated your work ethics more than once. You stand there answering questions, wondering why your integrity, skill or gut-feeling is being doubted. And then, suddenly you hear a voice in your head whisper - F@#k him. He wants it in one week. Give it to him in one week.

This is when you start building a truck load of crap that causes companies to move in infinite loop of failure. This is when you know for sure that your manager is an asshole. You spread the word every time the topic comes up. Then there are others who have had similar experiences with him too. The story spreads within the corridors of your organization and a brand new asshole is born in your organization.

If you are working with a bunch of developers, learn how to shut the fu@#k up and listen to their problems, specially when the best of your team come up to you and tell you they need more time. Stop what ever you are doing and listen when they come up to you for any help whatsoever.

There is nothing wrong with a healthy discussion, but don't act like an asshole. Don't classify things as black or white and don't start by assuming that people who come up to you are lying scumbags till the time they pass your elaborate cross examination and prove their innocence. Don't interrogate your team members like criminals.

Put simply, don't be a black and white jerk.

I wish you good luck.

As a part of my job, I meet young and budding programmers around the world, connect to them and work with them. One of the thing that amuses me more than anything else as I talk to some of the brightest programmers that I find is the amount of programmers who have 'plans' of starting their own organization or their very own personal pet project in the 'future'.

Ask them if they have a prototype or a work-in-progress version and you will find yourself staring into the wilderness of no-response. When these folks say they 'plan on' having an organization or a pet project, they don't mean they are actually working-on one. What they really mean, is that they are 'hoping' something magical just turns their 'plans' into reality without their doing anything.

Put more specifically, they mean that they have 'dreams' of starting their organization or their pet project someday.

After a couple of months however, these dreams after a lot of talking and without any real work, become hugely boring.

Not to say that these folks do not have in them what it would take to start an organization or just a pet project. Every single one of them have what it takes to start either of these. What they lack however, is determination and consistency. 

 Paul Graham explains this rather articulately in his article on determination. He explains:

We learned quickly that the most important predictor of success is determination. At first we thought it might be intelligence. Everyone likes to believe that's what makes startups succeed. It makes a better story that a company won because its founders were so smart.

The PR people and reporters who spread such stories probably believe them themselves.

But while it certainly helps to be smart, it's not the deciding factor.

There are plenty of people as smart as Bill Gates who achieve nothing.

In most domains, talent is overrated compared to determination—partly because it makes a better story, partly because it gives onlookers an excuse for being lazy, and partly because after a while determination starts to look like talent.

If you have ever thought of starting an organization or maybe even just a small pet project that you can work on for your entire life, remember that the world around you will not suddenly change magically to give you more time, means or measures to work on it and make it happen. None of anything that is worth doing is so easy that anyone can do it.

The least you can do is stop giving lame excuses for your own laziness, get your butt off that chair, power on your laptop after your return back from work and write some code over a nice warm cup of coffee or hot chocolate.

Stop whining and start shipping.

Keep opening the code editor day after day consistently for years and who knows, you might wake up one day and realize that your dream was not just a boring little dream after all. Of course, there is also a possibility that after years of hard work you might realize that things just did not work out, but then if you don't put in the years of work, there is a guarantee that they won't.  Besides, if you want it bad enough, you don't have an option, do you?

Now stop giving those lame excuses about you being busy and go write the first screen of your pet project, the first draft of the first chapter of your book or your first blog post today.

I wish you good luck.

Finding competent programmers in a hay-stack of incompetent idiots is level-one of hiring that every startup needs to learn.  This post assumes that you have crossed level-one of the hiring game and that your organization, company or startup is hiring decently competent programmers who are getting things done.

Now that you know how to look for competent programmers and hire them, what next?

What if I told you that hiring just hugely competent programmers for your startup is not enough. What if I told you that besides competence, that there is one quality that you need to look out for in your programmers and what if I told you that this quality is hugely important.

You know that three second thin-slicing that Malcolm Gladwell talks about in his famous book Blink. What if you could use that to get deeper insights into characters of the candidates you are interviewing and if there is one quality of a candidate that you could  find out about what should that quality be?

What if I told you that the quality that you should be looking out for is straight-forwardness and integrity.

Now, that should be easy, shouldn't it be? After all you are hiring programmers from the best of backgrounds, the best of colleges and the best of upbringings; how hard can it be to find folks with straight-forwardness and integrity? Turns out, it is harder than most organizations think it is.

Anyone who has taken his high-school class in economics, read freaknomics or super-freaknomics will tell you that human beings are not good or bad. Human beings are just human beings and that they are driven by incentives. The point of hiring straight-forward individuals with a truck load of integrity is not that you hire programmers who are hugely loyal to your organization or sacrifice their careers for your organization.

In fact, if all you do it hire people who are working for the best interest of the organization both you and your organization are seriously screwed. You want incredibly smart, self-centered and selfish programmers. The point of looking out for straight-forwardness and integrity is not to keep seriously kick-ass smart, selfish guys out of your organization.

On the contrary, the point of it, is to hire people who are driven by deeply selfish incentives and who have the spine to be completely open about the incentives that move them. The whole point is to hire people who can take their selfish needs and incentives and align them with the best interest of the organization.

Flashback into the days of Multiplitaxion Inc when the company was about three weeks away from a huge bonus payout to all the employees. It was during this time that someone in the organization had an idea of talking to some of the best programmers we had and doing one-on-one discussions with the programmers. The idea was to get their feedback on what could be improved at the organizational level.

Three of the most competent programmers in the organization, were asked what they thought about the organization during these one-on-one discussions and all three of them reportedly mentioned that they thought the organization was an amazing work culture. That they loved coming to work each day and that they would love to continue being a part of the organization.

Three weeks after collecting the bonus payouts, all three of them quit, within a three days.

Turns out, that all three of these individuals were amazing guys and they were very competent at what they did. They were not bad human beings per-say. Like most kick-ass programmers they were driven by incentives and selfishness which was also fine.

What was hugely disappointing however, was their inability to express their opinions strongly and candidly. The lack of straight forwardness. The lack of openness and the fact that they lacked the courage to talk openly about what they felt was wrong within the organization or how their incentives were not aligning with the organizations incentives.

This lack of openness is what ultimately results in dual personalities where you say a thing and end up doing exactly the opposite thing. The cherry on the cake of this story however were the exit interviews of these programmers where they saw everything wrong the organization, their compensation package and even the work that they were doing.

As a young and budding managers, I watched opinions and personalities change over a period of three days and for lack of a better word, let us just say that it was amusing.

The dual personality problem to be honest, is actually bigger than just a hiring or a retention problem. I have also had the opportunity of working with programmers who would sit in a meeting telling you how amazing your ideas were. Then months after the meeting, you would learn that none of those ideas had been implemented because those same individuals thought that the ideas were shitty and they would not work.

No discussions. No disagreements. No arguments.

They would agree to everything that you had to say and then go out and decide to do just the opposite without even feeling the need to discuss.

Again, not bad human beings. Just individuals who lacked the courage to express their opinions in a bold, candid and civic way.

I have worked with hundreds of programmers during my career and if there is one thing I have learnt it is that human beings cannot be classified as 'good' or 'bad' and that shit happens anytime you are dealing with people.

Having said that, in the long run, as an organization, entrepreneur or as anyone responsible for hiring, you are generally way better off hiring and working with straight-forward, open, candid programmers compared to their confused, lost or scared counterparts.

You are way better off being told 'no' on your face rather than being given a truck load of encrypted messages sprinkled with mitigated speech all over it. A simple open personality is much better than a complicated dual one.

If you are a small startup, looking for some seriously kickass programmers, the next time interview people for your team, remember to look out for openness, a strong spine and a straight forward simple personality in the programmers you hire. Without these qualities, the kick-ass competence hardly matters.

I wish you good luck.

I work in the high-tech business and being a programmer I am often surrounded with more programmers. Now we as programmers, as it turns out, are incredibly amazing and weird people who believe all problems on this planet can be solved by writing code and building a system for solving the problem.

This is probably why, I also get into frequent discussions with young and budding web 2.0 (whatever that is) enthusiasts asking me if I have seen this cool and happening site which will help me promote my blog and help thousands of more people find it.

I on the other hand, seem to consider this blog to be my true-third-place. A quite dimly lighted corner of the web where I can meet the kind of people I wanted to meet and start real online and offline discussions with them. Through my very own personal thoughts on software development, what I am really trying to do is not to change the world, but make a very tiny little dent in my very own personal universe.

I am not trying to sell to an audience of millions. Just trying to find one individual I can connect to and have meaningful conversations with over a mail thread or a cup of coffee. As I have often said, I am happy with this blog as long as it has three readers, me, my mom and you, dear reader.

I am not trying to start a movement here. All I am trying to start through this blog, is small threads of conversations with the kind of people I would like to connect to. Having said that, even if it was a movement that I was trying to start, I am not so sure if trying to sell your ideas to a million users and trying really hard to get a million individuals attached to your cause is the best way to start a movement.

Derek Sivers in his TED talk describes the importance of finding just one true follower or even being that first true follower rather than 'leading' the whole wide world into following a movement. He puts his  point across through a video of a shirtless guy dancing like a manic to start a movement. He explains:

The first follower is an underestimated form of leadership in itself. It takes guts to stand out like that. The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader.

If you are the type, like the shirtless dancing guy, standing alone, remember the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals, so it is clearly about the movement, not you.

But we might have missed the real lesson here. The biggest lesson, if you noticed, did you catch it? Is that leadership is over glorified. That yes, it was the shirtless guy who was first and he will get all the credit but it was really the first follower who transformed the lone nut into a leader.

So as we are told that we should all be leaders,  that would be really ineffective. If you really care about starting a movement, have the courage to follow and show others how to follow and when you find a lone nut doing something great have the guts to be the first one to stand up and join in.

If you haven't clicked on the link to the video yet, I strongly suggest you do.

So the next time you think of starting an organization, starting a product or even something simple as starting a blog, stop worrying about search engine optimization, getting your site up on that popular website or using the quote-unquote 'social media' to publicize what you are doing.

Be the lone shirtless dancer, prepare to get ridiculed and continue to do your remarkable dance consistently.

Chances are that you will stumble upon at-least one genuinely lone nut who will decide to join you as a partner in crime or better still you just might find a few other lonely nuts that you can join and that is the start of a small conversation. Maybe even a tiny little movement.

When that happens you are on your way and you know it from within.

You don't need a system.

You don't need to go shopping for Google Ad-words to increase you site traffic anymore.

I wish you good luck.