I'm sitting smack across the table as Jane, a very talented young and budding programmer, tells me her side of the story. For the last three months she has been a part of the product team and she has been fixing bugs which involve changing the captions of labels on screen.

I cringe.

There are more than one things in this discussion that worry me. The first is that her talents and her abilities are getting utterly wasted in the organization. Secondly, it also means that more sooner than later she would be sick of working and she would start looking for a change. All of this worries me as I listen to her, but what worries me the most is the thought that her team lead is an Alpha-Geek who is refusing to breed more Alpha-Geeks.

And he is violating the pact.

Yes, that pact.

He is solving the most complicated, challenging and some of the most interesting problems himself.

He is not, 'teaching the young'.

Every once in a while, I come across super-alpha-geeks, sometimes even good ones, who prefer to solve the hardest of the problems themselves, instead of letting others in their team solve it and helping them with the problems. Strike a conversation with them and most of them will offer you arguments on the lines of:

1. It's easier to do things myself than to explain and delegate things to someone else.
2. Most programmers in my team are not good enough.
3. I took it up myself because it was critical for the success of the project.

Hidden behind the layers of excuses, lie the bitter facts. The real reason why most alpha-geeks who like to control the most-critical items in the project and do these themselves, can be one or more of the following:

1. The Alpha-Geek has serious insecurity issues and feels threatened by people in his team.
2. The Alpha-Geek thinks of his team as a bunch of incompetent, inefficient idiots who are either not talented enough, fast enough or both.
3. The Alpha-Geek is a control freak and wants total control over the project.

The next time you see the scrum back-log and you start picking up the most complicated items, question yourself, if you are just acting like a selfish insecure jerk or are you helping other programmers transform themselves into alpha-geeks and become critical members in the team.

Give them the most complicated, difficult and challenging items, help them expand their zone of comfort slowly and help them turn into true alpha-geeks over time, because that is what true alpha-geeks do. They breed more alpha-geeks.

I wish you good luck.

At one of our clients office, who for the purposes of this post shall be called Multiplitaxion Inc we have what I call a decision-execution-crisis.

You know, those meetings where really smart people who have done really big things in life and have achieved really serious sounding designations on their business cards carefully position their asses on really soft chair and talk about really sensitive topics like the future of the organization, the future of the product, the official-name of the product, the official editions of the product and the features the free edition of the product would contain.

Did you notice the use of the word 'talk about' and the absence of the term 'decide' or 'act' in the above paragraph. The use of the word 'talk' was intentional, because while a lot of talking happens in these meetings there is often very little decision that ultimately gets taken and even lesser real work happens on those decisions.

It's not about what your manager says in these meetings that matters. It is how he acts after a couple of these meetings that matters the most. Does he get stuff done or does he act all tied and helpless.

Michael Lopp describes his practice rather articulately in his book Managing Humans. He explains:   

When the new VP showed up for his first day at the startup, he was wearing a Members Only jacket. Sky blue. I didn’t know they still made these throwbacks to the '80s. A jacket that lived under the tagline, “When you put it on, something happens.”

I’d given the VP a thumbs up during the button-up and tie phase of the interview, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Three months in, we had a problem. Members Only was doing a phenomenal job of discussing and dissecting the problems facing engineering. We’d leave meetings fresh with new ideas and promises of improvements, but then nothing would happen. OK, so follow-up meeting. WOW! He gets it. I’m fired up again. Let’s roll. Umm, two more weeks and nothing is happening here.

Michael in the same book also describes the problem with most managers who conduct these meetings and love the idea of talking strategy, ultimately getting nothing done. He adds:

The act of delegation is a slippery slope for managers. Yes, you want to figure out how not to be a bottleneck in your organization and, yes, you want to figure out how to scale, but you also want to continue to get your hands dirty.

Members Only's problem was he believed his job was purely strategic. Think big thoughts; delegate the results of those thoughts to the minions. He was a pure delegator and he’d forgotten how to do real work.

Pure delegators are slowly becoming irrelevant to their organizations. The folks who work for pure delegators don’t rely on them for their work because they know they can’t depend on them for action.

This slowly pushes your manager out of the loop and, consequently, his information about what is going on in his organization becomes stale. Then, the CEO walks into your boss’s office and asks, “How’s it going?” The third time your boss gives the same generic answer, the CEO goes to you and asks the same question. When you respond with, “Well, we’re fucked,” the CEO has an entire other conversation with your manager.

Real work is visible action managers take to support their particular vision for their organization. The question you need to answer for your manager is simple: does he do what he says he’s going to do? Does he make something happen?

And its not just about strategic changes or the steering the organization or the product through its future path. I am talking simple decisions here.

How long does it take your organization to get you a whiteboard in a meeting room when you tell them that you guys desperately need one. How long does it take your organization to fix network patch chords in your meeting rooms. How long does it take for your organization to reduce your meeting count when you tell them you are sick of attending them and want to focus on work for sometime.

Measure your manager's and your organization's ability to take decisions and then act on those decisions. If they are able to take decisions and act on them, you will be just fine, even if those decisions aren't correct or even if they are failing and learning at each step.

On the other hand, if nothing ever gets decided and nothing ever gets done at your organization, maybe its time to get your act together, figure out why your organization cannot act and do something about it. Procrastinating with your organization will not get you anywhere in the long run.

As they say, You can Change Your Organization or Change Your Organization.

Either ways, I wish you good luck.

I find myself seated smack across the table with Fred looking at me like I just performed the gravest of offence in his professional life. I tell him the awesome news of his promotion and a handsome thirty-percent hike. He eyes me like a criminal.

Turns out, he was expecting more.

He tells me that he was aiming for a higher hike.

Ok. Breathe. I tell myself.

I thought this was good news. I thought his face would light up. I thought... I am confused by the time the discussion ends.

I feel shitty. Really shitty. Really, really shitty.

During my career of breaking appraisal results to folks and telling them how their year was I have worked with three kinds of programmers, or should I say, human beings.

The first is the kind of have very little expectations and if they get what they deserve you can see their faces light up. These guys are happy-human-beings. They know their net-worth, they know the perils of over-pricing themselves and they have no desire to take home more than what they really know they deserve.

The second kind is the group of folks who just don't give a shit. Ok, maybe that's not a very good way to describe this group. Maybe they do give a shit. Just a little bit. But these are folks who are motivated by the process of building stuff and for them an appraisal meeting by itself is an awkward moment.

They would rather you just print their letters and send them their revised salary letters by post so that they can ignore the letters like their telephone bills and find out their new figure when the amount lands up in their bank account. Maybe they would like to just glance at their appraisal letters and if they are not utterly insulting or disappointing they would just keep them aside and move on with their lives.

Put simply, For this kind of people, appraisal discussions are not a life changing moment.

This is the kind that usually draws the highest raises in the organization. Raises, power and promotions are funny things. They tend to usually go to he people who have very little or no craving for them.

Even though the first two kinds are insanely interesting to study this post is not about the first two kind. This is a post about Fred. The third kind. One which lives in the constant state of craving and discomfort. This breed will tend to bitch, whine and moan about their salaries, what the organization gives them, what they give to the organization and what the organization aught to give them.

If you are leading them they will remind you a dozen times a year that they are grossly underpaid and they will decide to stick with the organization anyhow.

This is the group that typically hops organization for a ten-percent hike every time they get a better opportunity. The group that powers the infinite loop of failure.

We start getting into an awkward dance here. Fred and I. Fred tells me he is underpaid, I show him industry wide pay scales of people with similar experience and expertise. He refuses to believe the research data. Fred, as it turns out, loves to nurture the idea that he is grossly underpaid and he seems to love continuing  to work for the organization in a mode of utter discontent.

If you are dealing with Fred, here is a word of advice that comes after coming across quite a few Freds in my career: you cannot make them happy. So don't even try. As an organization, get them a fair deal and everything that they deserve and move on.

You can attend a dozen management classes on how to keep your employees happy, but the sorry fact of life is that you are always going to hire a couple of people who you cannot please irrespective of what you do for them.

Do what you think is fair and then draw a line. Stop feeling bad. Stop getting confused and stop spending hours wondering how you can please Fred, because it is pointless. And assuming that even if you were able to please Fred, chances are you would get his resignation the day he gets a ten percent hike. You are way better off sticking to the age old saying, you cannot please everyone. Focus on the other two kinds instead and do all you can to keep them happy.

That way, you can at least have a team where most folks are happy and productive.

I wish you good luck.

We are here for you Twenty-Four-Seven.

Today, lets dive into the depths of time and bring from days that have rolled behind, a classic tale of support done the Indian-way. Before you read any further and start sending me flame mails about the generalization of the word 'Indian' here, trust me, I know exceptions do exist.

I also know that generalizing anything by a country is just about the biggest stereotype of the software development world that you should avoid at all cost, but humor me. I have a point to make and the point is not to ridicule or insult Indians in any way. I happen to be an Indian and I am actually fairly proud to be one. But then, having said that, India as a country and Indians as a group are often totally capable of doing seriously shitty things.

So, as I was saying, lets dive into the depths of time and bring back from the days that have rolled behind, a classic tale of support done the Indian way.

In one of my last work trips somewhere between New York and Chicago, after making us wait inside the plane for about an hour because they lost the stair-case that was supposed to get us down, making me miss my connecting flight and making me quite literally run for the next flight United Airlines manages to put a cherry on the cake of surprises by loosing my luggage.

After a few frustrating experiences with the ground staff who tell me that the bags would show up a day later at my hotel, I decide to make a move, get to the hotel and get on with my life. Three days later, however, I find myself trying to look up my luggage using the baggage tag on the United website which tells me that my luggage cannot be located.

Then, smack out of nowhere, I find myself doing something that I have a love hate relationship with --- I am calling the Support Line. Now, as I already said, I have a love hate relationship with support lines. Love because support lines often tend to be sofa king (to be read really fast, repeatedly) funny that they give me food for thought and posts like this one. Hate because they are so funny, that after a while they stop being funny.

As far as the United support line is concerned this is how it goes. The system routes me through series of automated questions. Then after routing me through a hugely long automated process which also confirms that my luggage 'cannot be located' it lets me talk to a customer care executive. Seven minutes of wait follows after which someone answers the call.

Voice On The Support Line: Good Evening Sir, This is United Airlines. My name is Fred (I could have used the real name, but then Fred sounds so much more fun in this situation), How can I assist you today?

The voice is Indian. Clearly. Plainly. Indian. And the fact that this gentle-man uses an American name to identify himself, tells me exactly what to expect next.

Me: My luggage seems to have gone missing at the O'Hare airport. The ground staff told me that they would ship it to my hotel in about the day and It's been three days since then. I am just calling to find out if you guys know when I would be getting my baggage shipped to my hotel because I am leaving this place and moving on to a new location in the next couple of days.

Fred: I am sorry for the inconvenience sir but we are here to help you Twenty-Four-Seven.

Long silence. Awkward moment.

Me: Do you need my baggage tag number?

Fred: Yes sir. Can you please provide your baggage tag number?

I give out the number. Another long pause follows. After which he tells me that he is going to put me on hold and I sit there listening to music for about three minutes. Then the voice cracks back.

Fred: I am sorry for making you wait Sir. I am also sorry for the inconvenience sir but the system is showing that your luggage cannot be located at this time.

Me: I know that. I saw that on the website and heard that on the automated system and both of them said I should talk to a customer care executive.

Fred: Sure sir. We will have updated information on your baggage soon. I apologize for the inconvenience but we are here to help you twenty-four-seven. You can call us anytime.

Me: How soon would you have updated information on my luggage?

By now I am having a seriously hard time hearing anything other than, Fred is really sorry for the inconvenience caused and that he is here to help me twenty-four-seven. But then, I don't want him to be there twenty-four-seven. All I want is my baggage back. I don't give a rat's ass if they work for three hours a day or twenty four.

We do this insane dance for long time where he assures me that he is really sorry about the inconvenience caused, that he is going to get me a hundred dollar discount on my next flight and that I can call the support center anytime. He then reminds me for, I don't know how many'th time, that they are there twenty-four-by-seven and that I can call them anytime.

Three days later the baggage arrives at my hotel and United conveniently just forgets the promise of the hundred dollar discount on my next flight. I receive no emails, as Fred had promised, no discount coupons. Nothing.

It's like the episode never happened.

We Cannot Help You Unless You Pay More.

Life moves on. I get back to work and this incident of Fred and his Indian support center being online twenty-four-by-seven for me is long forgotten. Till the time I see another example of support done in a slightly different way.

Recently, one of my posts hits the top five post related to programming on Reddit and I get a throng of people visiting this website. The new unique-visitor-count hits almost about fifty-one-users-a-minute, with old users continuing to read and click links on this blog.

This is when the website starts crumbling down under the load of heavy unexpected traffic. After about five hours of non-stop-traffic growing at an uncontrolled rate people start complaining about getting service unavailable errors. I decide to call the support line of my service provider.

Now, before I describe how the call goes, here is a little bit of history of how these guys transformed their support department. These are guys who were once notoriously famous for bad customer support and then one fine day, magic happened. They changed.

They were now, suddenly, providing support that started positively surprising me and the rest of their customers in all the right ways. No-one could really figure out what they had done but something had changed for better.

There were no solid announcements per-say but I suddenly started getting great responses in my support emails and my problems were getting resolved at the blink of an eye. I never had to call them so far, but with this issue it was better to call, than to email and wait for a response.

So, as I was saying, I decide to call up the customer support.

With literally two choices on the automated system, one that asks what I am calling for and other that asks me to press a number to talk to a customer support executive, in less than three minutes I am talking to a real human being,  who by the way, helps me locate the customer ID that he needs and then tells me, that I am facing service-unavailable issue on my website, without me having to describe the issue in detail to him.

Then he wants to know if this traffic was expected. He puts me on hold for less than a minute and comes back informing me that even though I am just using one percent of my bandwidth I have crossed my concurrent connection limit and that I would have to pay a little bit more to fix this issue. He then adds confidently that without upgrading the plan there is nothing he can do to fix the issue. Unless I chose to pay more, he cannot help me.

He is direct. Confident. Focused on my problem and is providing me the one single solution he has with a choice: take it or leave it.

I take it.

He initiates the payment right away and the service unavailable issue is sort-of-gone in less than about half hour.

While I should been utterly annoyed with my service provider and the fact that they never documented the number of concurrent connections my site was allowed to have anywhere, I actually end up liking the way the guy at the support handled the situation.

He is not nice to me, he is not sorry for the inconvenience cause, he makes me pay more.

But then, he understands my problem and fixes it while my dear Fred at United, who is there for me twenty-four-by-seven does not get shit done.

And The Point Of This Long Tirade Is...

That support is an art which requires people who know what they are doing. That hiring random Indian students, paying them their pocket money and giving them a bunch of carefully scripted cue-cards or a stupid set of Frequently Asked Questions does not equal good support.

Sometimes, we really do not give a shit if you are there twenty-four-by-seven.

All we give a shit about is our problem and how quickly you can help us fix it.

So the next time you think of publishing your support email, see if you can get the best of your folks in that mailing list and allow them to answer support emails if they want to. The next time you think of building a support department, see to it that you hire the guys who are just as good as your developers or the rest of your organization.

Support is not something you outsource and forget.

Because if you do, people will eventually just stop calling.

And then, they just might move on to companies who understand their problems and do not hire a bunch of random college students to tell you how sorry they are about the inconvenience caused.

Support, is serious business. Give it the time, money and attention it deserves.

I wish you good luck.

David Heinemeier Hansson in his talk at Startup School describes the typical product cycle and the day dream of making billions and getting bought over by venture capitalist that most young and budding entrepreneurs have using a simple slide:

During the presentation, David's point is focused on a single topic. One way to make money is to hope for a lot of magic in step two and expect that a venture capitalist or a Google will buy you out. David describes the other, more practical, sane and logical way using a simple slide:

If you have not clicked the link to the video yet, you should.

David explains the idea of pricing your product or charging for your online service using simple, direct and wise advice for young and budding entrepreneurs. He explains:  

The really cool thing about all of this is that you don't need to be a fu@#king genius to make it work. Its not rocket surgery. It really is a simple three step idea.

You have a great application. You ask money for it. If people like it, they will pay and you profit.

But here is a kicker. Just because you slap a price on something does not mean you will have a successful business

37Signals has their own offering of free products for the end consumer but the focus of this video, is on their paid versions and how they make money online. As someone who has observed a truck load of software products getting priced, if there is one thing that I have learnt about pricing it is that pricing is just like any other phase of building great software.

Like any other aspect of software development, when it comes to pricing your product, you will fail too. The earlier and more often you fail the better off you are, as long as you do not keep making the same mistakes all over again.

Should you give out your product for free and seek additional business models to make money? Should you use free as a means to keep in touch with potential customers and convert them to paid customers over time? Is free your way to wipe your competition out of market? Are your products too highly priced? Are they priced too low?

You will never find out until you go out there and experiment with pricing. Lose a few customers because you are too highly priced. Get a few customers at a very low price. Give parts of your application for free. Explore other models of making money by giving your entire product out for free.

The beauty of online products and services is that you are always free to come back and fix your mistakes. Long story short, making mistakes is much better than procrastination and analysis paralysis.

Seriously, you really don't have to be a fu@#king genius to make it work.

Now go out there, make a few real product pricing mistakes and then learn from them.

I wish you good luck.

At TEDxCalcutta, we have been working hard on getting the videos edited and getting them live as quickly as possible. Today we have gone ahead and released the absolutely interesting and inspiring talk by Ashoke Viswanathan.

This talk is online and can be viewed from the TEDxCalcutta website.

I really like this talk primarily because it touches the intricacies of creative fields and nudges young minds to move away from safety. Something I have been a very old proponent of.

Join Ashoke Viswanathan as he takes you through anecdotes or stories, then connects the dots gently nudging you to take chances, try innovative ways of doing things and look beyond your profession into other areas of life.

Why is television truly the idiot box? Why aren't more people in the movie making industry taking chances to build something genuinely innovative and inspiring? Why are you in trouble if you happen to be a part of a creative field? 

This and much more in a very interesting eighteen minute TEDxCalcutta talk by Ashok Viswanathan.

Now go watch the video online.

Stay tuned for more videos, news and announcements on TEDxCalcutta.

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.