Google Vs Microsoft : War of Paradigm

Now a days you can't go to a technology discussion board or  a business news portal without hearing a remark about the ongoing bloodshed between Google and Microsoft . All self proclaimed IT wizard, Market   analyst and blogger are bidding for your attention with there version of what is going on and what is the solution or who will be winning the battle . Everybody support there argument with insider information from trusted source , sources who are close to the both camps .

 

For the record I want to clarify I have no such source and all the views mentioned hereafter are purely a creation of my own brain this is my version of the " Clash Of Titans" and any resemblance to  final outcome will be a fluke or purely coincidental .

 

HERO & UNDERDOG : The actors in the drama

Everybody loves Google ,it's a great site  started by two bright young men from Stanford and for sometime they were everyone's   good guy and nobody other than the early stage investors thought much about there search  technologies . than in an environment where market was slowly recovering from a downturn , IT spending were moving up , Amazon has shown profit for the first time in 5 years   people were looking for investing in tech stocks there was the Google IPO and windfall of $  come to the Google . now when you have   billion of $ of investors money you need to do something with it . you have to take a mission, you have to do something which make you look like a Hero . and in this industry what can be more Heroic than fighting with Microsoft ,and fighting head on . thus a hero was born . for the last generation of "casualties of Microsoft " (read Netscape and Linux ) this   hero was there another chance . they give him there blessing ( along with there browser and there Ex-C.E.O )  .Suddenly Google was in the eye of storm. From a Valley start up It became   a threat to The dominance of Microsoft .

 

With so much of noise it was inevitable that Microsoft would remain oblivious , they assembled there crack team of geeks they codename the project as "Underdog "   and launched a invasion to outset the Hero as the default destination for internet search . and there Microsoft committed there first mistake .  by doing so Microsoft acknowledged Google as the worthy adversary . classic rule of War is never to challenge the enemy on his own turf . you don't have a chance to win , remember USA was not able to beat Vietnam and still not able to find laden . Microsoft missed the point that why Google got such momentum ? and why they were so hard to beat ?   well  one reason that I can think of is that they are not trying  to replace OS ,they are only making it irrelevant . up until now Redmond giant never   faced anyone with the intention of changing the perception of Computing as we know it  . in past  battles where Microsoft won , every one was fighting in the eco system of desktop computing, the turf of   Microsoft but suddenly there is a company who doesn't attack directly and to beat them you have to go to there turf and start from a point of weakness . and that's what makes Bill Gates uneasy .

 

 

 

Define The Battle: Behind Enemy Line

 

Now to there credit Google core team has never said anything on record about the intentions of replacing Microsoft but the expectation is there . Some are born great ,some acquire greatness and on some   greatness is forced . sadly same can be said about martyr also .  in my view this ongoing war is somewhat over hyped and over chronicled and things got snowballed . in all the hype nobody cared to define the battle .

 

Question is what are we fighting  for ? what if we win ?   and What if we loose  ?

 

For  most diehard fans of Google  the company is fighting for beating Microsoft . for me   that argument is bogus you don't go on war just to beat somebody. at least not in business  you go to war with some company because either they encroach your territory   or they are an obstacle in your growth . strangely both of the conditions are not there in this battle , As long as Google wants to make money from selling targeted ads Microsoft has no problem .

 

when some enthusiast tell me that  one day  Google will launch Google office and we will have all our data lying on Google servers so any desk top application like MS Office will be out of market   I can only smile in amusement .well  sometime back same people said that digital office will be paper less and E- Commerce will make dollar bills virtually non existence . I am only 27 and don't think that   any of these things  will happen in my life time . there will always be paper and there always be dollar bills . people will always prefer to store there files on there disk .

 

If you are in Microsoft  you can ask "so what is it we are up against ?" my answered is you are up against your self . Sometime back there was a company named DEC they created Minicomputer and pulled carpet under the feet of IBM and other makers of Mainframes   this was an incremental innovation  it may have caused a loss of few millions to  Mainframe industry but it doesen't disturbed the whole eco system of Mainframe based computing . Then there was a paradigm shift   and world began to shift toward desktop computing suddenly DEC was irrelevant they missed a  paradigm shift which was fatal . Point is as long as you do incremental innovation with in the existing eco system there is always room for few more players . but suddenly someone from outside do a disruptive innovation and whole eco system is swapped . this is how Microsoft made a mark and this is what Google has stumbled upon . the whole point is   that BATTLE IS NOT BETWEEN GOOGLE VS MICROSOFT : IT IS BETWEEN "DESKTOP ECO SYSTEM"  VS "WEB SERVICE ECO SYSTEM"  

 

Ever since the dominance of windows in established from Windows 3.1 to Longhorn , Microsoft is too busy doing incremental innovations . but truth about Hi Tech market is that incremental innovation doesn't create news   you have to be a " Bull in The China Shop" to get the eye balls . sum guys from Mc Kinsey call it " Creative Destruction" and the published a whole book around it . I Think much of it is crap . Bull in china shop is not always good, for the obvious reasons people are not comfortable with a bull around if they are running a china shop. For past some time the same war is being fought although in a less celebrated manner in the market of CRM Software between SAP,Siebel Vs SalesForce.com although Salesforce.com has craved a niche for themselves but still its not likely that they will replace sieble and SAP of world in near foreseeable future .

 

Why ? because  big business of world are not comfortable with the idea of there critical data   stored on a remote server and sitting next to your competitors data everybody wants there data to be within there premises . that is the main bottleneck . Now we should accept the fact that Microsoft is Microsoft today because some very very big business choose to back it and Enduser accept it as a fate of life . I am not a very big fan of Windows or Microsoft .In my view during a paradigm shift when territory is   unexplored ,people accept whatever they are offered with out thinking  much because much of the time they don't have a choice . It happened with Sony In VHS-Beta Format war , With Windows   In the war for desktop OS . and with IE in war with Netscape . it's the backing of big boys which matter more than the substance of your product . we all know that Beta was more technically sound ,Mac was having a better interface and Netscape was a better browser but does that change anything now ?   So the point is when you are out there to conquer the world you can't do as a lone-warrior ,size does matter  and what I do see is that   Google is a company hyped by enthusiast like me  or nerds like my friends in the business of code writing .

 

I can see that there will be no clear winner or looser in this battle . world is too big to accommodate both eco systems. only happy outcome of this war will be that it will perhaps validate   web service as a acceptable way of doing business . but that too will be restricted  to there niches . perhaps in future we will have enthusiast, Mom & POP Stores and   SME's working on web service and Big guys using application or better still hosted application on there own server .

 

Will Microsoft be hit ? YES  in a substantial way.  More than financials or anything this forced war will take  toll on its image of "King Of the technology hill" . There will be lot more stories of Tug Of War for talent and media will have a good time reporting them .

 

Business Sense In Future Tense :The Road Ahead 

 

Now if there is anything which make me very happy in the whole drama is to see how both parties are preparing for the situation when they might have to loose . if you look at the actions of both camps closely you will observe both are trying to spread there risk across both platforms . If   Google    has launched its desktop tool bar then Microsoft's latest offering .Net is having web services in its central theme . no body wants to keep all there eggs in one basket. In edition to that Microsoft can find one more opportunity to come up with a RAD like tool for development of web services . .net frame work is still very very programmer friendly and doesn't appeal much to an average user . I think there   is enough room in market for a tool which can cut cost and complexity out of  web service creation and maintenance the way MS Front Page did for HTML Publishing and RSS did for Blogs .That might be a jump or a discontinuous innovation which Microsoft needs . but truly speaking I don't think this will happen in near foreseeable future, top brass of Microsoft   is too busy with the Antitrust trials and  Managing the Longhorn project . I seriously think that anything with the intention of taking over web service   space will be done only after this saga is over . Essentially that's suit Microsoft the company is known for pulling up good "Catch up Act "  and don't be surprise to read a cover story titled " Empire Strikes Back "  few  years after the current drama is over   or Don't be surprised to see few Antitrust battle .

 

 Its said no  one get a second chance in life to prove themselves specially when the stakes are too high but Eric Schmidt seems to have got it   for the third time  same is true for Gates ,Ballmer & Company . Drama is getting interesting. Enjoy the fight. but hold on to your chairs because Steve might need them to throw around .

--
Prashant Singh

blog:www.knowprashant.blogspot.com
Ladies & Gentelman ! Take My Advice
PullDown Your Pants & Slide on ICE

Agony of Doing Sales

This June I completed my  one year  of working as a salesman for WebPalins Information Systems . strange as it may sound but this year seemed to passed in a blur . as I look back in a reflective mood   and evaluate what I have done in last 12 months I find myself  a bit happy a bit  frustrated and   full of optimism .

 

 I  accomplish one key goal of my professional life . I wanted to sell software   I wanted to be known as a software sales guy , I wanted to prove to my self that I can pick a unknown brand of software and sell it to a demanding customer segment and looking back I can say that I did a good job of it .By luck ,fluke ,intelligence or sheer dog work   I was able to do some thing on that line some thing which was not spectacular but was better than just surviving at job ( I hope my boss will agree with me )    . I got a proof of concept of my core competencies . Now in the coming year I look forward to capitalizing on this and scale up my volume and numbers .

 

This year brought  a lot of insight in my professional and personal life , I was always intrigued by the     hostility and suspicions which is associated with the sales profession. No matter what we say about customer service and relation ship management  and all that bullshit .client always seems  to giver more  weight to  a tech guy and consider whatever I said as ,well    sales bullshit . I tried to understand  why it was like that ? why in spite of  best of   the intentions there was a shade of mistrust ?  why a sales guy is considered guilty till he prove his innocence .

 

Why Sales ? : It's  nobodies  idea of a decent job

.

One year back when I was looking for a  job change and went  through some interviews .almost always the first question of the interviewer used to be   Why you want to  go for a sales job after doing a bachelors degree in computer Science. ?  Some were amazed ,some were sympathetic, some were suspicious whether I will stay in the sales profile for a long time and whether I will jump to the first chance I will get to join software company as a programmer . somehow I convinced all of them   and almost every body  offered me a job in there firm .

 

Working  in a small software firm is always hard and more so if you are the sales guy there . you are commented and advised by everybody who will rather like to die than face the customer . you are dammed if you stay in office and dammed if you move out in field .

 

I used to think why people were so averse to the idea of doing a sales job . was it because of the hard work it demand ,but almost every type of job require to work your ass off . I discussed it with few of my friends . One of them said "well I can never do a sales job because I can't handle rejections and uncertainties which come with it " .

 

 

Rejection & Uncertainty  :  so this was the reason, ........well lets   look at it

 

Well at the first pass it looks like a good reason to stay away from sales. After all who wants to be rejected in life , Be it from Girlfriends or from Customers we hate being rejected . so logic goes that anybody with a respectable and big enough ego can't opt for sales as it demand you to take initiatives and risk the rejection .

Lets take them one by one : Rejection : my take on the fear of rejection is that we all are making our living here and doing the work . We go to our workplace equipped with our knowledge, we have tools ,we have raw inputs and we give some out put. That's the way world works . an accountant goes to world with a knowledge of   taxation and accounting there  he find a table or a ledger with figures he has to tally them. A software engg goes to his workplace with the knowledge of   C,C++ and finds a programmed needs to coded   or debugged ,he writes the code with intention of implementing a particular functionality in software . A sales man goes to work with the knowledge of a person(s) who is his prospect he understand the prospects work , requirements and   knows how he can solve the problem by the product or service he sales .

 

 Now in a typical workday an accountant might not be able to tally figures in a single table or a programmer might not debug a simple code but that is termed as "Natural" because the subject of there action can not speak out but in case of a Sales Guy making cold call over telephone the subject on the other end is a real living breathing human being and he can shout back if you act stupid   . If for a moment we imagine that we have a C /C++ complier who on every syntax error shout back " You fucking cock sucker !!,Can't you type the damn thing with proper attention? " or Ms-Excel saying " You spineless weasel!! it's the god damn Payroll of your colleague  you are messing up "
If we have these type of tools I think Programming labs and Accounting rooms will have more noise   and less work.

 

In a typical software firm  programmer tends to think that sales guy is at best is a necessary evil .These species of professional run from the fact that much of the respect which software programmer have commended in India is because of ignorance . people don't know what you are doing , you earn a lot of money and don't come home drunk and beat your wife .   All this automatically elevate them to a higher plane but if programmer stops for a minute a think that does  a word of appreciation from someone who don't understand what you are doing   means anything ?  how long does it give a artificial security to you when deep inside you know everyday you are less productive than your actual potential because of your stupidity .

 

I know many guys who say "I was debugging all day " and not many who says " I found out 10 bugs and fixed 5 " in the world of programming there   is no objective constant . there is only subjective realities , when they screw up some feature they philosophically declare " Fine ! that's one more and perhaps a better way of   implementing it " . Everything is subjective   to the interpretation of a spineless programmer .

 

They refuse to face the objective realities of outside world and love to live in there air conditioned cocoons . they can afford to do that because someone else is facing and fighting the world on there behalf and that someone is the sales guy . Even in developed and service centric economies like US producer is still revered as the creator of all the value in world and rest of the people including salesman is just passing the   torch . No wonder  we know Bill Gates , Steve Jobs and N.R.Murthy  and no one (until recently )cared about   Steve Ballmer , Sculley and Phaneesh Murthy . they were and they are merely a bonsai in the shadow of banyan trees .

 

Is it just a co-incidence or a nexus ? well your guess is as good as mine . and your guess depends whether you are a salesman or a Programmer .

--
Prashant Singh

blog:www.knowprashant.blogspot.com
Ladies & Gentelman ! Take My Advice
PullDown Your Pants & Slide on ICE

WORKING CLASS HERO

I HAPPENED TO LISTEN THIS GREAT SONG FEW DAYS BACK . ITS TOUCHING . I
JUST WANTED TO SHARE THE LYRICS WITH YOU GUYS TELL ME IF YOU WANT MP3
OF THIS SONG

"WORKING CLASS HERO " BY JHON LENNON


As soon as your born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasents as far as I can see,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
There's room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,
A working class hero is something to be.
A working class hero is something to be.
If you want to be a hero well just follow me,
If you want to be a hero well just follow me.

HAVE A GOOD TIME

The First Comment

so finally some great soul cared to post a comment on my blog .
i feel like loosing my virginity . it was good and i am curious who
is this Mystery man or women ;-) )

Delhi Vs Banglore: A Tale of Two Cities

Now its been almost two months since I have been in The “silicon valley of India “ . On my first visit I was enthralled to visit the city which was hailed as the Mecca of software in India, but guess what?? The city was nothing as I expected. But shock was a pleasant one ,specially after two years of hard time at Delhi .Life (initially) was cool and city was nice to me. After spending close to two months here and after interacting with lot many people who are the part of action of city when I look back and compare the life in Delhi and banglore I find myself in a CATCH-22. So I jot down my experience. I may ruffle a few feathers but here are my versions of a comparative study between two cities I hope you will find it correct ,useful and entertaining

Delhi Vs Banglore w.r.t: Weather Wine Women

Weather: Well Talking of weather it’s a no brainier. Thumps up for the city of banglore weather here is really cool, so much so that even in winter you can roam around in night in a half sleeve shirts. Thanks to the weather, females in banglore can afford to show a lot of skin which otherwise be buried under the tons of clothing in this season. I was surprised to see the innovative, daring and inviting ways of female dressing there. Low rise jeans V-Neck Tees and deep cuts here and there but follow the cuts with your eyes and the trail finishes the moment You think that the Truth and the Holy Grail is Just a inch below. it was like watching the trailer of SWADESH trailer is so interesting that you will dye to see the whole movie . But thanks to m workload I can neither see Swadesh nor complete my quest for the Holy Grail, which was JUST a inch below the cut. Still it was a visual treat and I had a good lot of this treat.

Wine: now I want to make it clear at the outset that I am not a heavy drinker and only take beer as the source of alcohol. But drinking in Banglore is an Experience of lifetime and people here seems to spend there life time in drinking. I have even seen guys in my hotel who take Beer and Tequila shots on Breakfast Table. They seems to follow the golden rule of drinking that “THE BEST WAY TO AVOID THE HANGOVER IS TO KEEP DRINKING “ Unlike Delhi where you have to drink the holy water in SHABBY “AHHATAA” provided by government, in banglore you can have beer just about everywhere “ JHIDHAR NAZAR GAYEE UDHAR SUROOR HEE SUROOR HAI , MERA DIL MACHAL GAYA TOU MERA KYA KUSOOR HAI “ . Female too are equally participating in this Smoking is In Thing here and I have observed that girls sucks the cigarette so hard as if sucking cigarette is precursor to sucking something else.


Women: Now women in Banglore are the most interesting aspect of the city. In just two month I came across three instants of Live in relationships. For beginners in “live-in “relationship” you live with the female without getting married. In more unpolished way of explaining you can say “You Can Get Fresh Milk Without Tying A Cow”. I frequently visited a café named Java City it played jazz music and oldies from Elvis and other. It was great .I was told that café is famous for the incidents of One nightstands on tool free basis. But even after 6-7 visits nobody zeroed in onto me, but something was really going on there. Well better luck next time. But Jokes apart I find female in the city more independent, pragmatic and modest with comparison to Delhi. Best part of The females here was that unlike Delhi they were not any Call Center working mindless ostentatious punk, talking in some suede American accent, Here girls can talk and they can talk intelligently. Some of the female I talked with were more beautiful between the ears than between the legs. But either way they were inaccessible to me, again courtesy my workload. Better Luck Next Time Here too.

That was a small analysis on the basis of WWW soon I will post another analysis on Carrier Compensation n Community (CCC) in banglore.

Blog and The Traditional News Medias

Hi all
since past few days i was refelecting on something . something which at the first glance looks very common place and mundane but as i gave it a serious analysis it was something that shocked me . it was something about internet and the way we access news and form opinion .
for some of you it might be very very simplistic but it was something of a discovery for me so iwould like to share it with you.

The fact that internet has revolutionized the world is an old story , the fact that it has redefined the face of business world and changed the rule of game too doesn’t gives a kick. These are big games but how does it effect some thing more fundamental Our WorldView our opinion . Inspite of Internet and all the source of info some COWBOY from texas was able to launch a war on some gulf nation for some nonexistent W.M.D and get away with it and more tragic is the fact that people and a large number of them believe that cowboy was not fighting for oil. Truth seems to be different from NEWS.

we were conditioned to think what we were told to think, by our teachers, By our parents ,by our church and in modern days by news channels ,No matter what we love to believe , no matter which news paper or news channel we subscribe to our knowledge of world was second hand we always learned the story not as what it happened but as what it appeared to the journalist . Journalists were in turn told by their bosses to see what was favorable to their political/corporate/ terrorist godfathers. We never crosschecked we never had a mean to cross check. It is an old axiom that people only question those things which are within there reach nobody wants to go an extra mile in search of truth . J.B.Shaw once said “If a news paper says there is a baby in Texas who has a head of an pig and and body of an human people will believe it but put an sign board in your neighborhood park with “WET PAINT” written over it and people will go to it and check whether it is really wet or not . field of vision seems to be controlling extent of enquiry “??”

The grip of media is so tight and so invisible on our mind and our thinking that sometime we live in a sort of matrix . I wonder this is what orwell meant when he was writing 1984 is the media and its nexus is some sort of BIG BROTHER.

You will be surprised to know that how things looks different once you get it from two different sources (Two Different channels or newspapers) I found myself fortunate to spend my formative years in Sriganganagar a small city near India –Pakistan long before cable television we enjoyed the luxury of two channel Our very own doordarshan and PTV of Pakistan . Initially I used to be amused by listening the two entirely different interpretations of same events in these channel some thing as trivial as a cricket commentary give two different story depending which side of the crowd you want to please or FOOL. This becomes more painful when you see a news report on Kashmir, two channel supporting two views both backed by facts and live transmission .you don’t know what to believe and what not to believe .

But some thing is fundamentally flawed here aren’t we supposed to hear what happened there at the place of event and decide what to think on our own and decide what to back or what to oppose by best of our OWN knowledge but subconsciously we are outsourcing this to media . Every Sunday morning I pickup my newspaper and read what is “swaminomics’s “ stand on latest economic issue and for past 2 year, more often than not it was used to be my stand. I outsourced my opinion. I outsourced my judgment I know people like me are plenty and we are fool enough to consider our self smarter than the villager who believe in something just because that is what told to him by XYZ. But hey stop and think for a while is there any basic different in him and us? Answer is YES his ignorance was forced our ignorance is chosen. we asked for it .
News channel and media are there to report the news not create or explain the news.

That brings us to the Question of how to search for the real story not the modified cooked up version oneway of doing it is to check up internet based news blogs its basically very easy to read and often a first hand account of people who were there at the time of any event . even though these blogs might be a bit raw and unstructured but they are refreshingly honest and candid . people on blog are not bound by any protocols or something to stop them from speaking there mind . one these platform only you can listen to other sides of story and understand other persons view .


when you are exposed to Varity of view on some topic and nobody is there to tell you what to think than only you think and form an opinion and that is your opinion .

for example earlier I used to believe that world is unnecessarily bad for Israel ,that they face hostility of world without doing anything to deserve it . I believed it because I read it in novels, watched it in movies and other source of knowledge were are sympathetic toward Israel and a bit hostile toward muslim people fighting them . but through blogs only I came to know that Israel has also commited it’s share of atrocities on muslims and it has no legal or historical claim on the land of Palestine and Gaza strip

now my views are more fact based and I have a less radical stand on this issue . but this is not important what is important is the fact that the view is my own .

so go on read blogs discover new facts and when you find something interesting don’t forget to tell me .specially if it is about some new tricks to get date or soem new way to do sex
.
We will talk about the impact of internet on commerce in next posting c u than

WHY PPL WORK SO HARD

Hi all !!!!!!!!!!!
how are u guys doing ???
its been a long time since i posted anything here . honestly i was a bit busy and had nothing spl to write about . but today i got something i would like all of you to read . more or less it apply to all of us .

well to start with i always had this "thing " about late workers the creatures who stay in office for long . as long as you pay your rent on time and you are not some "open source rebel" who get kick out of coding and think solution of all earthly and spiritual problem is to write more more and still more of techno gibbrish i don't c why any sane person would put insane hour to his work .

Don't give a crap argument of being in love with there jobs they were not in love with what they are doing because the change jobs every quarter

so i conducted an extensive research and come up with several possible reasons for this. It is not always true nor always appliciable ( To make it easy for my geek friends :its heuristic not determinstic) here is my theory

# 1 one can understand this as long as you are bachlore and no one is waiting for you at your palce but i know some morons who doesent change there ways even after tying the knot .
must be very hard for there wives.

#2 some of this morons were working perhapse bcoz they were not at peace with them self and out of office you are (mostly) in your own company .

#3 some of them were working bcoz there sex lives were a comlete mess and they get a kind of sexual orgasm by crassing the lines of mouse or thumping keyboard .

well guys i had milion such theory . i was curious to know there line of thinking (if any )than i got a insight (YA guys trust me , INSIGHT ) from a speech from NRAYANA MURTHY . but i would like all of you to provide me your view on it . so that we can construct the whole picture .

This probably give me matter for my next book .

(Don't woory i will mention your name in Acknowledgement )

++++++++++++++++++so read on and do reply ++++++++++++++++

This is an extract from Mr.Narayana Murthy's speech during a Menor session :

I know people who work 12 hours a day, six days a week, or more. Some people do so because of a work emergency where the long hours are only temporary. Other people I know have put in these hours for years. Idon't know if they are working all these hours, but I do know they are in the office this long. Others put in long office hours because they are addicted to the workplace.

Whatever the reason for putting in overtime, working long hours over the long term is harmful to the person and to the organization.

There are things managers can do to change this for everyone's benefit. Being in the office long hours, over long periods of time, makes way for potential errors. My colleagues who are in the office long hours frequently make mistakes caused by fatigue. Correcting these mistakes requires their time as well as the time and energy of others. I have seen people work Tuesday through Friday to correct mistakes made after 5 PM on Monday. Another problem is that people who are in the office long hours are not pleasant company. They often complain about other people (who aren\'t working as hard); they are irritable, or cranky, or even angry. Other people avoid them. Such behaviour poses problems, especially in an area like IT, where work goes much better when people work together instead of avoiding one another.

As managers, there are things we can do to help people leave the office. First and foremost is to set the example and go home ourselves. I work with a manager who chides people for working long hours.

His words quickly lose their meaning when he sends these chiding group e-mails with a time-stamp of 2 AM, Sunday.

second is to encourage people to put some balance in their lives. For instance, here is a guideline I find helpful:

1 wake up, eat a good breakfast, and go to work.

2 Work hard and smart for eight or nine hours.

3 Go home.

4 Read the comics, watch a funny movie, dig in the dirt, play with your kids, etc.

5 Eat well and sleep well.

This is called recreating. Doing steps 1, 3, 4, and 5 enable step 2.

Working regular hours and recreating daily are simple concepts. They are hard for some of us because that requires personal change. They are possible since we all have the power to choose to do them.
In considering the issue of overtime, I am reminded of my oldest son when he was a toddler. If people were visiting the apartment, he would not fall asleep no matter how long the visit, and no matter what time of day it was. He would fight off sleep until the visitors left. It was as if he was afraid that he would miss something. Once our visitors left, he would go to sleep. By this time, however, he was over tired and would scream through half the night with nightmares. He, my wife, and I, all paid the price for his fear of missing out.

Perhaps some people put in such long hours because they don't want to miss anything when they leave the office. The trouble with this is that events will never stop happening. That is life-things happen 24 hours aday.

Allowing for little rest is not ultimately practical. So, take a nap. Things will happen while you're asleep, but you will have the energy to catch up when you wake.

Narayana MurthyInfosys-B'lore