A driver’s job is taking you to your destination and back. I am surprise some of my colleagues feel sorry for the driver doing their job. The traffic is insane in Bangalore, so we have drivers to drive us around the town. The driver will come to pick us up in the morning, take us to the office. After work, the driver will take us to the restaurant, then take us back to the guest house after dinner. When we finish our meal, we will call the driver’s cell phone and get him ready to pick us up. Some of my colleagues feel sorry for the drivers that they have to wait outside with the car while we eat. I really don’t understand why they feel sorry for the drivers. How tough can it be waiting relaxingly in the parking lot. While they are waiting, they can take a nap, read newspaper or chat with other waiting drivers. Sometimes they even get free meal from restaurant. Why would you will feel sorry for the driver for simply doing his job? Being a driver is not a bad job in Indian after all. I rather feel sorry for those of us who got sent over here to suffer.
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Dinner plan
I am the unofficial Bangalore food guide. Whenever I am in town, I will take care of dinner arrangement for everyone staying in the guest house. It does not take much time, but the return is great. I only have to spent 5 minutes every day to pick the restaurant, make the reservation, print direction and sent out an email invite people to join me for dinner. People are glad that some one is take care of the dinner arrangement, they can hop into the car and guarantee a nice meal. I always pick the expensive restaurants, so that it can never go wrong. It’s a fun to have some colleagues to chat and chill out with a few drinks. It is far better than the alternative. If no one organize dinner, we may end up eating at Indian restaurants around the guest house every night.
Somehow, some colleagues choose to cook for themselves in the guest house instead of joining us. I don’t quite understand why don’t they come with us. Granted, the restaurants are far away, it takes time to stuck in traffic. However, buying glocery, washing and cooking also takes time. Having a nice dinner doesn’t take much time than cooking. Money is not a concern, the food bill is paid by the companies anyways. There is no reason to go cheap on food by making your own dinner. I just can’t imagine someone can have sausage and egg every day instead of fine dinner. One theory why they stay home for dinner is they feel guilt spending company’s money. I tried to enlighten them with the correct value of money. The company outsource to India to cut cost, so we are just helping the company utilize some of saving by having nice dinner in India.
Back to India
I am back in India for two weeks. I am not very excited, but work is work. This time I am taking dragon air and make the transfer in Hong Kong. The new 777 from Air Canada is pretty comfortable, the seat is wider and it has power sockets. I can keep my laptop charged and use it for the whole trip. The wait for transfer is 4 hours, so my dad came to the airport and I went outside of the restrict area to have dinner with him. On my flight from Hong Kong to Banagalore, I think I am the only Chinese on the plane, except the air hostress. I can’t believe a flight flying out of HK, running by a HK airline has no Chinese passenagers.
I touch down on the new Bangalore airport. It is much better than the old airport. From afar, it is pretty up to world wide standard. Although things still a bit shady when you look closer. Like the roof is not properly sealed, the door is kinda flimsy. There are no hawker trying carry your luggage and charge you a ridiculous fee. The custom has more counters, compare to only 2 counters in the old airport. No more tuck-tuck waiting outside trying to fish passengers Any how, it is still quite impressive. The new airport is far away from the city, so there a nice highway going into town. The highway is lit and has line on the ground. Other than occasional speed bump in the middle of no where and stop signs that everyone ignores, it is on par with newly developed countries like Taiwan or Korea. As I was praising the construction and though Indian has finally start getting better, the highway just ends. Yes, the highway ends abruptly and become a grave road right before entering the city. The airport highway is not connecting to any major road in the city, it just ends on the outer skirt of the city that goes no where. Ok, India is still India. It’s still not quite there yet.
India round 2
This year I really travel a lot. I went back to HK last Christmas, then I went to India twice in Spring. I just come back from my honey in Rome and Mediterranean, now I am preparing to go to India again. I have been kinda expecting to go back to India. Thing is not going so well with the project. My Indian guys are not as productivity as we want them to be. It is just a matter of time before I have to go back and shake thing up. The boss has just announced a delay, so it is probably the time to go back and get the Indian guys in shape. Moreover, there are quite a few new hire since I came back, it is always good to know the face of your subordinate.
India still sucks. No one is really looking forward to go there. Everyone come back with their version of horror stories. On the bright side, I only have to go there for 2 weeks. I had experienced the culture shock, so I can be productive once I get there and overcome the jet lag. The boss promised me extra bonus last time, but the extra bonus I got is less than my dinner bill in India, so there ain’t much incentive going to India. I have seen more than enough India from my last trip. I had already used my Indian quota for the next 10 years. I am not really excited going there this time. Whatever have to get done has to get done. I have to go to India or my work won’t get done. The only positive thing about this trip is that I can stop over Hong Kong on my way back for a weekend to visit my grandma.
Interviews
I have been doing lots of interviews recently. My project is half way and it is very behind in the schedule. How do we get into this mess in the first place? As usual it is bad management decision. Somehow we underestimate the complexity of the chip and largely overestimate the productivity of Indian contractors. The only way to stop the project from slipping further is adding more resource. When we first move our operation to Indian, one of the promised advantage is we will be able to get as many engineers as we need. Never believe any sales pitch, especially the sales pitch of Indian contracting firms. Wipro basically runs out of qualified engineers that meets our requirement. Indian contractors is the casue of the mess, it would be repeating the same mistake to hire more of them. This time we are hiring N. America contractors.
The project is in pretty bad shape, so we are approved to hire 10 engineers. To fill those positions, we have to do lots of interviews. I guess my boss is too busy to interview all of them, so I am helping him to interview the candidates. I did mostly phone interviews since most of the candidates are from the East Coast. I even have an interview with someone from Israel. I kinda act like the first line of defense, screening the qualification of the interviewees before pasting them to my boss for 2nd round interview. My role is to preform technical interview, trying to determine whether the guy knows enough to be productive. Since I am doing phone interview, I can’t ask very detail technical question because it may require some writing and drawing. I found asking what challenges the candidate had in his previous project is very effectively in judging his level of expertise. The more experience the person has, the challenge is usually more complicate. Sitting in the other side of the table gives me new insights. The questions asked by the Interviewer always have a certain purpose. A successful interviewee should look beyond the factual question and try to give answer in a way that satisfies what the interviewer is looking for.