Sunday, August 19, 2007

Two interesting blogs

I added to interesting posts (atleast I think they are) in my company blog.

One is on the characteristics of a Web 2.0 site

The other is on Some interesting aspects of building a R&D lab

Read them if you have time.

Saturday, August 4, 2007

Is there a difference between a business person and an entrepreneur?

This is an interesting question I keep asking myself?

Is every business or a self-employed person an entrepreneur? Most people seem to think so. Somewhere, I am not comfortable with the idea.

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Higher Education in India

I am facing a very interesting problem while recruiting freshers in our companies. We find either excellent students (the top 5% types) or bad students. There are no above average students anywhere in the horoizon.

I asked at least 25 students (all with Engineering/MCA) the following question:

If A can complete a job in 20 days and B in 10 days, how many days will they take if they work together.

Most thought it was a trick question!

A few were upset because it was not a software question :-(

None answered it correctly so far (most popular was finding the average by the way. My favorite was a M.B.A who said it all depended on how they synched with each other! Can't say he was wrong)

May be I am absolutely unlucky. I hope so.

But, what is happening is that the excellent students are simply beyond the reach of growing companies as the MNCs are a lot more attractive. The bad ones are willing to work without salary also but then it may be more trouble than gain.

I mean, is n't a system supposed to produce many average students and a few exceptions either ways. That will let us have decent quality all over and at an affordable price and effort.

I guess somewhere the issue boils down to the fact that the system is actually not doing anything! Students are what they are in spite of the system and not because of it.

Exceptionals and bad students remain as they are. Average students are becoming bad because of no effort from the system to push them upwards.

The worst thing is that this seems to be a visious circle. A poor quality university output is leading to poor quality teachers and then poorer quality output.

Being the optimist that I am, I believe that the solution can't be very difficult. Let me think over a bit before revealing.

Harry Potter Deathly Hallows completed

I finished it the day it was released. Just did not understand one concept though. How on earth Dumbledore defeated Gellert when the later had elder wand?

The only theory that I could form was that the elder wand does not support the wizard unless he truly overpowers the previous owner. That is he can still do good bit of magic but not extraordinary magic.

Gellert ownly stole the wand from Gregowitch. So, the wand granted him partial ownership and did not let him become invincible. However, when Dumbledore defeated Gellert, it truly became his. So, even Voldemort could not beat dumbledore. He had to flee.

Well, I am sure this is discussed all over the web and some experts have much better answers. Still, I do not have time at this point to study this more.