The History of the Internet

The Pictorial History of the Internet.

Interconnected Tech Companies

A very nice look at the world of tech companies  - They are all the same :)

Click on the image to see the complete version.

New way to make money - Borrow it

With negative interest rates coming in, I am tempted :)

Be loyal to job, not to company!

Interesting.....Don't miss last Questions...

Some, rather most organizations reject his CV today because he has changed jobs frequently (10 in 14 years). My friend, the 'job hopper' (referred here as Mr. JH), does not mind it.. well he does not need to mind it at all. Having worked full-time with 10 employer companies in just 14 years gives Mr. JH the relaxing edge that most of the 'company loyal' employees are struggling for today. Today, Mr. JH too is laid off like some other 14-15 year experienced guys - the difference being the latter have just worked in 2-3 organizations in the same number of years. Here are the excerpts of an interview with Mr. JH:

Q: Why have you changed 10 jobs in 14 years?

A: To get financially sound and stable before getting laid off the second time.

Q: So you knew you would be laid off in the year 2009?

A: Well I was laid off first in the year 2002 due to the first global economic slowdown. I had not got a full-time job before January 2003 when the economy started looking up; so I had struggled for almost a year without job and with compromises.

Q: Which number of job was that?

A: That was my third job.

Q: So from Jan 2003 to Jan 2009, in 6 years, you have changed 8 jobs to make

the count as 10 jobs in 14 years?

A: I had no other option. In my first 8 years of professional life, I had worked only for 2 organizations thinking that jobs are deserved after lot of hard work and one should stay with an employer company to justify the saying 'employer loyalty'. But I was an idiot.

Q: Why do you say so?

A: My salary in the first 8 years went up only marginally. I could not save enough and also, I had thought that I had a 'permanent' job, so I need not worry about 'what will I do if I lose my job'. I could never imagine losing a job because of economic slowdown and not because of my performance. That was January 2002.

Q: Can you brief on what happened between January 2003 and 2009.

A: Well, I had learnt my lessons of being 'company loyal' and not 'money earning and saving loyal'. But then you can save enough only when you earn enough. So I shifted my loyalty towards money making and saving - I changed 8 jobs in 6 years assuring all my interviewers about my stability.

Q: So you lied to your interviewers; you had already planned to change the job for which you were being interviewed on a particular day?

A: Yes, you can change jobs only when the market is up and companies are hiring. You tell me - can I get a job now because of the slowdown? No. So one should change jobs for higher salaries only when the market is up because that is the only time when companies hire and can afford the

expected salaries.

Q: What have you gained by doing such things?

A: That's the question I was waiting for. In Jan 2003, I had a fixed salary (without variables) of say Rs. X p.a. In January 2009, my salary was 8X. So assuming my salary was Rs.3 lakh p.a. in Jan 2003, my last drawn salary in Jan 2009 was Rs.24 lakh p.a. (without variable). I never bothered about variable as I had no intention to stay for 1 year and go through the appraisal process to wait for the company to give me a hike.

Q: So you decided on your own hike?

A: Yes, in 2003, I could see the slowdown coming again in future like it had happened in 2001-02. Though I was not sure by when the next slowdown would come, I was pretty sure I wanted a 'debt-free' life before being laid off again. So I planned my hike targets on a yearly basi without waiting for the year to complete.

Q: So are you debt-free now?

A: Yes, I earned so much by virtue of job changes for money and spent so little that today I have a loan free 2 BR flat (1200 sq. feet) plus a loan free big car without bothering about any EMIs. I am laid off too but I do not complain at all. If I have laid off companies for money, it is OK if a

company lays me off because of lack of money.

Q: Who is complaining?

A: All those guys who are not getting a job to pay their EMIs off are complaining. They had made fun of me saying I am a job hopper and do not have any company loyalty. Now I ask them what they gained by their company loyalty; they too are laid off like me and pass comments to me - why will you bother about us, you are already debt-free. They were still in the bracket of 12-14 lakh p.a. when they were laid off.

Q: What is your advice to professionals?

A: Like Narayan Murthy had said - love your job and not your company because you never know when your company will stop loving you. In the same lines, love yourself and your family needs more than the company's needs. Companies can keep coming and going; family will always remain the same. Make money for yourself first and simultaneously make money for the company, not the other way around.

Q: What is your biggest pain point with companies?

A: When a company does well, its CEO etc will address the entire company saying, 'well done guys, it is YOUR company, keep up the hard work, I am with you." But when the slowdown happens and the company does not do so well, the same CEO Etc will say, "It is MY company and to save the company, I have to take tough decisions including asking people to go." So think about your financial stability first; when you get laid off, your kids will complain to you and not your boss.

Taxes

• The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
  
  -- Mark Twain
  

• The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward.
  
  -- John Maynard Keynes
  
  
  
• Smile and the world audits your taxes.
  
  
• The only certainities in this world are death and taxes.
  
  --Benjamin Franklin
  
  
• Be wary of strong drink.  It can make you shoot at tax collectors... and miss.
  
  --Robert Heinlein
  

Recession predicted in 2006!

It's not often that we get the chance to see quite as clearly as we do in this video how pundits and experts can be completely and totally wrong. But if the people ridiculing and condescending to Peter Schiff in this video are deceiving themselves, how sure can we be that our most cherished convictions are correct?

This video is from 2006 !

At least we didn't do that

I quote this from an email list I am subscribed to:

"Interesting read [[about Iceland]]....about a country which stood at No.1 in UN's 2008 Human Development Index.... Where the stock market multiplied by 9 times between 2003 and 2007.....Where fishermen became investment bankers.... Whose debt today is 850% of its GDP.... Where people blow up their newly bought cars to claim insurance.... 

Its the only nation on earth that Americans could point to and say, “Well, at least we didn’t do that.”

I agree!

Read the complete article.

Books Read

Finshed reading a lot of books recently.

1. One Night at the Call Center - Too filmy in my opinion. This I thought when I read the book. At that time I did not even know that a film titled "Hello" is under production based on the same. A letdown in the story/plot department, after reading Five Point Someone. But the humour was quite good.

2. Anything for You Ma'am - Another of the I-was-in-engineering-college-and-I-had-the-time-of-my-life genre. Good narration, predictably filmy story. Nothing exciting in the story but author can certainly lift one's spirits!

3. Inheritance of Loss - Nice, if slow. Did it deserve the Booker....err...umm....how to say this....aaaahhh.....No, I don't think it deserved a prize like that.

4. A Prisoner of Birth - Surprisingly filmy from Jeffrey Archer. Old Jeff is losing his touch. Better than whatitsname novel about Art Auction and 9/11 but nothing better. So second last on my all time JA ranking.

5. The McKinsey Way - Reread this classic. Nice reading!

6. The Broker - Reread this John Grisham thriller. Above average by his standards. Could have been better.

7. The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham's classic with updated commentary from Jason Zweig. Reread this one. How true it sounds in today's financial crisis. I am glad I followed his advice in spirit in letter. Following it still. In Warren Buffett's words - "When the world is greedy, be fearful. When the world is fearful, be greedy." I am following it :)

How Jet Airlines could have averted the layoffs

Naresh Goyal and Jet Airlines are under a lot of media glare and criticism for their laying off of 1900 employees. Here's how they could have averted this by using some innovative cost-cutting mechanisms!

Policy Bazaar

My friend, Alok Bansal, has started a website along with some other people. Policy Bazaar (www.policybazaar.com) is an insurance aggregator. An interesting and useful concept. The company has now received VC funding. Here are the details.

_____________________________________________________

Info Edge To Invest Rs 20 Crore In An Online Insurance Aggregator

Info Edge will pick up 49% stake in Etechaces Marketing and Consulting, which runs Policybazaar.com . Info Edge India Ltd, the owners of Naukri.com, will invest Rs 20 crore for a 49% stake in eTechAces Marketing and Consulting Pvt Ltd, an online aggregator of insurance products, the company informed the stock exchange. eTechAces runs policybazaar.com, an online aggregator of life and non-life insurance products. The website essentially collects insurance leads and let the insurance companies compete for it. 

In a press note issued from the company, Info Edge, Ambarish Raghuvanshi, CFO and Director, Info Edge (India) ltd. said, “eTechAces has a great management team and a differentiated approach to distributing financial products online, by empowering the customer to enable comparison of available options and make an informed data-driven decision. The company’s bouquet of products include insurance products to be sold online, which is so far an untapped area in India. In other countries, especially in Europe, it is a high growth category."

Etechaces is founded by Yashish Dahiya who is also the CEO of the company, Alok Bansal and Avaneesh Nirjar who act as the CFO and COO of the firm respectively. It was only in July that Info Edge invested Rs 6.5 crore ($1.54 million) for a 40 per cent equity stake in Applect Learning Systems, a Delhi-based education content developer. It had already disbursed Rs 1 crore as part of the first tranche of the investment. 

Earlier this year, Info Edge invested $1 million in StudyPlaces Inc, as part of the latter’s $3-million series A round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Mr. Bush, Lead or Leave

I really liked this one from Thomas Friedman. His analysis stops short of saying but gives enough hints that Bush's friends in the oil business are the ones behind the current carnage in the international oil market. Bush's weak policies are hammering the dollar too, which to my mind is the biggest worry facing Americans!

A good read!

Spam King hit by 6 million dollars!

Spam comes home to roost, or not! Read here.

Interglobe 2008, An MDI Initiative

Management Development Institute, Gurgaon and ESCP-EAP European School of Management, London are jointly hosting InterGlobe 2008 the first in a series of annual conferences.The event is being organized by students of MDI and aims at bringing together personalities from the corporate and academic world to better understand the current business trends and issues that affect us all. The theme chosen for this year's InterGlobe Conference is 'India: Emerging Trends'.

The distinguished Speakers at this year's conference are:

1. Amit Chatterjee, Vice President, Tech Mahindra, U.K.
2. Ashish Gupta, Head of Design, British Telecom, U.K.
3. Ashvini Chopra, Head of Private Banking, ICICI, U.K.
4. Mark Bretton, Head of Outsourcing for UK & Ireland, TCS, U.K.

Discussion Panel Moderator: Dr. Davide Sola, Director, ESCP-EAP, London

Further details are available at the website.

Date of the event : 19th June

Official Website : www.interglobemdi.com

You Know....

You know........

.....things are different, when in the newspaper, the lawyers and politicians are on the sports page and the cricketers are on the fashion and lifestyle page.

Houses worth less than the copper inside them!

Read this article to see how the sub-prime crisis and rising commodity prices are combining to make this extraordinary situation!

DRM Free Music

With DRM (Digital Rights Management) more a pain than a useful thing, the music industry must come out with DRM-free music.

Misusing technology to harass users will only alienate the companies further from the consumers. I personally believe that this ostrich-in-the-sand mode of the music companies will do no good to the companies. While they should get a fair price for their services, it is important to realise that the market fundamentals have changed and while they can hold on to their empires for some more time, it will soon be beyond them to control such sweeping technological changes.

Here are two nice articless on DRM - one on how to buy DRM free music which is legal, and the other on how to remove DRM protection from songs that have such protection.

How to Predict the Future

How to Predict the Future is an excellent article! It focuses on how to predict the future ;)

Why Osama Bin Laden Hates Microfinance

Why indeed? Here's the answer!

Alumna Gives $128 Million to High School

Hmm....very interesting!

New Media

The new media is here. Changing business models are nowhere evidenced better than this small newspiece. Newspaper gives away Prince CDs!

The important point to recognise is that new revenue models and new ways to be profitable have to be thought of. DRMs, copyright protection is going to be harder and harder to prevent. People want the music, but at a reasonable price. Otherwise some Napster, BitTorrent, Coolgoose will come again and again, the occassional iTunes notwithstanding