Solve these S/W - real life case studies

You are in an interview to get into your favourite IT services company… Imagine you are thrown these small caselets at you, and asked to respond on how you will tackle such real life scenarios. Do not despair! Since our surrounding environment has so many examples to solve these…

The easier ones…
Case 1: You have planned for a vacation with friends to Goa. Your manager does not sanction your leave – so you call for a strike. However the management has strictly said no to any strike. How can you ensure you get across your point without initiating a strike?

Case 2: You are the technical architect in a large project which has just won an award. In an interview to your internal magazone, you inadvertently say that the project leaders didn’t know or do anything and the team contributed to the success. True as it may be, the managers decide to sack you for this. What do you do to save your face and **s in this case?

Case 3: You were having a nice time as a project leader doing nothing. However, your project is nearing completion and you need to shift into another project, this time however as a resource under someone you don’t like. How would you evade this scenario?

Difficult ones… (Need more innovative thinking)
Case 4: You have been developing a module as part of a reasonably good project. However you feel it is going nowhere. You are attracted to another bigger project and want to latch on to that. How would you do it without injuring your reputation in the eyes of the public?

Case 5: You are an average worker in your company. You realize that salary hikes have slowed down considerably. You really want a bad salary hike since you had promised yourself a car for this year. No other company is going to offer you a job. What do you do?

Case 6: You are the module leader for a very important module of a big project. You are bored for sometime now and don’t feel that too many people are giving importance to what you say or do. To make sure you get some immediate attention on yourself, what do you do?

Please feel free to post your answers in the comments section. Answers basically should reference real life scenarios (either from politics or sports or cinema) surrounding you in India…

If only India had daylight savings time...

Today, as I sit at a vague time of 3:00 am in the night on my computer, I experienced something unusual – the clock on the Windows tray turning back to 2:00 am on its own even though it had reached 3:00 am. Of course, this was the end of the daylight savings time here in Europe. We were reverting back by 1 hour to normal time. This now means that we are 4.5 hours behind India instead of 3.5 hours… The biggest benefit for now is that I get 1 extra hour of sleep on the weekend!

However, I was just wondering how this 1 extra hour would be of such great benefit though for us back in India… Here is a look at the tremendous benefits it offers to a wide cross-section of people…

1. Our politicians – The junior Gowda who had in the evening agreed to support the Janata Dal, decided to create the 50th twist in the whole (a)pisode. He is in talks with esteemed madam Mrs. Sonia Gandhi Jee to share power at the center in return for supporting a Congress govt. at the state level. Mrs. Sonia Jee in the meantime has given 7 more instructions in the additional hour for Mr. Manmohan Singh to carry out. In parallel in Gujarat, somewhere in collusion with the same people who were exposed on the Tehelka video, Mr. Narendra Modi is trying to figure out more means to block all access to the entire internet, print media and radio so that the Tehelka expose does not reach his people.
2. Our film personalities – 5 more trailers of Om Shanti Om were shown on around 25 different channels thus increasing the number of total impressions by 125 and the effective headcount of the mega marketing reach by around 2.5 people. The Big B meanwhile has signed up for 5 more brands to advertise this year, having had to compensate for giving up his claim on the farm land.
3. Our sports heroes – Current captain M S Dhoni has once again managed to get a new haircut – this time a 70s style haircut aka Shah Rukh in OSO, to woo model turned actresses who act as 70s stars. At the same time, ex-captain Dravid is utilizing the 1 hour for figuring out how the fortunes have completely turned for him – from producing India’s best, to be given a rest* (E.g. of * -. Teachers picking out “volunteers” in school to do stuff). Sehwag was last seen laughing all out for this 1 hour thinking about how many series he has been persisted with despite his “spectacular” form.
4. Our IT Services companies – Revenue-wise, there is no addition for the year since they lose this 1 hour in March when daylight savings time comes back in. However, they utilized this time to recruit 20 more people each and train them on the basics of computing. The overall training period has gradually shortened from 3 months to 2.5 weeks now.
5. The educated gentlemen and ladies – Most of our grads and multi-national employees are using this 1 additional hour to figure out how to make more money, progress in career, marry their darlings, take care of their babies or buy that splendid new apartment. The rest (like yours truly) are doing the same things at a place away from India (or trying to get 1 more hour of sleep).
6. The common man – He gets to see one more hour of all the above drama unfolding in front of him on the various news channels as more “sensational breaking news” fills up this hour. He cringes about how bad the politicians but knows though that the opponents are no less crap. He is hoping that some of the educated classes will save India someday. He does not know that this educated class is more foolish than him to depend on some politician saving them.

Any more such activities people can do in that 1 hour, please do post in the comments section…

The real meaning behind MBA resumes

One of the most important things that B-school students learn during their 2 years in college is the art of preparing resumes. They understand that their resume is their biggest self-marketing tool and spruce it up with tons of high-flown adjectives, adverbs and what not to ensure that they come out tops in getting at least a shortlist for an interview. Let us demystify some of the jargons that they use to spruce up their resume after a couple of years of life in IT.

Resume usage: “Core member of a large development project”
Real meaning: Was mostly involved in buying snacks for the team members. Helped out in some minimal documentation when someone was sick in the project…

Resume usage: “Led the business development team to win a large multi-year multi-million dollar proposal … “
Real meaning: Copy pasted over 75% of the proposal from a previous one. When everything else failed, we reduced our rates to such a ridiculous amount that we had to get the deal.

Resume usage: “Helped strategize on the business plan of the practice to focus on new and upcoming areas”
Real meaning: Put up a presentation for the senior management during one of the strategy sessions. PPT shelved into cold storage the next day.

Resume usage: “Underwent an exhaustive training program on strategic leadership”
Real meaning: Went to GRT Grand Days and had an extremely fulfilling buffet lunch. Had a good sleep away from project pains during the training sessions…

Resume usage: “Championed organization activities including recruitment efforts, pre-placement talks etc.”
Real meaning: Was one of the over two hundred panellists in one of our usual mega-recruitment drives when the number of panellists is generally more than the number of candidates.

Ram Gopal Varma ki $&%@#

If you have seen the latest block”bust”er of a movie that is titled Ram Gopal Varma ki “$%@#$”… then you can try your luck at answering the following multiple choice questions. There is typically only one answer to every question…

(1) What is the name of the latest movie from the Ram Gopal Varma movie (not so) stable?

• Ram Gopal Varma ki “Theater se Bhaag”
• Ram Gopal Varma ki “Career mein Daag”
• Ram Gopal Varma ki “Bahut bura cog”…
• Ram Gopal Varma ki “Go for a jog”
• Ram Gopal Varma ki “Hit yourself with a log”

(2) What is missing between Nisha Kothari and Ajay Devgan?

• Physics
• Biology
• Mathematics
• Chemistry
• Social Sciences

(3) What amongst the following took the honors for “worst part of the film”?*

• Casting
• Camera
• Music (for the songs)
• Dialogues
• Direction

(P.S: The above is a very difficult question to answer. Hence you may tick more than one)

(4) What activity did Amitabh Bachan engage in throughout the movie?

• Bumming
• Humming
• Hamming
• Farming
• Harming

(P.S: Clue - The fourth mentioned activity may sound right usually but is not the correct answer w.r.t this movie)

(5) Nisha Kothari DOES NOT know which of the following activities

• Act
• Sign a pact
• Attract
• Shout
• Pout

(6) You will prescribe watching this movie to

• Your in-laws
• Your boyfriend / girlfriend who just broke up with you for someone else
• Your boss (with family)
• Your seniors in college who rag you
• Person on his death bed who is wishing for death faster

(7) Sound effects in the movie can cause which of the following sensations

• Ear drum being torn apart
• The sound of a supersonic jet going around inside the head
• Feeling of liquid / solid / semi-solid traveling upwards via the food pipe
• (At least) 7 hands holding the neck firmly
• Shivering and vibration of the whole body

(8) Why did Ram Gopal Varma remake the movie in the first place?

• He wanted to get back at Sippy for not selling him the rights
• He had signed a contract with Nisha Kothari to utilize her “services” in at least three films
• He wanted to “cash” in on Ajay Devgan’s last few successes
• He wanted to show Urmila in an item number one last time before she started accepting sister character roles
• He did not have any other way to show he had “fire” in his belly

(9) You would term the movie as

• A Great Hit
• Deep Shit
• Absolutely Unfit
• Go and spit
• Beyond one’s wit

(10) If Ram Gopal Varma makes one more remake of any film, it could probably be which of these masterpieces?

• Neal aur Nikki
• Roop Ki Rani, Choron Ka Raja
• James
• Marigold
• Ram Gopal Varma ki “Aag”

If you need further clues on answering any of the questions, also read Rajeev Masand’s article on CNN IBN here.

Bollywood's benevolent babes...

The other day, I was watching this movie called “Shaadi No. 1” on one of the very few Hindi channels I have access to. In the middle, there was an advertisement for the new movie (which I have heard is extremely crappy and over the top) called “Heyy Babyy” or something to that effect. One thing that is very common to these two movies is the number of second-grade actresses in both. Having a lot of them in each movie not just increases the average crowd pulling factor of the movie, it makes the job of film-making much easier for a lot of technicians. I am sure one can easily hazard a guess on their names. Let us see how these "babes" contribute immensely to the entire movie making fraternity ...

• They are all very good actresses – with one single expression, they are able to convey laughter, sorrow, surprise, anguish etc. – there is of course no other expression that they know to handle, hence the director is spared off a lot of effort.
• They give a lot of opportunity to the camera to cover them from different angles – their exposure levels differ from 50% to upwards of 90% from varying sides and positions.
• They save a lot of work for the costume designers – studies show more than 80% lesser apparel consumption since there is no cloth choli ke peeche, neeche or oopar…
• The hairstylist has a rest day since all of them dance with their hair loose – he / she of course does some minimal work the previous day by spraying all remaining Holi colors on their hair
• The dance master loses no sweat in teaching them exactly one move – shake from head to middle to bottom, one part at a time, with the hair flying all around and hands either on the hair, or on the guy(s) dancing with them…

So, be glad that if you are getting into the list of these Bollywood hotties and naughties, you sure are making the life of a lot of people easier...

P.S: The research material gathered for this article was under the strict supervision of my madam…