Saturday, April 15, 2006

Dilemma...

I have been thinking about my future for the past few weeks and where I would see myself in the next 10 years. Almost every turn I took(in my imaginary future) seemed to end as a coder...system architect at most...

Its the choices we make that governs our life. If I would have been selected in MS, I would have ,without any doubt or pretension, sunk into an instant comfort zone and disappeared as yet another MS slave. The same holds for any other company.

If I do not take that path and choose to be an academician, do a PhD, then all I'll be is a bald Dr Iyer, trying 10 years to prove an arcane point and screw my life. Einstein may be intelligent, but he was not rich nor had a good family life, I want both.

So I have 3 paths to take:

1)Work for a company that pays me shit load of money and work on technologies I don't like and feign happiness for the rest of life, get married and just get sucked up in family chores. It will be a slow poison I might enjoy after sometime, but a part of me will always militate against it. Being rich but unhappy, not my definition of successful.

2)Work on system software, probably get a PhD and get into a research lab and the world will only know me through a few references in scientific papers. and when I get married and have kids.... there will be perennial complains about me not spending enough time with them. I will be blinded by all the technology that would surround me and play a deaf ear to them. Being respected and admired, probably rich but still unhappy.... again not successful.

3)Take the path of Bill Gates, Larry Page, Sabeer Bhatia.... etc. The success rate is infinitesimally small. The end is glorious but the risk factor is too high. A scary path for a guy with no experience like me. This path excites me the most though.

The fourth point, which most of the people believe in, is destiny, give the best to the present and hope for a better future... I am not one of them, I am in charge of life, I am solely responsible for my failures and successes.

Its the choice I have to make between these three paths.

The Oracle(Matrix Rev): You and I may not be able to see beyond our own choices

Maybe there is a path and maybe in due time I am able to see the bigger picture and this cloud clears. Till then I have two points and I need to choose one path amongst three.... the easy path is not necessarily the right path (Prof Dumbledore, HP)



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Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Trip to seattle- Epilogue

So the results are out... MS rejected me, hence I wont be writing about the interview as I had told earlier in the comments.
Just called the HR today who put a gracious smile and friendly voice to tell me that I was rejected by both the teams. I asked the reason. Her reply : " I cant legally tell you about it but you need to work on your technical skills"

The answer was obviously not satisfactory as there was not a single question I did not answer in the most elegant manner and i certainly did not dress like a hippie... and i guess I have good verbal skills. My best guess is that they did a background check on me and came to know that I was a serial killer and used to eat my victims alive :P

All said and done, atleast I got a paid trip to seattle. Here are the pics...
just the link (wanna make this post look gloomy :): Seattle pics



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Friday, April 07, 2006

Trip to Seattle- The journey

The trip to seattle was quite eventful.
I felt at home when the flight from syracuse to philly got 1 HR late. The airport was no better than a typical railway station in India. I was supposed to arrive at 7:00 pm in philly and leave for seatlle at about 8:30 pm. But bless those guys, I reached the airport at 8:20 and the other terminal was a mile away.

Just made it to the plane to seatlle and discovered that they were waiting for us... how sweet of them. The captain announced that he was waiting for one more flight to arrive. The people in the plane looked strangely familiar... not to mention that most of them were Indians. To my surprise, Kumar Sanu and Bali Brahmbhatt walked in!! they were with their families and looked in a total mood of vacationing... Ofcourse I did not want to ruin their vacation by asking for autograph and blowing off their cover. They looked more like gunda's (dons...:P) than singers. Glamour has its own pitfalls... phew.

Made it to Seattle and discovered that my luggage was missing. So its 2 am in the morning, I have an interview at 11:30 am and the only thing I have is my laptop. Poked my cab driver to stop on the way to get some formals for the interviews hoping that some nocturnal creature might open the mall in that ungodly hour. Reached the hotel, decided to go shopping in the morning and crashed in the bed. Managed to get a decent set of formals from one of my cousin's friends... thats pure luck. Attended the 7 hour long interview and went straight to the mall to buy some socks, Pjs and undies :P.
3 socks=$8
6 undies= $6
1 Pj=$12
you come back and discover that the luggage has been delivered... priceless. There are something money cant buy...



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