My first job in the United States

I came to Texas A&M in August 1993. I was looking for a job or an assistantship. A&M at that time was using Oracle for Research Accounting. I heard of a job opening for an Oracle Developer/Business Analyst and I was the only person on campus who knew Oracle and SQL. I interviewed for the job with two managers. One interview with the hiring manager was very interesting. She was looking for a Graduate Assistant Non-Teaching data analyst really and she gave me a piece of paper with a bunch of names and numbers and asked me to type it. After I did in excel, she had me print it out and she checked it and there were zero errors and she hired me. She was kind enough to make the start day Monday instead of Wednesday the day I was interviewing so I could get qualify for in-state tuition. The difference was $1200. This was a YUGE deal. I got my Master’s in Electrical Engineering in 1995.  During that time, my interest was in sparse matrices and did some coding in Oracle and SQL for sparse matrices and published it in the local Oracle User group magazine.

Gyanlet

Gyanlet

A word I coined for a unit of useful knowledge. 

a tiny of piece of useful gyan to be transmitted digitally for maximum and effective reach...

a tiny self contained gyan

Gyan is wisdom in Hindi/Sanskrit

Brilliant Computer Center

It all started in Jan.93. I had gotten admissions from Texas A&M, University of Texas and a couple of other Universities for the Fall 93, Electrical Engineering program. I let my job at HCL selling communication systems and went to Brilliant Computer Center(BCC) to learn UNIX and C. The counselor there (she was really pretty) convinced me to enroll in the UNIX/Oracle class she was trying to fill for 5 and I would complete the class. She told me I could use the free time available to learn C. From Jan’93 to Jul’93, I spent every day at BCC learning UNIX, C and Oracle. The first time, I got the concept of the relational join and tied it back to set theory was my first eureka moment of understanding. Interestingly, the theory was invented by Dr. Codd on the year of my birth.

Doggerel

My friend Swaminathan Poornachandran posted this amazing photo and I added a doggerel to it.
I call it a doggerel because I could not do justice to it and it is one of my favorite GRE word.

dog·ger·el

/ˈdôɡərəl/

noun

1. comic verse composed in irregular rhythm.

   • verse or words that are badly written or expressed.
   • 
     

The all pervading god,
Is bound with a cord,
He who is just,
Is led by a girl with lust.

Kemebe YoYo

Bob Miner was one of the co-founders at Oracle. He was one of the best programmers ever and he actually had a law degree. In any case, he was a consultant to all development architects at Oracle and when he would get tired, he would use the acronym, KeMeBe YoYo. It meant Kiss My A** Baby, You are on Your Own. This is from an Oracle history book. 

Kobayashi Maru

I actually had to endure the Kobayashi Maru test in my first job interview in 1992. This was for a sales job selling computers back home in India. The company was known for its aggressive sales tactics. So the test was as follows.

“You are in front of the customer. This is a big deal. You have been told by your management that you will lose your job if you lose the deal. Also you will lose your job if you agree to an un-approved discount on the price. You are in a meeting with the customer and your competitor is waiting outside. The customer says that he is going to decide only on price and that the competitor is going to give a discount he is looking for and he is going to make a decision immediately. He asks you to make a decision on the discount immediately. And BTW, you can’t call your management on the cell phone or use the customer phone to call your boss”. I did pass the test and got the job…

The answer to the sales test.
A few assumptions.

• I am going to assume that my competitor cannot offer un-approved discounts either to make the game fair.
• Another assumption is that I am purely selling a commodity and the customer cares only about price.
• I have had some sales people say that they will offer something which is an intangible extra which cannot be measured and so are having and developing personal relationships whatever that means.
• I am also assuming that the customer can delay the decision.
• The customer is going to make the decisions purely on price.

Given that, here is the solution. The only way out here is to extend the end game and have the customer delay the decision making. The customer is being offered a discount by your competitor. What you can do to extend the end game is to offer a bigger discount than your competitor but at the same time request more time to get approvals. Since the customer is buying a commodity and is going to make a decision purely based on price, then the bigger discount you are offering should be attractive enough for the customer to delay the decision and for you to go get the approvals. You can then go back to your management to get the bigger discount and make the sale and keep your job. Another benefit of this strategy is that you will have an idea of what discounts that your competitors are offering to their customers which is valuable information for sales management. It would be even better if the customer documented that expectation instead of a verbal statement. The bigger discount you are offering should carry that caveat of documenting the price expectation by the customer which could benefit your management.

You would make a good “agent” for the “principal” by finding that discount percentage in a careful manner by calibrating it down slowly instead of doing it steeply. You can then get some kind of commitment that the customer will cease negotiations and make the deal happen and not play a “Race to the Bottom”.
 
I did get the job…
 
As I go back in time in the Spring of 92, the answer was more by instinct, intuition and gut feel than an analysis as described above and Nash was on the verge of receiving the Nobel Prize.

Tutu Thoughts

A friend just came back from South Africa and we were talking about it. One of South Africa's greatest personalities (other than Nelson Mandela of course) is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The Bishop had a unique perspective which can be felt in his quotes. One quote that moved me was his quote on humanity. The quote reads, "We are bound by our humanity, for we can only be human together". The Bishop correctly recognized that Apartheid was not an issue of discrimination but a rejection of humanity. The rejection is the root cause, the discrimination is the effect. The Bishop worked hard to change the perspective peacefully as he recognized that any improvement was going to come by recognizing this. Any oppression or discrimination results from this core fact and for this insight we salute Archbishop Desmond Tutu.