My (Actual) Achievements (Not Just Potential) and Microsoft’s Non-Passion (About Them)

Soon after my comments about Microsoft at iMechanica [in early April 2008] had gone online, two things happened. (i) Bill Gates released an article in Times of India about how he is so much concerned about education and all, all over the world. (I suspect he might have hinted at, if not outright explicitly mentioned, the work done by Bill Gates and Melinda Gates Foundation.) (ii) Microsoft Hyderabad released a job ad in Times of India. Now, they were willing at least to accept applications from experienced people, if not actually appoint them. But, the ad also made it crystal clear, that MS expected these people to *get* *further* orders for Microsoft—i.e. that Microsoft was in no mood do acknowledge anything done by anybody for them in the past. It was not enough.

The point to note here is that the advertised MS Hyderabad jobs are with their global delivery (or the projects or the consulting) division—not with Microsoft Research.

In short, this is the idea: MS wants me to get orders for them, get paid in Indian rupees for American work, in the process turning the money that is actually due to me over to Bill Gates, who, in turn, would give (only) a portion of that money in charity to Indian kids, therby making his name big twice: (i) once, by acting big to have generated employment for me, and (ii) by acting big about his (and Melinda Gates’) charity.

That is *smart* on the part of Bill Gates. Also, of course, on the part of Steve Ballmer, and co! And, it sucks!! Not twice, but four times.

The first two times it sucked in a major way were the following: (i) When I was still in the USA in 2001, I publicly complained at CodeProject.com (in the first part of 2001) about my not getting any contracts. Microsoft had a significant presence in the Bay Area, but chose not to pay any attention to it, thereby forcing me to have to return to India. (Later on, some of them also chose to make it appear as if my C++ contribution at CodeProject, namely, the CWin32Error class, was no better than the compiler’s “built-in” error handling classes and macros. But that part was, in essence, nothing but making public their ignorance, and so, I don’t really count it under “the things that suck”.) (ii) Microsoft monitored, but did not even release job ads for (let alone invite me to) Microsoft *Research* in Hyderabad, in the period from August 2001 to March 2008.

And, then, the above two *additional* things that suck. (i) Job advertisements that primarily still stress the “Can you sell?” question, thereby stressing the idea that I still have something left to do to make Microsofties richer. Not jobs with Microsoft Research (apparently, reserved only for Americans)… And then, (ii) the articles on Education, Charity…

It all certainly sucks, Steve, Bill…. And it will continue to suck even if you throw a few hundred academic licenses to COEP. Keep *that* in mind….

It all just confirms the conclusions I had drawn about MS at iMechanica—they are not worth doing a good turn to, because, despite possessing the means to do so, they will *not* return  it… If I am wrong, show me how.

(Written on April 10, 2008. Published on April 20, 2008.)

He is a B Tech from IIT Bombay…

Oftentimes, I read profiles like: “He is a BTech from IIT Bombay [and, say, MBA from IIM Ahmedabad].” The usage is pretty widespread, especially in India. I have repeatedly heard it said in this way in the more formal settings, say, during speaker’s introductions at conferences, or while introducing guests on TV shows, or at other formal/semi-formal settings…

But doesn’t this kind of a usage sound weird to you? It does, to me. I mean the issue goes much deeper than the correct use of English.

When you say: “XYZ is a [degree like BTech]“, it sounds like the guy XYZ is so crucially dependent on his academic qualifications, he has so little else to show for himself, that he must define himself by reference to his degrees alone. It is almost as if so little of his own being would still be found to have been left once his degree were taken away from him, that the speaker has no recourse but to say, in effect, XYZ *is* that degree and nothing but that degree.

It is almost as if the very *existence* of this guy were premised on his possession of that degree. I mean, note the emphasis: “He *is* a BTech from IIT Bombay…” LOL!

But, jokes apart, there is one specifically *philosophic* issue here, namely, what view of man does that imply… The issue is, whether you believe that, metaphysically, man can exist as an *individual*, or do you believe, even if only implicitly, that he is doomed to exist merely as an offshoot of some or the other *social* institution, a world where it is the society which possesses primacy… Thus, the issue becomes: which one, in your view, possesses metaphysical primacy: the man as an individual, or the society. Which one is the primary existential force of sorts? That is the implicit idea here.

Note the contrast. If your working philosophic premises are better, you would rather choose usage like, for instance: “He *has* a BE from COEP,” or “He received or did [or "earned" etc.] his BE from COEP.” Now, the view implied in *this* kind of usage is that the degree just happens to be one of the many desserts that have been accomplished by the gentleman in question, that it is one more feather in his cap, so to speak [or, that he has *worked* towards getting it, etc., noting that productive work can be involved even when the context does not involve a job or a service].

Now, of course, there are a lot of other funny usages (and grammatical mistakes) that come up when Indians use English. But these do not interest me here. I certainly am one of those who habitually butcher the English language with surpassing ease. But the issue here is philosophic view, not English.)

—–

Speaking of the English language, one of the things I am always confused by is the following.
Which one should I use?
(a) This being an introductory course, we only consider linear problems.
(b) This being an introductory course, we consider only linear problems.
(c) This being an introductory course, we consider linear problems only.

Obviously, (c) is just an escape route (in that it makes the whole problem implicit); the real thing is between (a) and (b). Which one of these two is correct? I used to think it should be (b), and yet, I often read sentences like (a) from the native English speakers…. Is any enlightenment possible here?

More difficult question: Now, show precisely where the word “here” can be inserted in the above statement… Keep trying

(Written on April 10, 2008. Published on April 20, 2008.)

The University of Pune and Doing a PhD in Its Engineering Faculty (Part 1)

Recently, Indian Express and other papers have carried news items saying that University of Pune recently has increased the monthly stipend of PhD students from some Rs. 3000 to some Rs. 6000.

This is to clarify that there has never been any stipend for doing a PhD in the Engineering Faculty in the University of Pune.

Thus, I did not receive a single paisa from the University of Pune, or from COEP, during any part of my PhD. My entire PhD has been “self-sponsored,” so to speak. (No stipend, no equipment, no travel allowance to attend conferences,… Each and everything has been paid for by me.)

For that matter, it’s high time that the rest of the world also got to know that the PhD students of engineering cannot even use the Jayakar library of University of Pune. Not even just the e-Access section of this library (which does carry ScienceDirect, JSTOR and many other subscriptions). The students of MA (let alone PhD) in, say, Economics department are fully allowed to use Jayakar, though, typically, they do not care for it.  In contrast, students of PhD in engineering may go begging to use libraries in IITs, NCL, DRDO labs, or other places, because they want to use it, and ye, they are not allowed to use Jayakar!! The reason? Engineering faculty has no department to represent in the University of Pune campus, and so, until the time that this Great University built one, the Engineering Faculty students would continue to be treated as second-class citizens on its campus. Not even if it is the University of Pune’s stamp which is going to appear on their PhD certificates, once they produce the thesis—somehow.

Apparently, this University only exists to stamp degree certificates as far as engineering PhDs go, because there is no room for them in any academic sense on its campus. There can be very expansive (and towersome) offices for a select few, but not even simple e-access facilities for some of its own PhD students!!

I request everyone responsible for ranking of universities in various surveys to kindly factor in this fact in their evaluations too—until the time that this University begins behaving a bit more responsibly towards its hapless Engg. faculty PhD. students.

(Written on April 5, 2008. Published on April 20, 2008.)

The Timing, the Title, and the Opening Line of Walter Williams’ Recentmost Piece at CapMag.com

I have no respect for the timing and the connotations evoked via the opening statement of Walter Williams in this article here: http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5103. Regardless of whether he is an avowed Objectivist or not. And regardless of what the content itself goes on to describe.

I have sometimes found some aspects of Williams’ grasp of the Objectivist principles to be a bit shakey, at least in some minor ways. But I neither care for him nor for his readership (mostly Americans) enough that I should go through the essays he has written at CapMag.com in the past, and point out precisely where he was being a bit shakey. After all, as far as I know, Ayn Rand Institute gives out prizes of $10,000/- in essay competition but has not, for years, moved a finger to provide moral pressure on to, say, PTC, or Microsoft, to go and hire me. (Perhaps it is a moral issue for them. But if so, why don’t they state so in the open?)

More immediately, note that Williams’ abovementioned writing got published on the Internet only *after* my today’s update at iMechanica was.

If he (and Harry Binswanger as in the past, in 1998, on the Ayn Rand Institute’s Q & A section) and others (and I wouldn’t care even if it were Ayn Rand herself let alone Leonard Peikoff himself—or, to make the matter more practical and/or to take it outside of Objectivists circles, if it was Manmohan Singh and/or Sharad Pawar and/or Sonia Gandhi and/or Lal Advani and/or Prakash Karat and/or…) who are going to insist on choosing words so as to isolate and tease me, they, too, would have been immoral in fact. Harry Binswanger (and many other writers at ARI), in recent years (esp. post May 2006) seem to have learnt to write better as far as this particular aspect is concerned (for reasons best known to them—not me). Who knows, *this* (the apparent stopping of “teasing” me from at ARI) could very well be the reason that the “charge” to carry on the “battle” to keep “teasing” me has now befallen on this particular pair of black shoulders in the media. (I used the word “black” here to make precisely the same emphasis which he himself has used to some effect in another piece of writing in the recent past on CapMag.com).

Keep off Walter! Neither the fact of your American-ness nor of any (supposed) Objectivist-ness of yours mean a damn thing to me in the final analysis. If you choose to be nosy and keep getting in my way, you might get hit—by me. (Like the dog who has been so tied near a rail-road that only the nose portion of its nose remains on the rails so that when the train comes, it might pass only over the nose. This, actually, was supposed to be a whimsically eccentric sort of joke that a friend of mine used to tell us when I was an undergraduate student in Pune. It was his cousin’s fantasy, actually. To arrange dogs’ noses in the abovementioned way—noses on the railroad, the rest of the body, “safely” outside of the tracks—simply because, that cousin guy used to hate dogs, and used to “think” that the nose of the dog, as a species, was far too longer than what is “necessary” for an “honest” functioning of the organ. Thus, the idea.) Read the “fun” and forget it, Walter, but do remember the serious thing, and keep off. I mean it.

People from Microsoft (mostly Republicans, in the final analysis) could very well be behind this (I mean “teasing”, which, actually is nothing but harassing by pushing a man into troubles).  And, so could be the democrats from California (e.g. Sun Microsystems). I don’t know, and, far more importantly, I do not care. I do sit here judgment, but do not care to enslave my judgments only for the political or racial benefits of a group of people—especially, Americans. That’s the reason I do not care whether it is democrats or republicans. Its just that I want to tell these “teasing” sort of Americans: Just don’t assume that just because you can buy some talking space on some Internet sites, and buy wholesale our (Indian) politicians and newspapers, (with Russians and communists also buying some of the rest, and further so on for all other groups in India) it means that you can buy *everyone* in India. Some Indians, still, do not have their souls or their integrity on sale. (Griding or no grinding, marriage or no marriage, sextual history on records or otherwise. Got it? Americans? If you have got guts, go a bit further ahead, be exact and open in the attack on me, and let us have some more “fun” if you want. Got it?)

One final point. When I say “Americans,” I do not expect to refer to people like Walter. (This is to cut down in advance the power of a likely argument that I pick fights with good meaning professors with family and lovably high ratings and/or tenures like Dr. Williams.) But yes, if they insist on getting in my way, then, what the hell, they should be included in the term “Americans” too.

Naturally, I do not hate *all* Americans.

I don’t expect to repeat myself.

Update

I have quite a few things to tell…

My PhD defence at the University of Pune is already over.

I have also received post-doc offers, one from a group at MIT Boston, as well as another one from the University of California, Berkeley. The two offers followed within hours of each other. The jobs are in the computational sciences/engineering areas; the people were impressed by what I did in my PhD as well as my iMechanica writings.

However, the US visa picture is not yet clear. If this continues to be the case, I might actually have to leave both the post-doc offers alone, in which case, I might actually end up joining an “industrial” job instead, one with the parallel processing group at Microsoft Research in Hyderabad, India. They have offered me a group leader’s post, and the perks are pretty good too.

…Keep watching for the update…

Update on April 2, 2008

That was April Fool’s joke. For more details, see my posting at iMechanica: http://iMechanica.org/node/2969. (If they delete it from there, let me know, and I will post my saved copy here.)