All these days, I was under the impression that Google was THE place to work in, they were doing the coolest stuff around, coming up with geeky ads in Bangalore newspapers etc etc. And so when I heard that there was a talk by Krishna Bharat at the CSI2004 conference today, I registered myself and went for the talk....... In a packed audience of 250.....after the (quite heavy) talk, there were two questions from the audience, and guess who it was; yep, yours truly; thats about it; no other questions; nothing.....as one of my "miss"es would've said in middle school - pin-drop silence.
This was mid-afternoon. Later today, from 1900-2200, there was a Google openhouse, where they were supposed to talk about their Bangalore R&D centre, their work culture, research problems, get to know us better etc; guess how many turned up. I was there, there were 2 fresh-teachers from Punjab University. There were more waiters and maitre'Ds than technical people there. I was bowled. Ain't Google cool? Aren't people interested in knowing what they are looking for?
Couple of thoughts come to mind. The conference was CSI2004 - a historically old-school society; where they highlight topics like "use of technologry to serve rural India better", and other systems areas like DB and OS. Maybe the audience were those types. An interesting observation (confirming this) was that in the morning session on Middleware Technolgies (most of which I attended), there was NOISE, it was chaotic, with tons of questions; the presenter was screwed by a very interested and keen audience.
Does this mean the Indian software companies are still only services driven? excited by J2EE etc.? I mean, it was a proper conference in a 5 star hotel, all the works, not some IT-fair-glitz thing. The delegates here represent a good sample of folks who actually make up our industry and academia. Further, I asked Google how their hiring was going on, and they replied that it was quite frustrating that most Bangalore software people do not know what computer science means and are out applying in droves.
Anyways, I had a few things to talk about with them, but no freebies :((((.....good food, pastres, fruit punch, and back to the campus......
My first time out to Bombay-West......and "MG's", "Brigades", and "Kormangas" of Bangalore are no match for the kinda .........er......... pretty young things I saw on a DVG-road like street in Bandra. Dileep Kumar, Sunil Dutt, Shahrukh Khan, Priety Zinta, Rajesh Khanna, Rishi Kapoor, Aamir Khan...saw all their homes. Remembered the nostalgic days of VLSI2001 (you with me till here GD? :)))) )........
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