Of all perspectives on mentorship I have come across, my favorite is from an insightful chapter of the novel Siddhartha. The book narrates the journey of another Buddha in the making.
When a young Siddhartha and his friends get to meet the enlightened Buddha - while his friends yearn to be accepted as disciples; Siddhartha, though immensely impressed, decidedly stays away.
In an interesting dialogue that follows, Siddhartha is effectively telling the Buddha that I don't want to the best Buddhist; I want to be a Buddha! And even the Buddha himself cannot teach me how to become one!
I think same goes for even us, the lesser mortals, in any field of life. Experience and realization can neither be "taught" nor "transferred" as-is. They are best meant to be sought and gained first-hand in distinct, personal ways.
Leaving you with these wise words from the Nobel Laureate's celebrated work -
".. But there is one thing which these so clear, these so venerable teachings do not contain: they do not contain the mystery of what the exalted one has experienced for himself, he alone among hundreds of thousands."
#mentorship
In his TED talk, and his book "Flow", Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes the "flow state" as being a state of intense focus and complete absorption in an activity, for it's own intrinsic sake. Interestingly, he describes one of the key conditions that induces such a state, as being in a zone where your skills either match or, can be stretched to match a worthwhile challenge at hand. When the challenge is relatively too low for your skills, you experience boredom; while in the reverse scenario, you experience anxiety. He also talks about the altered sense of time you experience in this state of mind.
So, when was the last time you found yourself working an odd hour? - not because you had a deadline to meet, not because you had been asked to, not because you were driven by external rewards and praise, not even out of a noble sense of duty - but simply because the task at hand felt so worthy and challenging in itself, and your skills felt so perfectly utilized, that you couldn't wait for the next day to see what you have built! :-)
#workplace #engagement #productivity #happiness
Technology is under-represented in the leadership across the industry, and no diversity council in the world happens to question that. The tech pipeline of your organization just mirrors that, as success gets blindly copied as a formula.
A general awareness of tech jargons, trends, and case studies is not to be confused with tech capability, and in itself doesn't qualify one for a tech position. Just like googling/researching about COVID doesn't make me a doctor. "Talk is cheap", as Linus Torvalds aptly puts it.
Regardless of which one of the plethora of fancy tech titles you hold; if all you do is delegate, coordinate, control, streamline processes, conduct so-called "reviews", and give out knee-jerk reactions when things go wrong; you are an administrator, not a techie.
When you review my work, make sure you understand the technical subject matter, and review substance over anything else. If you can line up an army of "reviewers" for every contributor; that itself is a worrying metric. As a rational being, the least I cannot help but do is question what qualified each one of you to show up for that review session. And I would expect the army to collectively be a powerhouse of technical expertise and competence, and share some real feedback.
#technology #leadership
[Re-posted from my recently authored posts on LinkedIn]
Time and again, many great singers have attempted, but have failed to match up to the legendary Farida Khanum in her unforgettable rendition of "Aaj Jaane Ki Zid"! Last week, thanks to my sister-in-law, I heard this purely instrumental attempt (a fusion sitar-tabla-violin trio) that instantly felt so right! Unfortunately, I don't even know the name of the artists - but what a fine, nuanced performance! This appears to be a limited-audience mehfil in our neighbour country, with Rahat Fateh Ali Khan gracing the occassion!
I usually connect better with a vocal performance any day. Verses and vocal expressions are important, in that they convey rich context and feelings, thereby lending more soul to music.
In this exquisite performance, however, the lead artist has attained the outsized goal of almost blending the singer and the musician into one! - effortlessly moving back-and-forth between extreme restraint in playing the vocal sections, and intense adventure over the musical sections which he owns exclusively! You almost get to experience a soft, nuanced and very measured singer seamlessly morph into a bold and unrestrained musician in masterly command of his every stroke, nonetheless! Check it out and judge for yourself! :-)
Try and recall the most productive and skilled individual contributor you have ever watched closely in action. Think of the signal-to-noise ratio in his/her one undisturbed hour of "flow".
Now try and recall the most productive group meeting you have ever been a part of. What hard skills did it take? What was the signal-to-noise ratio in this meeting like? How many person hours did this one hour of meeting consume? Weigh that against the outcome the group as a whole produced in that one hour.
Group meetings are highly overrated and overdone, and generally contribute to your self-importance and your time-sheet. Two is company, three is a crowd.. and one is transcendence. Great work stands on the shoulders of giant individual contributors, who you let be masters of their own time and work.
If, as a leader or as an organization, you are okay with losing this giant share of productivity and magic to the mediocracy of meetings; that's your loss.
Modern development takes an incredible level and mix of skills ranging from problem-solving, to design elegance, to language nuances and fluency, to mastering the intricacies of every framework, technology and tool in use – all in unison!
Many of these may even have been non-existent a few years ago. Technology landscape and paradigms shift often, and enough to topple all your old practices and limits - so that what was your best practice is now an anti-pattern or plain redundant.
So, as an architect, are you still qualified to lead a modern dev team? It's a tall order, especially if you have cross-skills.
- When was the last time you have written complex production code in this same space?
- How updated are you with new languages or versions?
If you have answered poorly (I haven’t impressed myself either!), do you have the bandwidth and focus at work and a personal urge and passion to catch up?
If no - strictly keep your old-school ideas to yourself and make way for the new generation of leads. Just having problem-solving skills without up-to-date tech skills, doesn’t qualify you to lead (if you knew better, it might be a solved problem in that technology already!). You will do more of a disservice to the team and take them behind many years, otherwise.
Which book would you imagine is the best to read in such an absurd time? I would imagine it’s Camus’ “The Plague” - though I would prefer to grab a paperback and not read an electronic copy.
Camus’ “The Stranger” had lingered on my thoughts for long, and perhaps I understood it better after I read his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” – wherein I got a clearer glimpse of his “absurd hero”, in his immensely powerful expression of stoicism in the face of an overwhelming and inescapable absurdity. It’s a different brand of stoicism from Viktor Frankl’s “Man's Search for Meaning”, wherein the author personally bears testimony to witnessing a handful few (including himself) discover meaning even in the worst of human circumstances. Camus’ stoicism stems from defiance and scorn, rather than as a response to/submission to a higher force.
As someone who would question and search for meaning in everything, these books held a strange appeal for me. You would be drawn towards the characters and be left wondering whether what you see is ultimate dispassion or ultimate passion - perhaps two sides of the same coin. And perhaps the ones who have mastered enough and are capable of the highest passions, are also the ones capable of the deepest dispassion.
Do read Camus, if you get a chance. :-)
Last week marked the 25th birth anniversary of #Java. I owe this language, and the JVM platform so much! I had professionally embraced Java by choice than by chance; by giving up my campus job in Mainframe (biggies don't care about a fresher's inclination). Rather than having to maintain COBOL for a living, Java gave me not just a good living but so much exposure to modern software development at large!
There is a wise saying that resonates deeply with me - "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." Having spent innumerable quiet and productive hours building software with Java, Scala and the JVM ecosystem at large; Java/JVM has taught me whatever I know of Enterprise Backend, Distributed Systems, and Big Data. It has taught me the joy of thinking, designing, and programming in OO and functional paradigms. It has also taught me what a thriving ecosystem and community can build around an open source platform (we moved to Amazon Corretto OpenJDK, when Oracle started charging for Java LTS).
I only hope I have earned a rightful claim to call JVM my home-ground, and Java my mother-tongue (though it's been more of Scala, of late). It's more of a hard-earned deep familiarity than any expertise I have a claim to.
Long live Java & the JVM! #MovedByJava #jvm
[Re-posted from my recently authored posts on LinkedIn]
Somewhat ironically mirroring real-life progression; I believe most people in career start off by suffering from near-sightedness (can't focus on far objects), and later develop long-sightedness (can't focus on close objects).
Both are vision problems; and a direct result of exclusively dealing with things too close or, too far off; at the neglect of the other side. Only a handful few of us, through conscious practice, learn to beautifully navigate back and forth as the situation demands. The lesser mortals (including me) need a "power correction", so that we can continue to "spot" and "see" the important things - be it close or far. Agree? :-)
Disclosure: Even with 15y+ of work experience; I am a self-confessed myopic always drawn to details, who wears big round glasses to see far off things. ;-)
Just like true players at heart, I believe, true practitioners in any field love to be on the ground up until the time they are either rendered unfit or, declared unfit to play the game anymore. Whereupon, they silently pack up and retire to the commentary box or to the gallery - watching and commenting about a game being played out at a far distance.
On and off, I get an opportunity to contribute to a high-end project with a steep "learning curve", in an IC role. Nothing pleases me more. I code in a high-intensity gym-mode, writing production-code perhaps no more than 1.5-2 hours a day; and still get considered "highly productive" in the team - a mode that can be sustained for such short bursts only, as I "burn" really fast. The rest of my working hours, I am quietly researching, learning, figuring out better ways to solve the problem, launching my code with a heightened pulse, watching and tuning how it behaves on the cluster, and attending highly focused discussions/meetings. But those 2 intense hours of execution, where "things just fall in place", make all the difference to my work and my day.
What does your most productive hour at work look like? :-)
It's been a long time since I had watched this brilliant talk by Rich Hickey, the father of Clojure, on simplicity in software. And his brutally honest talk still haunts me.
He starts by reminding you that simplicity is a prerequisite for reliability. I am sure it's a prerequisite for all other desired -ities as well, including agility.
He further clarifies that "simple" is objective, versus "easy" is subjective (a measure of your "familiarity" with something).
He talks of "essential/inherent complexity", which is inherent to the problem versus "accidental/incidental complexity" - the complexity that was not required to solve the problem in the first place - basically "man made complexity" through convoluted approaches taken to a simple problem.
He draws an interesting parallel between "trying to make sense of, and untangle complexity" and juggling; and the human limitations of even the most amazing juggler in the world!
As techies, we are naturally drawn to problems that are "essentially complex", as opposed to addressing technical debt of a massive scale. As an architect, how many hours do you spend addressing "essential complexity" versus "accidental"? #architect #simplicity #agility #technicaldebt #productivity
As we patiently wait in hope, and contribute our bit towards containing the spread of #coronavirus; if your weekends suddenly feel empty, here are some tips from someone who is a natural at being socially aloof, and finds the world way too chatty and way too busy for the value we create. :-)
I remember a line from a Christie book I can't recall right now - that "lazing is an art". Not everybody can do it well.
Sleep - If you feel tired, just sleep without an alarm. And without guilt. Weekend mornings don't necessarily have to start at 8 AM. Jab jaago, tabhi savera! ;-)
Marathon reading - Pick up an unread book from your shelf, and soak yourself in it.
Learn by doing - Learn by doing something you have not had time for.
Contemplate - Turn inward. Think and feel deeply about something important you only had rushed time for. Thinking, at least deep thinking, is ultimately a solitary and a no-rush process.
[Re-posted from my recently authored posts on LinkedIn]