A young engineer I met last week asked me “Sir, you have had an impressive career since the time you left college . Did you always ace every job interview? ” That question took me back a couple of decades and I realized I only aced one from the first four interviews – which was…

This weekend I ran into an unusual problem – I did not have a single book to read . To the best of my recollection, I have never had this situation in my adult life . Now – the rational thing to do would be to get a book on kindle . But that’s not…

Pressure is a fact of life – especially so in businesses. You cannot eliminate it, but you can probably minimize it with good preparation and training and so on. But whatever you do – you are bound to end up in high pressure situations from time to time. It could be your boss promising more…

“Football is two things. It’s blocking and tackling. I don’t care about formations or new offenses or tricks on defense. You block and tackle better than the team you’re playing, you win.” – Vince Lombardi Just like in football, there is a perception that blocking and tackling has no glamor and it is beneath us to focus on those activities…

Yesterday evening, while flying from PHX to JFK, I had a chance to read this excellent blog by Arun Murthy . If you have not read it yet – pls read it first before you read my rant below. As always – these are strictly my personal views . First – I think Arun is…

Having “Chief” in your title is pretty awesome . I am friends with several people who have “Chief” in their title and they are rightfully proud of it – and I am very proud of them for getting to those important career milestones. I have my own ambitions on this matter – some day I…

Over the last few days – I had multiple conversations about different aspects of anxiety in the work place . I also chimed in on a couple of threads in social media about it . So when I woke up today – I felt like I should share some thoughts about how I deal with…

The smart people that I listen to have been saying for some time that I should think about the issue of “work life balance” more as work – life integration and it will be easier to make sense that way . Their infinite wisdom was that I will find a lot of useful things that…

It was August 9, 1999 when I left my home in a train for Mumbai with a suitcase I borrowed from my aunt . I was home sick within about twenty minutes into that two day train ride, but also very excited to join TCS as a trainee in their Borivali campus – called the…