And Vijay Says…

I was in midtown NY earlier this week and had a coffee with a young immigrant colleague who recently moved there. She asked me “How did you manage to survive here for so long ? I can’t seem to stop tripping over myself every step” . So I told her how my first week in this country played out – a story that might resonate with many others who came to this country at a young age.

I landed here by an Air India flight from Mumbai via London to JFK . And then I had to connect from LGA to Denver , and then by road to Colorado Springs . I must have flown at best 4 times in my life at that time – and never in an international flight. I was 24 at the time .

When I picked up my passport , Visa and $200 from TCS travel desk in India – I got some minimal instructions on what to answer the immigration officer , a warning that my connecting flight is from a different airport and so on . I was also told that if anything is hard to understand in the new place – the best people to ask are the cops in this country !

So I landed at JFK – goosebumps and all that – and the first words I hear from the immigration officer were “Is there anyone left in your village back home or is everyone here already ?”. This was directed to the guy from Guntur ( also from TCS ) who was immediately in front of me in the line . Goose bumps left me in a hurry 🙂

I got out of the airport – and the first guy I saw outside was a friendly Indian guy who told me his name is Hari. His speech went like this “I can take you to LGA – and it will cost you $200. Good thing you saw me – else someone would have cheated you”. I already knew from my research that he is quoting a high amount and decided to walk to the cop who was standing 20 yards from where we were . From the corner of my eyes – I saw Hari running like an Olympic Sprinter. The cop helped me get a cab and it only cost $30 or so to get to my connecting flight .

By the time I landed in Denver , it was really late at night . My manager who was supposed to pick me up hadn’t shown up . I had his phone number – but couldn’t figure out how to call him . Out of nowhere, a Hispanic lady showed up next to me and offered to help . She bought me a coffee, and using the change she got from the cashier – she called my manager from a pay phone , yelled at him at the top of her voice, and gave me the phone . He gave me instructions in a sleepy voice on how to get to Colorado Springs . The lady had already left by the time I turned around to thank her . I am convinced to this date that she was an angel !

In my infinite wisdom, I rented a car – only to find that it has no gear and no clutch ! And I couldn’t figure out how to roll the windows without the manual rotary control either . To make matters worse – for a few miles I drove on the left side of the road till I realized people drive here on the “wrong side”. I drove the car over a median and found my way to Colorado Springs and on to the motel 6 . One thing I vividly remember was a stretch of road where the street names were Arizona , California etc. i was quite impressed that US was so neatly organized that all it took for me to drive to California was to take this well marked street 🙂 .

The receptionist – Mr Patel – gave me a little package with the key and some paperwork and all . When I reached the room , I opened it and found no key in that package . I went back and woke up Mr Patel one more time . He patiently walked me to my room and showed me how to use the key card – which was pure magic to me ! I also couldn’t figure out how to handle the shower to get hot water – so I took bath by filling the ice bucket with hot water from the sink 🙂

The next morning I could not return the car to local Hertz location – after seeing cars whiz past me at 70 MPH. I waited till evening for lesser traffic to get to Hertz, and the manager even kindly waived the late fees . On the walk back to the motel – I waited 15 minutes to cross a Street because I didn’t know I had to press a button for the pedestrian signal to turn on .

First three days, I survived on McDonalds burgers – till a colleague who had been in Colorado for a long time took pity on me and took me home for a home cooked meal . His wife – who cooked that meal – was the second angel I met in 4 days . I don’t remember her name unfortunately, but the ONLY thing I brought back as a gift for someone on my next trip back from India was a Saree for her !

After three days I called my mom in India and told her that USA looked like India – there is no snow like we had seen in movies . It was June ! Snow did come – heavily – in August and I quickly realized it is a lot better to see snow in movies as opposed to dealing with it every day .

Thanks to my dear friend Kasi for sharing this photo of my first snow in Colorado Springs outside our apartment.

That weekend – another colleague invited me and a few other newly arrived young guys to his apartment for lunch. While we were eating, the door bell rang. His wife opened the door and it was a FedEx driver with a package for Mr Stevens . He had the wrong address – so the lady helpfully told the driver “Sir, there are no foreigners here in this apartment . Actually I don’t think there are any foreigners here in this entire community . We are all Indians here” . I will never forget the look on his face 🙂

Few weeks ago, I had dinner with an old friend in India . He is not a technologist and doesn’t have any background in services . We knew each other socially through a common hobby. The last time I saw him was some 25 years ago when I was in college. He asked me what I do in my line of work and the simplest answer I could come up with was “I am a problem solver”. He quite innocently asked me “And are you any good at it?” . We had a good laugh over beers 🙂

The question has stayed on my mind since then . To know if I am any good at it – obviously I need to define what good looks like. So here is what I think what good problem solving looks like – and I would greatly appreciate it if you could add your thoughts and/or challenge my thinking

1. Picking the right problem to solve

We are not short on problems to solve and there isn’t enough time in the day to deal with every problem that comes our way. So it’s critical that we choose which ones have the most impact if we solve them . Often the challenge is to keep reframing a question till you come up with a version that can be solved meaningfully

2. Ownership (or passion?)

The acid test of ownership for me is whether the intent is to find a solution against all odds or to default to find several reasons why the problem can’t be solved . Problems generally don’t age well – so if we don’t tackle them early, we usually are just going to get more grief later. I am not sure if passion is a better term than ownership in this context . The trouble I have with passion here is that I think it often gets in the way of being objective . On the other hand – some of the best solutions happen ONLY because the problem solvers were passionate .

3. Understanding

The difficulty with understanding is not usually a lack of data – but more of our tendency to see only what we want to see. Ability to listen well, poke at it thoughtfully and transfer it to deep understanding is quite hard in practice .

4. Effective dealing with people

All problems have a people angle and people are complex beings. And most problems need multiple people to solve . Every problem gets harder to solve if the problem solver cannot bring together the right people and get them to contribute . With experience , most of us become efficient about doing this – email , conference calls , slack etc all help. But are we really effective though ?

5. Structure

While we all like one grand solution to each problem – the reality is that most problems have multiple solutions . What’s right for short term may not be right for long term for example . If we don’t have a framework ( like perhaps MECE ) to solve problems – it’s hard to know when to stop. The flip side issue is that every framework has limitations too and overlooking those can be disastrous in some cases . Net net – some framework is better than no framework

6. Knowing when to stop

At some point – all solutions have diminishing returns . This can come in many forms. A classic example is “premature optimization” – usually found in larger companies. They tend to build a sales and marketing engine , complex metrics etc before figuring out if there is market fit to begin with . It could also be that another problem with bigger impact could show up and take priority over what you are working on . The ability to stay objective is crucial here to avoid significant opportunity cost

I would really appreciate your views on this

Romeo and Juliet is a brilliant piece of literature and every time I think of it, I remember Juliet arguing “What’s in a name . That which we call a rose. By any other name will smell as sweet” . What Juliet did not say was that when it comes to those of us with very long names – the answer is EVERYTHING !

Last name was not a big deal at all when I was growing up in Trivandrum . Till I got out of college – I did not even have a real last name . It was just an initial V that I used – and that was common practice . My name was signed Vijayasankar . V . That V stood for Vijayaraghavan – which is my dad’s first name . There were no other Vijayasankars in any of my classes – and this never was a problem . My friends called me Sankar in school and VS in college . No one called me Vijay – ever !

My parents and grand parents had decided on my name after a lot of careful consideration . It’s a combination of the names of my paternal and maternal grandmothers. And it was – and still is – kind of a unique name . Normally it would have read Vijayashankar like it’s pronounced in Malayalam – but because of this truncation and concatenation of grad mothers’ names, and in the interest of not ending up with 13 alphabets in my name , it ended up being Vijayasankar . I have my paternal grandfather to thank for that part 🙂

Then I had to apply for my passport while I was in business school . That was the turning point. The dude at the counter insisted that initials are no good on a passport and that I should expand it to Vijayaraghavan. I was in a hurry and I agreed . What he did in the actual passport was that he made that my first name and my own name became my last name . For good measure he also had me convinced that this is how it was done for EVERYONE:)

The dude was not a total liar , as it turns out . I now know several Indian men whose names were butchered by the passport office . Several from Kerala have their dad’s first name as their first name in their passport 🙂

When I started in TCS – most of my fellow trainees were from the North (North of Kerala at least if not North of India ). They were the ones who started calling me Vijay instead of Sankar. It stuck and in a few months I started introducing myself as Vijay too 🙂

Finally came the time when I had to travel to USA. I remember the frustration of the CBP officer at JFK who let me in – she couldn’t make out which was my first name and which was my last name . Passports were not machine readable at that point . I nearly thought she won’t let me into the country 🙂

The next shock came in Starbucks in Denver, CO . My manager there told the barrista that my name was John – which always resulted in a big frown on her face ! I eventually started using VJ as my “Starbucks name”. I hadn’t known most of my life that everyone needs a Starbucks name 🙂

Along came an opportunity to live and work in Liverpool, UK . There – no one had any difficulty pronouncing my name . And there was excellent Indian food available all around. Yet I was in for my next “name experience”. We were building an extension to SAP for insurance and they needed a field to hold email address . My tech lead chose mine as the test case proclaiming “in the history of mankind , there hasn’t been a longer email id and there never will be” ! He was right of course and I have personally used it as the litmus test for a dozen projects after that 🙂

After the UK , I started in Los Angeles, CA on my next job . With that came the Spanish variable of my name problem . We had a lot of Hispanics in the team and they would call me VIHAYA ! Some would call me VIHAYA VIHAYA shortening my first and last names . Took me ages to find out that’s how they pronounce J

Finally there is the TSA . I swear I speak to them the most outside my own family given the amount of flying I do. Every week , they stare at the long string of letters on my ID at the airport for a couple of minutes . I am convinced they don’t read – they just count letters and verify it they way . Some tell me in an exasperated voice “it’s a very long name , sir”.

I respond “I blame the passport officer in Trivandrum”, and walk away enjoying their confused look 🙂

PS : hardly a week goes by without someone asking me about my looooong name . I wrote the whole story down so that the next person asking will just get a short link to it 🙂