Posted: July 21st, 2010 | Author: Sudhir Upadhyay | Filed under: Musings | No Comments »
I’ve been using Flipkart for ordering books for almost a year now. Their service has been exceptional, books have discounted price and most of the time, I have received books with under 36 hours.
However, recently when I used Swaroop’s Book price compare tool, I decided to buy a book from InfiBeam as the price was less than any other book shopping portal. The book was promised to be delivered in 5-7 business days, however, after 6 days of my order, I get the below e-mail from InfiBeam.
Due to an unusually high volume of orders we have run out off inventory for the following items. We have tried our best to source the inventory but are unable to do so at this time. Hence, we will not be able to fulfill the above items. The cost of these items including any promotions & gift certificates have been reverted to your account / bank account / credit card. Please allow 3-5 days for the refund to get processed from your banks end.
* Wellsprings: A Book of Spiritual Exercises
The book in question was published in 1986 and I don’t see any reason for “unusually high volume” for this book. And after 6 days of order, Infibeam realizes that the book is out of stock.
Recently, I was looking to order Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh. Flipkart was accepting pre-orders for book, however, InfiBeam claimed to deliver book in 4-5 days ( The delivery time was different in three different place varying from 1-2 days to 4-5 days). Excitedly, I ordered book from InfiBeam, however, after 2 days I got a call from InfiBeam that because of some bug in their system the order was accepted and the book is not available. It cannot be delivered as it has not been released in India yet and would take another 15 days to deliver the book.
This was consecutive second disappointed experience from InfiBeam in two months.
After these two incidents, I’m sure that I’ll stick with Flipkart even if InfiBeam offers more discount on books.
Posted: July 12th, 2010 | Author: Sudhir Upadhyay | Filed under: SAP/Unix | No Comments »
Installing SAP NetWeaver Sneak Preview (NSP) on a Windows machine requires a lot of patience and luck. Gingle on SDN Network has published a series of blog posts which ran for several weeks. He has covered installation in great details starting from installation to configuration of TMS and applying support packs.
Below are the links for his blog posts.
Give it a shot with these steps and all the best with your installation.
Posted: May 27th, 2010 | Author: Sudhir Upadhyay | Filed under: Musings | 3 Comments »
It’s not very long ago, I wrote a blog post about moving on and here I’m writing it once again.
After almost 3 months of joining Capgemini India, I’m quitting my position. I will join MphasiS, an HP company, starting next week.
My short stint here has been a real pleasure. I’ve met some wonderful people and it’s a little unsettling to quit a company after joining in couple of months. In hindsight it’s not one of the best decisions I have made, however, I do hope that after couple of years, I would be able to connect the dots looking backwards.
I will be moving to Pune after living for more than 4 years in Mumbai and will be devoting time side-by-side to my entrepreneurial dreams as well. Let’s hope for the best.
It’s time to move on, time to get going
What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, babe grass is growing
It’s time to move on, it’s time to get going
Posted: April 12th, 2010 | Author: Sudhir Upadhyay | Filed under: Musings | 1 Comment »
No! I’m not an engineer
Yes, although, I am working in IT but I’m not an engineer. I know engineer are different breed, they save world by coding and working in IT. But I’m not engineer. I’m a simple-plain just another computer graduate working in IT.
I know for a fact it’s not at all fashionable to be in IT industry without a B.E./B.Tech badge. People get surprised and sometimes shocked that a person like me is sitting among them who is not an engineer and he is as good, if not better, as them.
I was an average student during my schooling days. I did want to join engineering college like everyone else. I did not want to do it because of my interest in it but because every other person in my class was trying for it. however, I realized that it was something which was not meant for me. I just didn’t feel the need to get an engineering degree. I did not even appear for a single entrance test for engineering and ended up getting computer science graduate degree.
Is it really required to get an engineering degree to work in IT? I mean I have seen all sorts of engineer (chemical, mechanical and even civil engineers) working in different roles in IT. I really don’t understand what problem the mechanical/chemical engineer is solving by coding in Java/PHP or administering the Oracle database. Is this what he has got education for?
With all due respects to engineers, there are more than approximately 3500 engineering colleges (couldn’t find an official figure on AICTE website) and these days one can get admission easily in any Baankelaal Chavannichhap Engineering College, which might have setup of few acres in the far most outskirts of city with almost no infrastructure and most of the faculties comprising of old students. Need not to say, the quality of these engineers is not very reliable. In 2004, India produced more than 450,000 engineers out of which 31% were Computer engineers. But are these engineers employable? Answer is a clear no.
These engineers will have to go through a rigorous training of 2-3 months in the company and then only they will be somewhat productive after signing the service level agreement of 2 years, in most cases. And trust me on this, for these kind of thorough trainings you don’t have to be an engineer.
I’m not saying that guys with degrees like MCA are directly employable, however, they have better understanding of computers and their learning curve would be shorter as compare to a mechanical/chemical engineer.
So, It’s not the degree what matters. It’s the attitude, knowledge and skills that matter. No doubt that engineering degree would put you in job queue ahead of few not-so-cool computer graduate like me but it would definitely not give you that extra edge while working. You have to prove yourself.
P.S: This posts is not at all talking about engineers from IIT/NIT and such elite colleges, this post is about engineering colleges in every nuke and corner of every city.