The sandwiched generation. The best generation!

Cucumber-Mint - the tastiest sandwich in the world!

Last week, we were at the Bellarmine Speech and Debate team banquet, where we heard a great student speech, in which Mr. Rogers (of the TV show) asks each member of his audience to take a few silent moments to remember who made them the special (imperfect, but unique) person they are.

I remembered my parents, who are responsible for who I am and where I am today.

Being in Silicon Valley during the most vibrant technology era in humanity offers us absolutely unique perspectives and opportunities, while also throwing challenges our way as first generation immigrants from a distant place.

Being a first generation immigrant, we’re caught in a middle ground between who we are and who we (really) are. Or who we were and who we are. Or who we are and who we’re going to be. I’ve just crossed over in terms of spending more of my life in the US than in India. India still means a lot to me, but in day-to-day happenings, e.g., elections, business changes, etc., I’m not impacted - it’s not personal any more. My roots are there, my life is here, my parents there, my children here, my heart wanders there, my mind stays here. My citizenship has flipped, but my accent hasn’t. Proud of India’s accomplishments, derisive of the system, politics and corruption, yet hopeful of what India will become.

We’re bound by old traditions, but liberated by free thinking and the worlds we’ve been exposed to, starting with a liberal upbringing. Actually, it is not my son who is the American Born Confused Desi (ABCD) - I am the Indian Born Confused Indian-American!! The kids are actually reasonably clear in that their ties are just to us, not to a faraway country they were born in. I have half-baked ties to my relatives, even to those I was reasonably close with during my childhood. The kids have just a few clear relationships, and they seem pretty matter-of-fact about them.

My identity is like that blurred face in the airport scan. I feel like I’m on the Berlin wall, while someone’s pounding on both sides to bring it down - I don’t even know which side I’m going to land on. Maybe I don’t really care.

I’m the spicy mint chutney in a sandwich with wheat bread on one side and white on the other.

For my children, the extended family just got an order of magnitude smaller. They don’t enjoy the relationships that we’d have otherwise nurtured - their grandparents are not a strong force in their lives. Our family is so small out here! I have to PLAN to be with my parents!! That’s sad!

Now, for the good part!

There’s nothing like living in a sunny part of the world with the best technology minds in the world (yes - most of them are indeed working on making you click more on ads :-)). Technology is moving so fast that I’m almost obsolete before I write my next blog post! We’re not just consumers in this new connected world, we’re the ones creating it!! That makes us a special generation!

The best part - I can enjoy gooseberries and mangoes as much as I do crunchy persimmons, and salt-rimmed margaritas and caipirinhas just as much as a masala-chai(at different times :-)), crepes as much as masala-dosas, kababs as much as sushi. That makes me a special generation.(I still don’t get sauerkraut and tripe!!) I no longer need to stare at someone because he or she is from a different place - I stare at myself in the mirror and wonder where I’m from.

I've taken salsa lessons, been a soccer coach to kids from all parts of the world, watch football and basketball (and the Sharks choke every year on ice in crystal clear HD). I can watch Rahat Fateh Ali Khan in concert, followed by U2 in a few weeks. I can appreciate ghazals and the magic of Bollywood music, while also tuning in to classic rock and rap and Lady Gaga and ... Friday(that's talent!) I can choose to ski or go the beach this weekend (or watch TV!). You can do some of these things, but not all of them unless you are in the right place, like Silicon Valley.

I can appreciate a variety of things, because of where I am, and the generation I belong to. The next generation will never understand the magic of Kishore Kumar or Jagjit Singh. My kids have lost the ability to relate to good Bangla folk music, or even western music from the 80s and 90s (Michael Jackson?). I don't believe this is just a generational thing, it is a timing issue - we’re the right generation. The next generation will not appreciate the automatic respect we have for the earlier generation - the appreciation of hard work and experience and integrity and loyalty. Ask yourself how long you’ll work for a single company!

Yes, each of us brings a uniqueness to the world, to the neighbo(u)rhood, as stated by Mr. Rogers. But our generation, and our first-generation status in the sunniest part of the world brings a certain uniqueness to our lives.

Am I a citizen of India? A citizen of the US? A citizen of Silicon Valley?

I am a citizen of the world!

It’s all about the farmers!

Flying out of Bangalore, Silicon Valley of India, last month, I saw patches of coconut trees and other patches of green around the airport. Farmers! Those of you who know India will realize that those fields are … history! The farmers who own that land probably have their uncles in the state government, and will make serious money selling their land to developers, or to the government over the next few years! For all we know, those acres were doled out to the right relatives by the politicians who knew where the airport was going to finally land!

Anyone who knows India knows how, over the years, it was the landowners (the zamindars!) exploited their way to riches and power. Although they did not pull the plough, they were in the position to sell the produce of the real-estate.

My parents' current flat in Bangalore is on land that was a paddy field when I used to go to high school. Paddy farmers moved up to real-estate farming, selling flats! It’s all about farming your real-estate!

If you know anything about parked domains, you know that it is big business, where the landlords of the domains make money off ads when people arrive at these sites from various referrers.

Have a good domain to sell? iCloud anyone? That’ll be $4.5 Million. Cash! The opportunists who buy up domain names are called cyber-squatters for a reason! The benefits of land-grabbing in the real virtual world.

Shelter in the past was where you lived - home - with a roof over your head. Today, it’s where you live on the web. This is why I pay more to my Internet provider than my utilities company! The expensive real estate is those pixels between the search box and the search results on Google, or the strip of ads on your Facebook page. There are always vendors hawking their wares where you live. They know you live there, and you’ll be back.

The smart farmer will figure out how to fertilize the land so the yield is higher. Plant strawberries with other trees and you’ll have more to sell at the famers market on Sunday. Plant richer ads on the web page that you’ll be at, and that’s fertilizer for the online world. Make your home an estate, where your friends can live, and there’s more fruit to be purchased! If you don’t have enough land for your friends’ (updates), you can always plant other fruit - some other lucrative offers.

It’s all about the fertile land. That’s where the trees grow (or buildings! if real-estate brings more than flowers or tomatoes - what the heck!). It’s where the famers go, where the market makers go, and the customers too. It’s no wonder that all the fishermen go to the fish market! You’d think they don’t want to sit next to each other and compete ... they do, since that's where the customers are!

It’s all about the right space. Let’s Face it! It isn’t My Space - it’s the landowners’ space!

Big company … small company?

My life in bags!!

Ok! So I’ve worked for several companies so far, and they range from big to tiny - conglomerates to mid-sized companies to startups. My roles have seen the gamut - from research to development to product management, driving vision to building prototypes, mulling architecture to evangelizing technology, coding JSPs to creating sites for internal communications, meeting customers to writing blog posts. Jack of all trades, master of some!

There’s been a common thread - the need to have impact - help move the needle of technology in some tangible way, or impact the search experience for users on the web or within the enterprise or try to create a new paradigm that changes how we work/play.

A question I'm asked is - which is better - large or small company? What are the pros and cons?

First, let me say that with every organization, there’s something to learn - what to do, and very often, what not to do. I try to take that with me wherever I go, so as I get older and wiser (dumber and less skilled?), these lessons can help me become more effective (tolerable?). Some things, I don’t seem to learn - like managing up! Maybe it’s not in my DNA. BTW - that’s a mandatory skill for success anywhere :-)


The biggest advantage to working for a big company is that you have access to contribute towards changing the world in a significant way, sometimes making tech. history. 

When you’re contributing (even in a miniscule way) for the world to watch IBM’s Deep Blue beat Kasparov, or serve the Olympics results on the web for the first time (Atlanta 1996), there’s no feeling like it! I still cherish those projects. Before the Olympics site went live, I remember personally bringing down IBM.com to upgrade it  with our research software (Network Dispatcher) (to prepare for the expected surge in referral traffic from the Olympics site) - 2 hours became 4 and I was sweating, since the web server logs were stalled instead of running like a torrent. The folks on the Watson team are feeling that exhilaration of the Jeopardy achievement now, and it will last them throughout their careers! The folks at Twitter and Facebook will forever cherish their role in the transformation of the middle east! 

When you launch a feature on Yahoo! or Google.com, you know that you’re impacting millions of people in a very real way. People think you have something to offer when you speak at conferences. You meet large customers - brands you hear about everyday. Your product is powering their websites and intranets, and you’re reaching into their everyday lives and touching their users. For me, it is deeply  gratifying to work on products that power FIFA.com or the NY Times or Starwars.com.


Now - what about smaller companies? There’s a huge thing going for them - you own the destiny of the company. You’re not a cog in the wheel - you are the wheel! You are driving from idea to product, design and architecture, and you’re probably also the person selling the idea to your CEO/CTO and to your customers. You own the budget, you are responsible for delivery of product, and the primary owner of the health and happiness of your team.

In a startup, you are the company! You’re working on a mission, and sometimes, it is all-consuming. During the first phase of the company, once the core team is in place, all that matters is the product you are building - it is only after the first few months that mundane things like market conditions, market opportunities, burn rate (oops!), go to market strategy and the business model become top of mind. That adrenaline-pumping exhilaration is only possible in a startup. You’re doing the design, you’re doing the coding, you’re doing the data backup, you're writing the design docs and product documentation and your product is … finally … working!

With a startup, you’re not meeting daily with the big name customers. In fact, you have to repeat your company name more than once when someone asks what you do at a party. You’re not being given the tour of the newsroom at the New York Times, or getting an inside view at a museum in Washington, and you’re not meeting a customer who (really) cannot tell you what their top secret (really!!) project is.

In the lobby of the New York Times

With a startup, you’re not getting bags and shirts that have the Olympics/FIFA logo on them.

One of the nicer shirts in my collection

But … given a choice ... give me the exhilaration of the startup!