Agent of Change

Had a talk with a friend about being an agent of change. In essence, what he said was true. I'm being too aggressive and radical in my approach. But I stand partially at fault. Part of the blame is theirs too.

I came in with great expectations. I mean come on, claiming to be the largest company in the field, they should be able to offer better than what they currently have. I was wrong. And they are wrong too. I should not have expectations that great and they should not have made the claim. They are actually manufacturing company that produces hardware products that targets the IT field market. So, they are not actually the largest IT company. They're not even an IT company in reality.

My second mistake is 'forcing' them. I understand that it's hard to have someone who is young in the field and yet telling you that they way you're doing it is wrong. But again, look at the context and the big picture and consider all the factor instead of what you've used to do. It is easier to produce a hardware instead of a software. Manufacturing hardware is just a matter of producing the parts, assembling it and testing it. I'm not saying that it is that easy it's just that producing software is far more complex and requires a paradigm shift. Software is far from being 'mechanical'. Software requires creativity and deep thinking. It's not something that you can just mindlessly assemble to mass produce it. Software itself does not even have the capabilities of being manufactured.

Well, I've nearly stopped complaining. I'm tired of talking ideas to people who aren't even passionate and care about quality. Most of the time, they just rejected it although I've proven that there's a way to do something better. To them, delivering functionality is more important as it generates income. True, but if your codes are crappy, who the heck wants to maintain it? "Corporate Inertia" is the term for this kind of behavior.

Flashed my Samsung Galaxy S with Doc Froyo 7.6.2

After waiting so long for the official Froyo to be available here in Malaysia, I decided to just get on with the European version. So last night, I flashed from WXJM1 (European version of Eclair) to a custom version of JPM (European version of Froyo).

The whole process was very easy although I did a small mistake that nearly gave me a heart attack - I bricked the phone, but I managed to recover. It's true that they say the phone is quite hard to actually brick it. LOL.

Now I'm testing out the lag fixes. currently using NoRFS + ext4 formatting but it seems that the battery drain is quite noticable. I've read that flashing SpeedMod kernel is enough rather than applying the lag fixes. Maybe I'll try that later.

Edit: Crap! just about 12 hours I flashed the custom Froyo, the official Froyo for Malaysia came out. zzzz

How do you use your social network tools like twitter/facebook/etc. ?

For me, in my opinion, I usually use it to describe the state of my mind, pitching my thoughts, ideas or interesting articles which again in my opinion are more appropriate to be shared with friends.

I'm writing this as I feel kinda really annoyed reading updates that are of little value such as what you've been eating or ranting about something without reason. I couldn't care less about what you eat whether it's delicious or nauseating. It just doesn't add value and a waste of time and network bandwidth unless you include the details on why it is delicious/nauseating and the location of the food joint. Now that, at least have some value to be shared socially and could be helpful.

So people, please at least post something useful and have value instead of some mundane general status update such as "am at <location>" or "<something/someone"> is stupid" or "eating <delicious/nauseating> <food name>". Elaborate them a bit like telling what's happening at the location, your reason for rating the food or why you think that something/person is stupid/good. Now that, I believe will add value to the posts/updates and will usually start some discussion. "Why would we need discussion on the update?" you might ask. Well, it is simple. It is not called "social networking" for nothing.

So people, update wisely or you'll just be labeled as another idiot spammer.

People behaviors are just intriguing.

Had a conversation with a colleague a few weeks before about software development methodologies. I find it funny how people tend to reject things that are new to them. Funnier thing is they even belittle something that they never even tried.

Seriously people, don't just say something bad just because you think it is but you never really experienced it. And please, those things that are new to you doesn't mean that it's actually really new. Probably, you were just too busy "chopping down trees" that you forgot to "sharpen your axe" or just don't have the time to go to the market and look if there are things that could do better than your dulling axe.

So please, keep updated with the current trends if you are really passionate about your job. You might find that there is this "chainsaw" thing at the market could help you way lot better than the axe.

I've been thinking.

Lately I've been reading a lot of books on business and investments. We're not getting any younger and time flies so fast that by the time we realized it, it felt like what happened months or years ago just happened yesterday. The conversation that I had with Clarice's dad during lunch at The Curve last week really made me having serious thoughts about really starting my own business. The future is full with uncertainties but still, there's no harm trying.

I've seen an heard a lot of examples of successful people. Sometimes what they all did is so simple but really profitable. My idea is to start my own software development company or software consultancy. I know that I'm far from being a real technical expert like my software development idols or those people from the other side of the world but analyzing the situation from the people around me at my current job, I guess I'm more than good enough for the local market.

The main thing that is bothering me right now is the main focus or direction of the business. What kind of industry should I be really concentrating? At the current moment, analyzing on the current local market, my eye is currently set on the local private health industry. I noticed that most of the clinics (except for the hospitals) that I went to did not really have a computerized system for patient records management and inventory management. It's 2010 and they're still based on papers and folders. It would be great if those data can be managed and retrieved easily. Inventory restocking could be done with minimal effort and patient records from the illnesses and insurance coverage can be retrieved a lot more faster

Maybe I should just talk to my personal doctor when I visit her next time..

It's been a while...

Since my last post.

So here's an update. I'm still stuck in HeshPee. The whole administration style still doesn't improve much and I've understand why my other colleagues just kept silent about it. Most of the reasons are because that they previously come from a local or Chinaman style company which squeezes you until you're torn and battered. So they found great relieve and are quite happy with the way things are done in here.

In contrast to them, nearly everything sucks for me as I strongly believed that all of us there deserves better treatment from the higher management. Although I feel that my reporting manager doesn't really help me, I know he's under pressure himself. The higher managements really do deliver great speeches and 'motivational' talks, I am not that easy to convince unless they really can prove that. For me, if you want people to trust you, you have to give leadership examples first. Don't ever give me the usual bullshit such as "If you are performing well, you will get greater rewards". Those kind of talks are nothing. Show me some leadership first and I will follow. If you only give that kind of talk and promises to me, I will only deem that you are just treating me as 'just another employee'.

I'm not going to continue ranting on the management issue. Now comes the issue with the job itself. This company bought me out and claims that they need my expertise in Java ASAP as it is mission critical. Bullshit! It's almost 3 months and what I found out is that this thing they're doing don't really need Java expertise. Someone with some experience in web development and not even strong in Java can do all of it in my opinion. The questions asked during the phone interviews that they conduct is really misleading. A person will think that the questions asked regarding the technology are really going to be used in the project-which is far from being the truth. There's no EJBs in here, no Hibernate, no Struts/Spring/whatever framework. It's all tightly coupled and I would say that we're under the mercy of Intershop-the company that created the platform that we are building on. There is nothing on the web that really could help us, only marketing bullshit that goes as Intershop (self claimed) offers the largest and the best e-commerce platform in the universe. yeah right.

I just can't wait to get out of this hell hole.

My take on HPME and SLIM

so today, I finished one of six course of HP's so called software development methodology which is SLIM. The whole training course reeks of waterfall methodology. Always talking about processes and tools and how those tools helped them to save time and budget. In my opinion and observation, those metrics that they used are so shallow and there are a lot of possibilities on how they could arrive to the conclusion.

Which makes me wonder did they never read those books written by those famous and successful software developers? for example, The Mythical Man Month which explains extensively on why we should not add more people to an already late project.

They mentioned I the training course that when they implemented SLIM, the numbers of defects went significantly down. But as I observed from the slides, that was in the last phase which could easily mean that logically most of the other requirements have already been met successfully so why would they need to change the source code further? And regarding the so called work life balance can be easily achieved if the whole organization implements agile and lean methodology at the first place. Agile and lean protects the developers from unnecessary problems and allows them to focus more on developing the product.

On a side story, a senior colleague warned me that I'm under serious scrutiny as the manager often saw that I'm on facebook 'all' the time. Did they never heard of focus and time management techniques such as the pomodoro technique? I guess that comes naturally when you stay too long in a traditional waterfall management.

Conclusion: waterfall is evil and should be ceased from practice. Adopt the Agile Methodology today!

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Hey dumbass!

Bloody hell! Stop posting comments in chinese and stop trying to promote your stupid porn site will ya? Better if you just stop visiting my blog. Sorry to say, you and your chinese porn site sucks! Now just go to hell!

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Well, whatever.

This new company that I serve is seriously messed up. Too many things that I'm not satisfied with to list here. I mean come on! It's been nearly a month since I worked here but I still don't have access to too many stuff that I should already have access to. The active id for example. Why the heck do I need to request access for it twice? And about the claim for my employment buy out process, why the heck does it says that I haven't keyed in my bank account details yet when I already keyed it in 2 days ago? Why do those people in india have to key in my bank account to another system? This is so inefficient and stupid.

You tell your employees that you value them but these things that you're doing really contradicts to what you just said. I really don't get why a lots of people wants to work here.

This place is so overrated.

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The grass aren't always greener on the other side..

It has been a week since I've joined this new organization. There's a lot of things that I am not satisfied with how they do things. They definitely could have done it better judging from the fact that they have the time to surf the net for non job related purposes. I only received my ID after a week of doing nothing. They gave me the laptop since the first day, but in order to activate the laptop, I need to have my ID and I've been carrying the machine around for a week without being able to use it. Talk about inefficiency.

I got cheated by the HR too. They mentioned that the Annual Leave is 15 days. But they never mention that there is about a week of forced leave during the end of the year for business closing because of Christmas. I don't celebrate Christmas and I do not need 1 week of holiday for it. Talk about being honest.

They promised me that the job will be as interesting and as challenging and the work environment would be as exciting as what I had in my previous company. But just after a week of being here, I don't feel excited at all, I found out that the job doesn't really need my deep technical skills and I heard from one of the colleagues that there will be no real programming task as the framework that they are using are already catering for that via the use of templates and what we are going to do are just plumbing. I really wonder why do they really need people with my knowledge around. Now this is just boring.

They told me that the organization have their own version of development lifecycle which is a mixture of Waterfall and Agile methodologies. I seriously went 'WTF?'. Those two cant even mix together as both are of different ideologies and different focus. Fine, they are derived and incorporated from Agile but seriously, you can't just say that you are using Agile. Adopting from Agile doesn't make it an Agile! and just by a glance I can tell that they are going against all four points of The Agile Manifesto. So, tell me, how can you say that you can call it Agile when you are going against the manifesto itself? Now, this is getting annoying.

Well, now, all I could say is I wished I never did all of this. I miss all the things that I enjoyed previously. I miss working with people that are smarter than me.

Well, lesson learned: no matter how big and prestigious is the organization, all of it are just talk unless they can really prove it. I guess the much more fatter pay doesn't really guarantee happiness at work. Well, I'm going to give it a chance and challenge myself whether I can change the mindset of at least my designated team. It's hard to work with people that doesn't share the same passion on software development.

I guess it is time..

to make the move.

It's been wonderful, colorful and beautiful. Going back a year before, I was really eager if I can go due to some difficult situation. But due to a difficult situation too, I am unable to leave. Forced to stay and face it. For a year, I endured the battle. I had my victory, I had my losses. I gained and lose comrades along the way.

I love the support and understanding of my leaders and comrades. I love the facility. I love the atmosphere. I love the fun that we all had along the campaign. Alas, the battlefield is still not to my favor. I felt out of place. I felt like a burden to my comrades. Although they told me it's alright, I still feel bad about it. I've done my best. But it seems that even my best is not good enough. Though my leader told me it's good to see that I'm getting better at things, I am still dissatisfied with myself. I wish I can do better. Still, I continue to endure and do my best to improve.

It's not that I'm saying that most of it is bad for me. I've learnt a great deal while serving the organization. I know now that I'm better and stronger than I was before. And though the battlefield was not in my favor, there was a lot of things that I've learned from mine and other's  mistakes and now, I know what to focus for in the future. I learned to trust people, and honor people's trust in me. I've made a lot of friends, much more than I ever had from the organizations that I previously served. I even found someone special while serving. For all of that, from the bottom of heart, I would like to thank everyone in the organization.

I have been seriously considering. Contemplating for 2 weeks. It's hard but eventually, I'll have to decide. And this time, for real, I choose to leave.

Thank you all for the best 1.5 years of my life.

What is wrong with university students nowadays?

Seriously, aren't you at least feel even the slightest shame when you post to forums asking freelancers to do your assignments or even worst your Final year project?

If you can't even be honest and professional about your current job (being a student that is) then just quit your studies. Don't waste your parents money or burden yourself with study loans.

I don't know about what others think but personally, do not ever ask me to do your projects/assignments no matter how much you offer. You know what? assholes like you guys are the cause for the deterioration of a university's image and make other honest people lives harder after graduation.

Seriously, I hope you guys just end up as pathetic as this one spammer that never fails to spam my comments with his stupid pathetic chinese porn site.

Frustrations.

It's been three months of no actual news. Well, here I am again. Lots of things happened but let me just keep most part of it to myself.

I am still in the same company. Did not make the jump. Decided to refuse the offer from my ex-supervisor and the other company failed to get back to me on the offer letter. Asked my friend about it and he told me their HR dept are run by dumbasses. Well, I didn't know that my current income is near the limit for the post in most local companies. Did not know how they actually calculate that but in my opinion, if your employee benefits package falls short and you would say that the compensation I request for that is too high but seeing your upper management drives luxury cars, boasting that your company is listed in Fortune 500, I will conclude that your company aren't that great as you did not value your employees that much. There's no such thing as cheap but high performing workers. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys. My demand's too high? please evaluate your whole offer package against what I'm earning now. Experience and skills doesn't come cheap yo. It's not like I plucked the numbers from the sky. And so, I'm, going for other companies that can offer better and currently, there is this one of the giant MNCs that seems to be chasing me and my colleagues as we have quite the largest number of highly talented Java developers. Got a face to face interview on lunch time tomorrow. Had a phone interview on last Thursday which they asked me if I was googling the answers (yeah right, as if answering phone interview questions at my own desk is convenient with people all around you listening, I had to do it in the pantry as my battery is low and the pantry is the most private place that has a power point). The best news is, their project is web applications. That is relieving enough. I really need a break from this crazy desktop applications projects.

The govt keep on claiming that the economy is getting better but I would definitely disagree. Indeed that the MYR is getting stronger with the exchange rate being USD 1.00 = MYR 3.18. Yes, purchasing power for foreign items are increasing if you are buying over the internet but, for items that are available locally, the prices will never go down and the people's income wont be increasing either. It's one of the sad part of living in Malaysia, where the political leaders are always power hungry and full of corruption shit. Even the news reports that surveys found that MYR 3K is just barely enough to survive in the city of KL. I wish I could get to work overseas. In my views, out there is definitely better than here.

On another story, there's nothing much to say. The world is never fair. Life is never fair. And most of the times, I wish that..sigh..just forget about it..

...

I wish I could make it disappear..
I wish they would understand..

I've walked this far..
I've worked hard to rebuild..

but now I have to let it all fall..
wasted, broken, torn, shattered..

once more my life in shards..
battered heart turns to dust..

once more...
I long for eternal darkness..

Hey Spammer!

YOU! yeah, you the one who spammed my comments of my posts with your pathetic Chinese porn site links.

I don't even have the slightest interest in your dumb site so stop spamming me with that stupid site of yours.

So get the eff out of my site you pathetic loser!

The Unforgiven

New blood joins this earth
And quickly he's subdued
Through constant pained disgrace
The young boy learns their rules

With time the child draws in
This whipping boy done wrong
Deprived of all his thoughts
The young man struggles on and on, he's known
A vow unto his own
That never from this day
His will they'll take away

What I've felt
What I've known
Never shined through in what I've shown
Never be
Never see
Won't see what might have been

What I've felt
What I've known
Never shined through in what I've shown
Never free
Never me
So I dub thee unforgiven

They dedicate their lives
To running all of his
He tries to please them all
This bitter man he is

Throughout his life the same
He's battled constantly
This fight he cannot win
A tired man they see no longer cares
The old man then prepares
To die regretfully
That old man here is me

Never free
Never me
So I dub thee unforgiven

You labelled me
I'll label you
So I dub thee unforgiven

Crossroads II

It's actually really tough to make a decision when the outcome is no longer a simple count size of 2.

What lies before me is quite difficult to weigh. Both with it's pros and cons and it seems hard to forfeit one path to pursue the other path.

One path is totally in my current interest. Both are actually in the list of my goals just that the other path was calculated to be not in the near future, but it seems that I reached both of them rather earlier than what I've pre-calculated and that is the dilemma I'm facing right now.

The first path, time flexibility and feeds my insatiable hunger for knowledge. The second path, power will already be at my command but of course, with responsibility and commitment. And both of them beckons me to choose either one.

I was set for knowledge, but the other path calls that I already have more than enough to be ready and that I will be most welcomed to walk through it should I choose to do so but the path won't be open for long.

"God never changes the state of a people until they themselves change their own situation." (Al-Anfal:53).

It would not be possible for me to reach this point in life, unless the above is true. Thank you Allah, for the blessings that you bestowed.

Crossroads

Sometimes I wonder how did I manage to hold on doing things that are not really of my interest. It's kind of puzzling myself. Well, I guess it could be because of the atmosphere, friends and colleagues.

December last year was real intense pressure that I ever felt. Going back to the office and face the shear terror and frustration of debugging someone else's messy code after a lot breaks in between surely kills my spirit.

And I reached my breaking point.

But somehow, it felt heavy to do this. Part of me struggles to break free. Another half wishes to stay and hope that it would somehow will turn out better.

But then, one by one, my comrades decided that it is also time for them to go off on their course for a better future. Memories are beautiful aren't they. I guess I have to firm my resolve then.

Cheers for friendship, memories and the future.

Silver linings..

This is my 1st post in 2010.

Nothing much happening except for the increasing level of stress and frustration. Job related especially. A hell lot of things happening currently that made me feel this way. I really hate changes or introduction of new stuffs that is required to be in the delivery of the product at the last minute. They should know that it is a very bad practice to do so as it causes unrest among those whose work depends on each other.

Another issue is if you are the one that worked on that particular task that introduced a new problem. You should be the one responsible to fix it. You are not supposed to pass your own mess to another and then keep on asking the person to settle it as soon as possible. Especially if the thing that you call working piece of code can be classified as not just spaghetti, but with shitballs too. Yeah you claim that it has all that nice pluggable features yada yada blah blah blah so on and so forth but does it ever crossed your mind that the thing should be simple and just get the job done? Have you ever heard of the principle of YAGNI?(You Ain't Gonna Need It). It's pointless to OVER ENGINEER something that could be done with just something simple. Be pragmatic about it please.

Anyway, rantings aside, I've decided I should leave soon. Sent my details to a friend and hope that his company will get back to me ASAP. They're working on web and enterprise applications development for a well known organization which sounds very interesting (Of course as my interest area is in the web and enterprise applications). Just hope that they wont suddenly start developing desktop applications as this is the thing that drives me crazy everyday. The most appealing part is that the work hours is super flexible. I just need to be at the office or site if there is a meeting or getting new task or delivering completed task. That way, I can work from anywhere I want. All these while I imagined myself working at my own pace and at any place that I wanted to. Starbucks?Coffeebean? McD? or just anywhere with an internet connection and a conducive environment. Mobile office for the win! As long as I can deliver, they promised they wont bother. Who needs Annual Leaves that way? Sounds really cool. But he mentioned that the other benefits that the company offer are sucky especially on the health and hospitalization coverage.

News flash! got a message in Facebook from my ex-supervisor during my industrial training at Celcom. He got one position for a System Analyst. We chatted a bit a few hours ago and he explained the responsibilities of the position. The person who holds the post shall be involved in the design of the system but NOT involved in the actual development? From the way it sounds, it's more like being a Product Owner to me. That would be cool. And he said that my expected remuneration is quite okay. The downside is, from past experience, commuting to work is horrible and work time is not that flexible. And I hope that if I ever offered the position and decided to take it, will it ever have something to do with coding? If not, that I might miss the joy of code writing.

Kinda confused on these two places. Don't really know what I want now. But anyhow, I'm grateful and happy. It's true then that reward came to those who persevere and patient.