The No Complaining Rule

On a lazy Sunday afternoon, my wife and I strolled into Barnes and Nobles in downtown Bellevue, just to get a glimpse of new arrivals and more accurately to get a coffee from Starbucks inside B&N. While sipping hot coffee, I went to the Business & Investing section to find this book "The No Complaining Rule". It was a very timely find. Off late I've been hearing a lot of constant complaints from my colleagues at work, especially the same damn thing again and again. It was like a constant nagging of a old imbecile lady, with really no substance at all. At first I thoughts these complaints were to vent their anger and are a fleeting emotions. Unfortunately they weren't.

As someone who does think about constantly improving efficiency of people and the team, I feel complaining to the extent you call out the problems is required. It is both cathartic and helpful to note down items that need attention and to be taken care of. However, just complaining alone isn't enough. There are enough people in the world with negative outlook, and I don't need my team to be one. I don't want people around me to be that either. I've consciously made decision to distance myself from such people in the last few years.

Now back to the book I started talking about. It is a fictional story of a lady who has a great career position but complains about little things, which becomes a habit thereby effecting her moods and performance. It is about how she, with advice from a sweet nurse, turns her life around and how things change for her over time. That one little advice is: "Do not complain! If you complain, add a statement which has a positive effect ." With this one piece of advice, her home life, her social life and her career take turn for better. And everything is rosy and happy ever after.

I have a few problems with such kind of books.
1. Author has just one point to convey to the readers: "Don't complain or add something to fix that complaint." The rest of the book is just a fictional story; in fact bordering a fairy tale
2. Author tries very hard to convince this is THE essential thing to go after
3. Life doesn't turn around and not everything falls right into its place, just because one person started this no complain rule.
4. $15 for this book is useless. May be worth $5 at most

Overall, I would say the point conveyed is very good: "Don't complain, but if you do, suggest something that fixes it", but I don't like the fairy tale used to convey it.

Now it is your turn to try out this rule and tell how it affected you! For me, I stopped complaining until I find a way to help the situation. Not many times I succeed but then it does help to keep positivity around me.

Analyze monthly expenses - know where your money goes!

This post belongs the series I am going to write for engineers who are just about to start their careers and/or have just started their career. The ideas discussed here are useful for others who are in their beginning years of investing and gaining hold of their finances.

To get hold of your financial life, you must first understand how your current spending habits are. Here I broke down expenses of a typical engineer. By typical I mean:

·        single

·        works full time (and often times, overtime)

·        not much partying on weekdays

·        eats lunch outside most of the days

·        weekends are for enjoyment

·        shares an apartment with one or two apartments

·        has a smartphone and a cable connection

·        drives to work about 10 miles roundtrip every workday

A typical monthly expense is shown in the table below. All numbers are in USD.

Food	310
Gas	134
Housing	675
Connectivity	120
Entertainment	89
Shopping	167
Travel	250
Insurance	69
Car loan	365
Total	2179

A pie chart of the expenses is given below:

Before we start talking about the numbers, let’s look at how I got them. 

I gathered the data from my own expenses during the first couple of years after joining my first job and also by talking to my friends who were in similar situations.  Your expenses might be different, but I think the percentages will come about the same. There are a couple of my friends who had student loans, which I didn’t include here. I need to gather more data before I can do that.

Now let’s look at the data in more details.

Housing (31%)

It is no surprise that housing is the biggest chunk of our expenses. No matter whether we own a car or not, no matter whether we party or not, we need to pay rent every month. Since most of my friends live in Bay Area, San Diego or Seattle, I only considered the housing prices in these areas. Since most of the engineering companies are in or around these cities (apart from Austin and Dallas) I suppose we can agree that this is a true representation of the housing expenses. A two bedroom apartment in these cities run anywhere between $1300 and $2000. Assuming you share the apartment with at least one person, the rent would come about $650. I have also added basic utilities into housing expenses.

Transportation (23%)

Car loan: Most of my friends bought a new accord, civic or Mazda when they started their careers. Some of them bought 1 or 2 year old cars. These used to cost just around $20,000. The loan amount I calculated is on $20000 loan with 4.75% interest rate. The monthly payment comes about $375. Currently I pay $365 towards my car loan. This puts car loan at 16% at the second place.

Gas: Assuming you drive about 10 miles per weekday and about 100 miles per weekend, you would be driving about 10000 miles an year. With an average mileage of 25mpg, it would need 400 gallons. With the current gas prices ~$4/gal it would be $1600 / year or ~$164/ month.

Food (14%)

Most engineers eat out almost every day at lunch time. Assuming each meal costs about $7 (almost the cheapest you could probably find in a food court, not counting for McDonald’s type fast foods), that’s at least $140 for lunches. Add your dinners, breakfasts and those weekend party dinners we go to, the bill came up to be $310 for me during the last year. My eating habits haven’t changed in years; so I assume I was spending more or less the same during my first couple of years in my career.

Travel (11%)

I am an Indian. I go visit my family once in a year mostly during Christmas and New Year given that we have about 15 days of vacation at office. This is typical of most Indian engineers. Each trip now a days cost about $1500. Add on the top of this the long road trips we make during all the long weekends, the hotel, car rental, gas for the car, food, etc and you would end up raking about $3000 a year just for the travel. I haven’t included the gifts we buy for our family and friends back home, but I figure $3000 for travel is a very good representative.

Connectivity (6%)

Everyone nowadays has a smartphone. In fact we are forced to buy a smartphone even if you want a decent looking phone. And it costs us a whopping $90 or so. Add your internet/cable bill split amongst your roommates and you are close to $120 per month on the connectivity. If you have ipad/kindle or such devices with 3G/4G on them, add $30 at least extra on it.

Shopping (7%):

I just pulled my last year’s shopping expenses to arrive at this number. You should know that I hate shopping. I probably go shopping 4 or 5 times a year. Please check your shopping habits to find out the number.

Entertainment (4%)

How about shooting some pool or going for bowling? These two used to be my favorite pastimes with friends when I was single and working late hours. Now I was not much into drinking and hence I should say my entertainment expenses are lower than most others.

Insurance (3%)

If you own a car, then you pay car insurance. If you don’t have employee provided health insurance, then you pay health insurance premiums. Some employers only pay partial premiums and employees need to pay the rest. I paid car insurance and also my health insurance premiums for 3 months. Your number might differ.

Now you might be asking yourself: “What is the point of all this analysis?” There is, in fact, a point to it my friend.

• It gives an insight into where your expenses go. 
• It shows how much money you need to be making, bare minimum, to keep up with your lifestyle. (psst… don’t forget taxes, but we will defer to another day).
• You can make an informed decision on setting your monthly budgets
• Check whether your intuition on your expenditure tallies with the reality of the numbers

We will look at ways to cut down these expenditure in another post. But for now, I encourage everyone to pull out one’s credit card and bank statements and construct your own monthly expense pie chart. Happy analysis! Leave a comment if your percentages differ significantly from what I showed here. Leave a comment if you have suggestions on reducing any costs.

Dos and Donts for newly joined employees

It is the time of the year when after years of toiling people graduate and are eager to join their jobs. First off, congratulations to all the graduates; you worked to hard to earn your degree; enjoy the moment.

Joining in a job has its challenges. New place, new people, no matter how talented you were in school, you would have to reestablish your identity. This post talks about a few DOs and DONTs to smooth your transition into a new company. Here we go..

Your job is NOT your life 

One of the most common mistakes new graduates do is to think job is their life. I've seen a many new employees working overtime, putting in extra hours to impress their bosses. This is a huge mistake. You raise the expectations from your boss. Your boss will expect the same commitment every time from you. You are now stuck for your career. If you cut back, it can be construed as slack. So think before you work too much on your job.

Your job is at most a part of your life. Job is your vehicle to get your life where you want it to be. Read this article to know how much your extra hours will be worth financially.

Don't be afraid to say NO to deadline

When your boss assigns you a task, don't jump right into it. First thing you need to negotiate is the deadline for the task. This is the first time your boss is working with you, hence he/she may not be the best judge of how much time you take on the task. When your boss sets a target date it is an estimate. He/she would really appreciate you if you are upfront and talk about the deadline, rather than come the day before deadline and say you cannot finish it. Negotiate the time, and once you do it, own the task and see to its completion.

Don't eat lunch alone

You are new to the company and the place. You need to make friends and learn about the place. What better way to do it than make friends with the folks already working there. Invite your colleagues to join you for lunch. Everyone has to eat, and they would welcome an invitation from a newcomer. They will be more willing to talk about their experiences. Take the opportunity to know about the team, its members, duties, tips on how to get more work done. Ask about the place, things to do, best places to eat, anything that comes to your mind. Bottom line : make friends, quickly

Learn or Perish
As a new employee your primary focus should be on learning the company culture and to enhance yourself with the toolset used and the technology used. I bet that not more than 30% of what you learned at school will be applicable at your job. A new job equals opportunity to learn new technology, new methods of analysis, new approaches to problems. Take the opportunity and learn or soon you will find yourself ignored by others. As a new comer you have an advantage of asking help from others. Since you just joined everyone will be willing to help you and teach you. As the time goes by, you would be stranded with less people willing to answer your questions. Moreover they would start judging you. The best time to learn as much as possible is right after you join. Do not procrastinate.

Take ownership of your work
This is very important. When you accept a task from your boss, own it. If you need other folks to help you, go ask for the help. Don't sit around and wait for others to fix things for you. You would face a situation where you would find a problem that is not directly under your responsibilities, but if not solved would direct affect your project. These are golden opportunities to shine in a company. It is how you handle these situations that determine how others perceive you. Own up, roll up your sleeves, tackle them and grab such opportunities by horns.

Be honest to yourself
Many a people tend to work only to impress their bosses and/or when it is time for a review. This is absurd. Don't fool yourself. Be honest. Don't slack off just because your boss isn't watching or it is not review time. A good boss will constantly monitor your progress. Don't worry about ratings, don't worry about hikes. Don't get caught in the rat-race of promotions. Do your best, learn as much as you can from your job and just be a better professional. Don't ever become complacent. The day you become complacent is the day you are done in a company.

Accept your mistakes
Don't ever make excuses for the mistakes you committed. Just admit you made a mistake and make a point not to repeat it. Do not open your statement with an excuse or an explanation. I would say even explanation at that moment will sound like an excuse. And for god sake, never say "oh! I dont know what happened, it used to work." Your boss will immediately know when you are making excuses and will sure remember to mention that during your performance review. And when your colleagues critique your work and give feedback, be open and accept it. Later sort through and figure out what is useful to you and what is not.

Follow office culture
Try to fit into the office culture. If the company culture is to dress up formally, then do dress formal. If it is casual, then wear casual clothes. If the office hours are flexible, then go at your own time. If the culture is to come and leave on time, stick to it. If your company frowns on using instant messengers and social networking sites, don't do it at office. In fact, reduce the amount of time spend on personal browsing, especially social sites like facebook and twitter.


I am sure there are other dos and donts, but I hope this list will get you thinking in the right direction. If you have any that you would like to share with others, please leave a comment.
Good luck with your new job!

Acknowledgements: Thanks to my friends who shared their experiences and advices especially to Kotesh Bandhamravuri & Suresh Sistla.

Is your salary hike worth the extra hours you put in?

As engineers starting our careers, we are all motivated to work hard and make a mark for ourselves. We are driven by various factors: the type of work we do, competitiveness, our desire to get ahead in the company, get promotions and salary hikes.  Whatever it is, we tend to work overtime and dedicate ourselves to our work. Companies reward us for our hard work and dedication with salary hikes, bonuses and potentially stock options. These are some powerful incentives that would make any person prioritize work over personal issues and put in extra time.

Managers and directors will tell you that the best way to climb up the ladder is to dedicate yourself to the company and work hard to impress your boss. It sure is good to impress your boss with your good work. However, before we dedicate all our time to the company, I think we should take a harder look at what the outcome would be.  As engineers we should take a look at each problem in an analytical way.  What would be our salary at the end of all the extra hours that we put in? Let’s look at that.

A good way to do that is find an engineer senior to you who you know is a star and find out what his/her salary increase is over the past two years. Now of course salary details are supposed to kept secret. However most people have no issues mentioning the % hike they got, without giving the absolute numbers. You can be assured in a typical engineering company, which most are multi-national company, the number your gather from your senior is what you are mostly likely to get, no matter how hard you work.

Talking with friends and seniors I know with stellar performance records, I was surprised to see how their salaries increased. Typically it is in the range of 2-3%. Of course they were awarded bonuses, but their base salary only rose by maximum of 3% , unless there is a promotion involved. By the way 3% is unusual these days; it’s more likely to be 2% or upper 1%s.

Let’s see what this salary increase does to your take home salary at the end of year. Before we get into analysis, here are the assumptions in the following charts

•  Base salary:  $75000 (a typical fresher’s salary in an electrical engineering company
•  401k contributions: 10% (a number that I am a proponent of. Reasons to come in another post)
• Lives in CA and pays both state and federal taxes
• Tax Filing status: Single
•  The tax calculations assume only standard deductions (pretty typical for a fresh engineer
• The tax numbers are taken from www.irs.gov and www.ftb.ca.gov for the year 2012
•  Net income is the income you are left with in your bank account after paying state and federal taxes, medicare and social security taxes.
•  Net income doesn’t include your 401k contributions. You cannot use 401k contributions until a few years anyway.
• Disclaimer: I am not a tax expert. The tax calculations were based on my understanding and using simple 1040 form.

Salary increase	New salary	Net Income	Increase in Net Income
0%	$  75,000	$  49,061	0
1%	$  75,750	$  49,453	$      392
2%	$  77,265	$  50,245	$   1,183
3%	$  79,583	$  51,456	$   2,394
4%	$  82,766	$  53,119	$   4,057

So taking a typical increase of 2% salary, you can see that your net income increases only by $1183. Over a year you spend about 1960 hours ( I am assuming you get 3 weeks of vacation) at your job. As you can see your hourly increase in pay is just about $0.60. The question you need to ask yourself is: do I dedicate my time to my company for a trifling $0.60/hr increase or shall I do something else with my time that would get me better than $0.60/hr.

We will explore the options to make more than $0.60/hr in another post. But for now, I think we can all agree that those extra hours you put in to impress your boss didn’t really make sense.

 

If you were wondering where your salary goes to, here is a pie chart of the pre-tax salary.

Should we rebuild Bamiyan Buddha's statues?

March 2nd 2001
The world stood helpless as the Taliban government started the destruction of Bamiyan Buddha statues first by using anti-aircraft guns and artillery and later using dynamites.  Despite the protests from Organization of Islamic Countries, which includes Pakistan, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, Mullah Mohammad Omar order the destruction of the site which was listed as World Heritage place by UNESCO. These destructions were later dubbed by many nations as "savage" and were condemned. Of the many statues that were destroyed, two of the more prominent ones are Vairocana and Sakyamuni, standing 55 and 37 metres (180 and 121 feet) high respectively. I fail to fathom how the hideous minds of these Talibs work.

The Place and its History
Bamiyan lies on the silk route, the main trading route between the east and the west. Until 11th century Bamiyan which lies in Hindukush mountain range was part of Gandhara kingdom. For those people who know Mahabharata, this is the kingdom where Gandhari, the wife of Dhritarashtra hails from. The legend has it that the then Gadhara is now what is called Kandahar.
Bamiyan is a very fertile land where culture, religion and Indian art were flourishing. The statues were built by Buddhist monks under Kushan empire during 6th and 7th century AD.
When Taliban took over Afghanistan, they started "cleaning" non-Islamic segments of the society. It banned music, sports, television and any form of communication with the world, there by pushing Afghanistan back into medieval ages. In the process, a whooping 400 clerics around Afghanistan voted that the Buddha statues were against Islam and should be destroyed. Despite international pressure to stop the barbaric activity, Taliban govt dynamited the place and grounded it to rubble.


Post Destruction Political Scenario
On September 11th, 2001, Osama bin Laden carried out an incredible attack on World Trade center that divided US (the entire world's, probably) history into two parts, pre-9/11, and post 9/11. US govt under George Bush vowed to bring Osama down. US started mobilizing its forces into Afghanistan and after years of battle drove Taliban govt out and reinstated a "democratic" govt. After 10 years of fighting, eventually Osama was gunned down during Obama's administration.
When the statues were destructed, a few countries like Japan and Sri Lanka came forward and pledged to restore them. In 2011, a proposal was put forth to reconstruct the statues out of the rubble. However it was turned out eventually citing the risks in the process.


To build or not to build
The proposal begs a very interesting question. What is history? Is history a study of what happened without trying to rebuild what was once there? Or is it restoring how things were at some point of time? In this particular case, the history is that there were statues in Bamiyan at one point and they were destroyed by Taliban. There are two schools of thoughts. first, which thinks the statues shouldnt be built since the history is that they were destroyed and hence be left as they are (destroyed) and be taught to future generation what a hideous thing the Taliban has committed. Second, which thinks the statues to be built to teach future generations on how they used to look like. Personally, I am with the first school of thoughts. History is what happened and should be left untouched.
The proposal put forth in 2011 argued that reconstruction of the statues will bring jobs to folks who are unemployed currently and will help Afghanistan with tourism industry. Without going into too many details, my take on this :
1. I think there are more important things to address currently in Afghanistan than to rebuild the statues.
2. Even if they construct the statues, with the current conditions and instability, I doubt how much tourism these statues will bring in, especially given their location which is remote.
3. Employment promised through the reconstruction can be brought in by reconstructing the broken infrastructure. So divert the funds from reconstructing the statues to other projects which help Afghanistan sustain the growth.

Today is March 2nd, 2012. I thought it would be apt to put down my thoughts on the anniversary of the statues destruction. What do you think? Should we build the statues? And what do you think about the timing of the proposal? Leave a comment with your thoughts.

Super short story :)

Today I challenged my wife to write a story with the following constraints:
Starting statement:
There are sometimes when a man gets so self-confident that he thinks he can get any
pretty girl he wants until he approaches her and she flashes her brilliant smile.

Ending statement:
He left the building flashing her the same smile as she flashed at him when he
approached her.

And here is what she came up with :) Short, simple and crisp :)



There are sometimes when a man gets so self-confident that he thinks he can get any
pretty girl he wants until he approaches her and she flashes her brilliant smile.
She was dressed in a killing red dress with a deep plunging v neck .Her blonde locks shimmering in the
lights she was drinking a martini topped with a red cherry .He could not stop staring at her and wanted
to try his luck that night.He starts to slowly appraoch her while thinking in his head how he could break
the ice .Should i say "you look thirsty", nooo but she already has a drink in her hand. Perhaps i should
start by saying how beautiful she looks, naa may be she heard that the million times. So finally he approaches her to get a glance at her pretty face only to his horror notices her moustache!
He left the building flashing her the same smile as she flashed at him when he
approached her.


Hahah! Good one Dumbu! :)

My thoughts on move to Seattle!

Its been about 4 months since I moved to Seattle from San Diego. I thought now is a good time to step back and reflect on my first four months here in Seattle area and write about what is good and bad about this place. Obviously when I first announced my decision to move here from San Diego, everyone thought I was nuts; to leave such a beautiful weather for what they claim to be crappy one. However, apart from that one thing no one came up with any other negative point about Seattle. Anyway, here is my list of good and bad about Seattle.
First lets look at the good:
Small
Even though Seattle is the biggest city in the pacific northwest, it is still small compared to cities in California. Everything is close by in terms of distance. From Redmond to Seattle is 20 mins, so is from airport to downtown. There are 4 major highways I-5, I-405, I-90 and 520. These four highways form the major transport medium from north to south and east to west. If you are in Seattle downtown, you can just walk around. It has one of the highest walk scores I've seen.

Charm
Seattle has its charm everywhere you go. It is artsy; lot of museums, street art, the buildings are old, it is quaint. If you think every part of Seattle is old, break your thoughts right there. It has one of the best "green" buildings ever designed. The experience music program building is just amazing. If you have a wall paper of Seattle Space needle on windows 7, look at the building from where it is taken. Thats EMP building. The view from 520 bridge going into downtown in the evening is just amazing. I loved driving back from work every night.


Environment friendly
Seattle is very environment friendly city. It is the first city I saw which has trash bins for recyclable and solar compactors on the streets. The city has mandated that the taxis that go to airport be hybrids. People in general are very conscious of environment. If you are planning to do any business on the "green" side, you should consider Seattle.


Green
Seattle is green. You would see high rise buildings and not a couple of blocks later, you would see awesome greenery. Some places appear as if the city just popped up in a national park. Eastside is mostly like a national park. A few evenings when the fog sets in, it gives you an impression you are in a hill resort. There are trees everywhere, and not just some plants that were uprooted from somewhere and put in your streets like in San Diego. These are native plants that are here for a long long time. And they are beautiful.


Estuaries
On the west side of Seattle is Puget Sound. A Sound is a sea/ocean inlet surrounded by two land bodies. Puget sound has many fresh water sources flowing into it making it a very rich ecological place. Marine life thrives here and ecosystem that mainly depends on marine life. These estuaries combined with mild temperature make it one of the best places for human race to develop. And of course the sound and the lakes around add to the scenery.


Transit
Seattle has one of the best transits I've seen. You can take bus to any part of the city. And they are pretty frequent. Oh, most of the companies provide you with ORCA card, which makes it free to ride the bus. And if you are in downtown area, you dont need ORCA card either; it is just free to ride in downtown.


No income tax
This is one of the best things of Washington. No personal income tax. Zero; zilch; nada. Thats about 8% better than what you will make in CA :). And before I boost this, the sales taxes are at 9.75%. Slightly more than CA, but still not too bad.


Entrepreneur spirit
God knows why Boeing and Microsoft decided to set up their headquarters here, but ever since entrepreneur spirit in Seattlelites is just climbing. Microsoft, Amazon, Nordstorm, Eddie Bauver, Expedia, Boeing, Nintendo, Costco are just few of the companies to name. Ever since Amazon made the cloud computing famous, Seattle has become hub for cloud computing. Google just opened its office here to attract more Amazonians to work on its cloud computing. Apart from these, there are a lot of small companies and the number of meetups for entrepreneurs are limitless.


Friendly people
People here are very friendly. They are open, welcome you, smile at you and are generally pleasant to talk to. For a place that gets has bad reputation of being gloomy, its the people that light up the place.


Fresh food
As I said earlier, Seattle is big in being environment friendly and green. Most of the food that comes here is locally grown. This is not to say there are no corporate giants; but most people still prefer farmers market. Almost at every corner you would see locally grown produce. They are also big into being healthy. You would see notices posted everywhere about being healthy and asking you to eat better nutritious food. I've been to only one farmers market so far; it was great.


Soccer
Soccer seems to be running in Seattlelites blood. I was told that there are about 300 soccer teams in Seattle. They have indoor soccer/outdoor soccer, co-rec, mens, womens, kids. We've a soccer field at office and thats one of the reasons I love to go to work. We play during lunch hour. Many people play in leagues with games all around the city. Marymoor park has about 16 soccer fields. It is a great place to be if you are a soccer fan.

Now coming to the bad part:

Weather
Yes it is true, weather is not great in Seattle. You must've heard that it rains a lot in Seattle. I would like to modify that statement and rephrase it as : "It drizzles a lot" or "it is cloudy a lot". The rain is not pouring down most of the time, it is just like the spray drifting from your lawn sprinklers. It doesnt snow here much, except for one or two days, but when it does the city pretty much closes down. Yay! free day to stay at home :). I've been fortunate enough (pun intended) to be in one of the worst snow storms of Seattle during second week of January 2012. But it was not devastating or anything. Just stayed at home, watched TV and lazed.


Traffic
Traffic is bad especially if you are with in the rectangle connected by I-5, I-405, I-90 and 520. The intersections are usually really bad. And since Seattle is horizontally challenged due to Puget sound on one side and lake washington on the other, there isn't much scope for improving it either. There are car pool lanes to mitigate the problem. And transit frequency is good enough that most people can take the bus and read something. If you are on the eastside and dont have to go to Seattle, you are fine. The new areas in suburbs are not affected by these traffic issues. Unfortunately my wife works at Amazon in Seattle and I work at Nintendo in Redmond, which makes it difficult for one of us to avoid traffic.


Parking
Parking is an issue in Seattle. Since the city is so small and cant really expand, it has to cut down on parking. There are parking garages, but expensive. Most of the apartment complexes dont provide parking unless you pay extra for them. A parking spot runs anywhere between $125-$200 per month.

So there it is. Overall I would say there are a lot of good things than bad things about Seattle and you shouldn't hesitate to move up here just because you heard about bad weather only. Good things happen to those who dare and explore new horizons; be the one to explore and reap the benefits.