“So you gotta let me know, Should I stay or should I go?” — The Clash

What are the factors, which decide whether we should stay, or not:

Satisfaction: As Wikipedia defines “Job satisfaction describes how content an individual is with his or her job”. Before you make a jump to another job, please ask yourself a few questions: “Are you fulfilled? Are you challenged? What about your knowledge growth? If answer to any of these questions is NO, then you need to ask yourself the right questions. As without personal satisfaction and constant learning, it is impossible to grow professionally.

Company checkup: While your own mental health is certainly a consideration, so is the health of your company — and your industry. Did you check  the health of the company to which you are moving to? Is it fulfilling your goals? Where is your organization going? Growing or shrinking? A shrinking company provides less opportunity to their employees. That’s a fact.

Industry checkup: In some cases, the health of entire industries has suffered, causing people to consider not just a job switch but a career change. Just don’t forget that if you do decide to switch careers, you’re now the newbie, competing against all the unemployed people in that particular sector. Making a career change is very risky so please make sure you are moving to the right industry, which is going to grow in the next 5 – 10 years.

Manager maintenance: My friend told me once: “You never leave your company, you leave your manager”. This phrase is true in most of the cases; however, we can always resolve it before making a big change in our life. It’s in a manager’s best interest to keep stress levels in the workplace to a minimum. Managers must act as positive role models, especially in times of high stress.

Find Ways to Dispel Stress

• Get time away: If you feel stress building, take a break. Walk away from the situation. Take a stroll around the block, sit on a park bench, or spend a few minutes meditating. Exercise does wonders for the psyche. But even just finding a quiet place and listening to your iPod can reduce stress.
• Talk it out: Sometimes the best stress-reducer is simply sharing your stress with someone close to you. The act of talking it out – and getting support and empathy from someone else – is often an excellent way of blowing off steam and reducing stress.
• Cultivate allies at work: Just knowing you have one or more co-workers who are willing to assist you in times of stress will reduce your stress level. Just remember to reciprocate and help them when they are in need.
• Find humor in the situation: When you – or the people around you – start taking things too seriously, find a way to break through with laughter. Share a joke or a funny story.

“Experience is the best school, but the fees is whole life” – Shakti Choudhary
]]> http://shakti1985.wordpress.com/2010/09/18/job-satisfaction/feed/ 0 shakti1985 http://shakti1985.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/google-future-adwords/ http://shakti1985.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/google-future-adwords/#comments Wed, 01 Sep 2010 06:33:20 +0000 Shakti Choudhary http://shakti1985.wordpress.com/?p=17 ]]>

The nine points nomination necessarily focused on privacy issues:

1. Google’s immortal cookie:
Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether. Now it’s years later, and immortal cookies are commonplace among search engines; Google set the standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google page, you get a Google cookie if you don’t already have one. If you have one, they read and record your unique ID number.

2. Google records everything they can:
For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as “IP delivery based on geolocation.”

3. Google retains all data indefinitely:
Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save.

4. Google won’t say why they need this data:
Inquiries to Google about their privacy policies are ignored. When the New York Times (2002-11-28) asked Sergey Brin about whether Google ever gets subpoenaed for this information, he had no comment.

5. Google hires spooks:
Keyhole, Inc. was supported with funds from the CIA. They developed a database of spy-in-the-sky images from all over the world. Google acquired Keyhole in 2004, and would like to hire more people with security clearances, so that they can peddle their corporate assets to the spooks in Washington.

6. Google’s toolbar is spyware:
With the advanced features enabled, Google’s free toolbar for Explorer phones home with every page you surf, and yes, it reads your cookie too. Their privacy policy confesses this, but that’s only because Alexa lost a class-action lawsuit when their toolbar did the same thing, and their privacy policy failed to explain this. Worse yet, Google’s toolbar updates to new versions quietly, and without asking. This means that if you have the toolbar installed, Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk every time you connect to Google (which is many times a day). Most software vendors, and even Microsoft, ask if you’d like an updated version. But not Google. Any software that updates automatically presents a massive security risk.

7. Google’s cache copy is illegal:
Judging from Ninth Circuit precedent on the application of U.S. copyright laws to the Internet, Google’s cache copy appears to be illegal. The only way a webmaster can avoid having his site cached on Google is to put a “noarchive” meta in the header of every page on his site. Surfers like the cache, but webmasters don’t. Many webmasters have deleted questionable material from their sites, only to discover later that the problem pages live merrily on in Google’s cache. The cache copy should be “opt-in” for webmasters, not “opt-out.”

8. Google is not your friend:
By now Google enjoys a 75 percent monopoly for all external referrals to most websites. Webmasters cannot avoid seeking Google’s approval these days, assuming they want to increase traffic to their site. If they try to take advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Google’s semi-secret algorithms, they may find themselves penalized by Google, and their traffic disappears. There are no detailed, published standards issued by Google, and there is no appeal process for penalized sites. Google is completely unaccountable. Most of the time Google doesn’t even answer email from webmasters.

9. Google is a privacy time bomb:
With 200 million searches per day, most from outside the U.S., Google amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Those newly-commissioned data-mining bureaucrats in Washington can only dream about the sort of slick efficiency that Google has already achieved.

Link for the above summary: http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html

India’s Independence Day is celebrated on 15 August to commemorate its independence from British Rule and its birth as a sovereign nation on that day in 1947. The day is a national holiday in India. All over the country, flag-hoisting ceremonies are conducted by the local administration in attendance. The main event takes place in New Delhi, where the Manmohan Singh hoists the national flag at the Red Fort and delivers a nationally televised speech from its ramparts. In his speech, he highlights the achievements of his government during the past year, raises important issues and gives a call for further development. The Prime Minister also pays his tribute to leaders of the freedom struggle. U.S. also recognizes this day as India Day

Flashback:

On 14th July 2010, my manager and my buddy asked me to join Agile NCR 2010 and my perception was ” OH MY GOSH, another conference!!” and also to make it more interesting, it was on a weekend and to make it more dramatic, my travel time to the location was 90 minutes. Let me add some salt to my injuries, timing for the event was 930 – 1815 so I checked it twice before booking my calendar for the entire weekend.

On 17th July 2010, I was up at 0730 on a Saturday morning ( WHAT AN ACHIEVEMENT FOR ME) and then started my journey towards one of the most memorable weekend of my life. I reached my destination at 0930 and missed the first welcome session. Technically, I started my day at 1000 with a session on “Agile Buzzword” from Thoughtworks team. At 1100 hours after attending the first session, I realized Agile thing is really great and conferences are not as boring as they used to be during childhood days. I also attended the session where benefits of agile were shown in the form of a play: “AGILE DRAMA“. At the end of day 1, I wanted to say “THANKS” to my friend however, I held my thought and waiting for one more day won’t be a bad idea.

Please check the link for the event:  http://agilencr.doattend.com

On 18th July 2010, I reached the destination at 0900 as I was already so excited about AGILE and do not want to miss even a single session. At 1130, I attended a session from Ajay Danait which made me a fan of Agile. He taught us the difference between ” SURVIVAL mode and CREATIVE mode” and please read his thoughts using the following link: http://www.slideshare.net/ajaydanait/agile-developers-create-their-own-identity-4786316 and please share your thoughts about the same. At 1430 we attended session from Biju Bhaskar, my dear manager, who asked me to attend the conference. I loved the way Biju explained how we adopted Agile in our company: SOFT LAUNCH.

TODAY:

Right now, I am reading Succeeding with Agile by Mike Cohn which I got as complementary gift from Xebia people. Today, I want to say special thanks to my friend, Gurpreet Singh and Biju Bhaskar. I am looking to attend more conferences and trainings THE AGILE WAY and now my BHAG for my organization is to create cost-effective and quality applications using AGILE!!