Life in Xome

In my previous company, one fine day, I was asked to come for a meeting, where the HR director Gayathri Chandrasekharan was present along with the Engineering Director and my manager. The summary was, I need to leave the company in some time. The same HR director signed the offer letter of Xome. 

Irrespective of who signed the offer letter, the job was given by Manikandan Sundaram, who was a in a way responsible for my job for almost 15 years.

Kiran Kumar SN was the only manager in the last 18 years, who gave me salary raise more than the inflation without taking anyone's help. 

Srikrish Subramanian was one of the few managers who talk very clearly to the point, which makes a lot of difference during sensitive discussions. He also tried to give higher salary raise than the inflation by taking help from Narendra Modi and Arun Jaitley (who in turn took help from the reduction of Oil prices). Later they also could not help.

Whenever anyone asked me about CTO, I used to tell about Jaganmohan Vangal Thulasidass. 

When you and your manager's work profiles are a lot different, it is not that easy to understand the value provided by your manager. Life in Xome was very smooth mainly because of the support of Ram Krishnaswamy.

It is not that easy to find a transparent manager like Raman Srinivasan.

For any issue Jocelyn Gaw used to bypass everyone and everything, and provided whatever I asked. In India, Pradeep Kumar Kanagarajan used to give me everything that I asked till he was handling IT. 

As a Senior Developer Ramya Prasad helped me in debugging the code, and as a VP, she provided the work that I asked, and a lot in between.

If one gives the exact same update for many days, not every manager would be happy. But, Poomaran Shanmuganathan did not mind getting the same update, "Migrating Project X from .Net Framework to .Net 6" for many months with a variation in X. When Wazidshareef Mohammad presented an award for that, I was like, why an award for my role? Later when I talked to Kavin Franco, I realized that, it can be considered as the recognition of the complexity of the work. 

Randy Croy always supported any new initiatives and never said no for anything. 

I did not realize how valuable a project manager can be, till I started working with Pooja Patel. Any issue/blocker that we raised at night, would have been resolved by morning. She is the only project manager that I have seen, who stuck to the agenda of a standup (in a standup) and nothing else.  

When we took a few issues to a senior leader, he suggested to be like Robin Secours, who does not allow anyone in her territory. 

Eric Beck brought many new technological initiatives, some of which I could take forward.

Till Kannan Subramanian was in India, we used to have frequent communication, and I used to have a special ringtone for his number (Kannanule from Bombay movie). Once during an issue at mid-night, he tried to call me repeatedly multiple times, and that ring tone could not wake me up. Only when someone else called, I woke up (due to normal ringtone).

Vinoth Kumar Ganapathy had taken all non-technical challenges from me, and saved me a lot of time to concentrate on technical challenges. Later Santhosh N did the same. 

Professionally, it should have been embarrassing for me, when Vamsidhara Reddy told more about my work (in my previous company) in his interview than myself in my interview for Xome. 

I used to think, I pay lot of income tax than many others (proportionate to the income). Later, I realized that, Sateesh Naramsetti pays much more. I pay only the tax, and he pays tax along with interest and fine. 

All the discussions (everything under the sky) I used to have with Jeevanram Kasiviswanathan years before joining Xome, continued even in Xome.

Except one, all other people who sat facing me did not stay for more than 6 months (after sitting at that place), whether it was Ravinder Kumar, Vinoth Kumar Sambath, Siva Shanmugam Umapthy or Sukumar Nataraj.

No one conducted the games better than Karthick Paul Ramachandran aka KP, whether it was TT or chess. 

When one person asked in what all projects I had atleast some contribution, I said, almost all the projects except the ones that are handled by Mohanakrishnan Gopalakrishnan. Then, she commented that, then we both (Mohan and myself) could manage the entire company. 

Whenever someone raises a bug in the code, the first response that would come from me (and many people) is, "It cannot happen". But, the typical response from Ashwin Ramesh is, "Yeah. I did not test that", even if the issue is a race condition, which cannot be tested in the normal flow.  

Whatever little help that I have done for Balaji Srinivasan, he never lets me forget it.

The interactions with Phaneendra Raju Mudunuri was more after he left Xome than while he was in Xome.

Working with people like Immanuel Prathap, Sriram Parthasarathy, Venkata Kiran Mutha, Gadi Lingappa Kuruva, Vishnu Priya S and Florence made me like, I was a part of DevOps.

She mocks at a Senior Software Engineer, ignores a Team Lead, gets work done from Senior Architect, interviews 10 years experienced person casually. When I was supposed to go to US the next day, she got her work done from me, and in the evening, she gave me permission to go to US. What would be her designation and experience. She was Kowsalya Devi Palani, and this happened after she completed one year in her career.

Whenever I needed a voice over in a video, the only person that I used to call was Pooja Govindarajan.

With very brief interaction with Anjana Sherin Thangadurei, I got two ideas for hackathon with one win. 

The small things that Rekha Dhinagaran did, made me smile or feel happier.

I have never met a better host than Melissa Fernandes. Her attention to detail was excellent. 

Rikia Kosaka is very helpful and fast responsive. There was one time and only time, where we disagreed on one thing, and finding the root cause was one of the challenging things that I have done, which I cannot forget even after 7 years.

After taking an interview for Suneetha Chunduru, many people told me that, "Others" were interested in knowing the result. Nobody said, he was interested in knowing the result. 

Whenever Mounika Sure asked what food I had, my response used to be either I was fasting or had only fruits and vegetables (During the peak of Corona). 

Uma Maheswari is the only HR who scheduled interviews for me in three different companies either as an interviewer or interviewee or both. 

When HR Shanthi asked me whom do I look up to in Chennai office, I was like, I was the senior most person who was still coding, whom do I have to look up to? 

When Sharanya Suresh and Rajaraman Swaminathan were talking and said, I do everything that is asked, I wondered whether it was a sarcastic comment or real, because, I did whatever Rajaraman asked only after multiple follow-ups. 

Preethi Chandrasekharan would have felt, it was easier to manage a school kid than me. [I said no for almost everything that she asked].

Sindhuja V uses the terminology of heaven for time. Her call for a moment lasts only an hour. 

Being in Technical Role requires constant competing with young people. It was good to compete with Sai Charan Gondrala and Suvathy G who were born around the time I started learning programming. Of course, it was even more interesting to compete with Rammprasath K, who was born around the time I started working. 

S Venkata Mohith Reddy introduced me to many new technologies, and helped me in improving my development.

PrasannaKumar Balashanmugam and Saminathan Nagarajan provided me challenges in different domains. I used to feel bad for not efficiently solving the problems of Veronica and Subhashini. I would have been more happy, if I had got chance to modernize things in their domain.

When Dinesh Palanisamy informed me that, I was shortlisted for the annual award (which was presented to me by Jay Bray), I was like why are they wasting an award by giving it to me. Instead they should have given it to another person who would get motivated by the award. I would have been much more happy, had Naveen Palanisamy or Sabaribalan R received that award. [One left the previous year and other just joined and was not eligible for the award.]. The consolation was, Naveenkumar M got rookie award in an annual event. 

There were a few instances when I felt the compliment was better than any award. During a monthly meet, when Shyam Royal talked about me, I felt that was better than any other award.

Even for very insignificant help, Vinithra L used to thank me in public. 

The most exaggerated compliment was, when Shawn Brown introduced me to Rich Lull as Scott Boston of Chennai.

How to get the postman collection data of others?

Create a postman collection that is of some interest to other users. 

Invite them to your postman collection. 

Once they accept your invitation, remove them from your team, and while removing, select the option to copy their private workspace to your account.

Voila..  You got full access to their private workspaces, variables and many others. 

At this point, they would lose access to all their workspaces. If you want to appear to be nice, add them back immediately after copying their collections, and grant them access to their workspaces. If they do not pay much attention, they may think that there was some glitch in between and it got resolved automatically. But, in between, you would have got full access to all their collections.

Like the spam mails that are sent, if an invitation mail is sent to all the software engineers, definitely a few of them would click accept and you would get access to all their postman collections.

Typically many people who use postman extensively would keep the passwords, api keys and many other confidential information in their private workspace, assuming nobody could access. If you could tempt them to join your team, you can get all the confidential information. 

However, this would work, only if that person has not yet joined any team. If that person has joined any team, the owner of the first team to which he/she joins, would get the access to that workspace. 

Serious Security Issues in Postman

I have been using Postman for many many years.

A couple of years back, I joined a team. 

Yesterday, they removed me from the team. 

They got full access to all my private workspaces that I have created before I joined the team, and I lost access to those workspaces.

It is definitely one of the biggest security issues that I have seen recently. 

End of Buy back shares?

Recently, you bought shares of a company for Rs.100. The company is ready to buy it for Rs.120. A random person in the market is ready to buy for Rs.106. Whom do you want to sell to maximize your returns?

You would be more profitable, if you sell for Rs.106 to a random person than selling for Rs.120 to the company. 

Starting with this financial year, the returns in the buy back shares are taxed in the hands of the recipient as Dividend. 

If you are selling the share to the company for Rs.120, and if you are in the highest tax bracket, then you have to pay a tax of Rs.36+Cess. 

Of course, you can claim a capital loss of Rs.100 for the purchase price, which can be offset with other capital gains that you may have. [It cannot be offset with your Salary, Savings/FD interest or any other income other than capital gains.]

Let's assume, you have a short term capital gain somewhere else and you are offsetting that loss with that. The tax benefit that you get by that is Rs.20 [20% is the short term capital gains from 2024-25 FY].

The net tax that you would be paying is Rs.36-Rs.20=Rs.16.

For the profit of Rs.20, you would be paying tax of Rs.16 [In case of short term capital gains].

Let's say, you bought this share more than a year back, and you want to offset with the long term capital gains. The tax benefit that you get from the capital loss is Rs.12.5 [Assuming, your long term capital gains is more than Rs.1.25 Lakh + purchase price of these shares].

The net tax that you would be paying is Rs.36-Rs.12.5 = Rs.23.5

For the profit of Rs.20, you would be paying tax of Rs.23.5

Hats off to Nirmal Sitharaman for bringing such a simplified tax system.

Electoral Bonds

I am a little disappointed with the judgement of the Supreme Court on the Electoral Bonds.

One of the most important aspects of a democracy is Confidentiality. One should be able to support a political party without disclosing to which party one is supporting. It has two aspects. First one is voting inside a polling booth, and second one is supporting outside the polling booth. Voting inside a polling booth is confidential and others do not have any way of knowing. But, supporting a political party outside the polling booth confidentially has many roadblocks.

Except for the businesses of politicians, no business person would like to align with any political party publicly. They always wanted to be seen as neutral to everyone. They try to tell all the political parties that they are with them. They do not want to disclose any support that they do to any political party. If they are seen as aligned to one political party, they will face many problems when that party is not in power. 

If one does not appreciate the fact that there are few people/companies that want to support the political parties secretly, they need to learn many things in democracy and politics.

Before electoral bonds, if a company wanted to donate to a political party secretly, it was a lot of work for them. They cannot write a cheque in the name of the political party, as that would be reported in the company books, and it would be disclosed. What they used to do was, they manipulate the accounts and take some money out of the company (by not so legal way), and give that cash to the political party. 

Electoral bonds was trying to fix the issue of the anonymousness. A company can buy an electoral bond through the company's money from the bank by paying money either digitally or through a cheque. The electoral bond can be physically given to any political party that the company wishes, and the political party can redeem and get the money in its bank account. 

By this, the company does not need to manipulate the accounts. Manipulating the accounts comes with a cost, as the people who supported with fake bills/accounts/companies would need some percentage of commission for their work. Also, companies won't get any tax benefits from donations to the political parties when they donate that way. With Electoral Bonds, companies would not need to manipulate the accounts and would save money from there. Also, they would get tax exemptions when they donate through Electoral Bonds. 

Even for political parties, it is not so easy to manage a lot of cash. When there is a lot of cash, it is possible that the lower level leaders would siphon some money. It would be hard for the top leaders in the political party to manage huge cash. If the money is in the bank account, then the top leaders in the political parties have control on the money.

Arun Jaitley was a treasurer of BJP for a long time. He faced all the problems, and he wanted to make it simple for both the companies and the political parties, and brought Electoral Bonds.