aqumada

Last week, we interviewed a brilliant young programmer for a lead developer position. As most other positions in the company, the position requires coordinating development projects with developers in India. This is because the company, as most other financial companies, heavily relies on these off-shore developers. The kid probably will not get the job because such companies prefer a fast talking bullshitter to a brilliant problem solver. He may get bored working with the off-shore guys was the reason given.

It is true that we currently do most of the design and architecting work here in the US or Europe. However, most of the actual implementation work is done in India. You can imagine how difficult this makes for new graduates to break into the field. When I graduated in the late 90’s, the opportunity to be trained on the job was there. It took me few years to actually get the experience that I can sort of be confident with. Such opportunities have been dwindling down with time.

Yes…that is where IT is going. Most of the grind work is done by off-shore developers and people like me do minimal development work or will end up coordinating and managing tasks. Once India and China manage to develop these low level programmers into experienced Engineers, my ass will be out of the door as well (unless I start to learn how to talk fast soon enough)

If shit goes down, I am joining "Yemi and co" in Dalian:-) ...

I noticed that the two most prolific Abesha bloggers attended the same school, “Miskaye Hizunan Medhane Alem”, while in Ethiopia. One would be “Yemi” and the other “Fezzzz…”. Incidentally, that was the school I attended as well. By no means, I am equating myself to these two …. I like to think of myself as a sane person:)

If there was no youtube, I would not have known what to do with the spare time I have. I spend most of my weekday evenings watching videos produced by Pune educated Abeshas (the only explanation for the Bolywood like videos) and im’ing links to my friends. The proof for the Bolywood influence can be found here... “ahun ewnet” is that too different from this?

When Meseret Defar won the 3k/5k double in the 2002 world youth championship, I had predicted that she would win the 5k gold medal in Athens. She did not disappoint. When very few thought that she could top that performance, she has been outdoing herself by going on a world record breaking streak. Not only she broke the 5k record today, she obliterated it by running a whapping 7+ second faster than her own world record. In a post-race press conference, she revealed that she is in a sort of shape that would allow her to run even faster than she run today. This reminded me of Abebe Bikila doing calisthenics right after winning the 1960 Olympic barefoot. More power to you, Meseret.

WR: 14:16:63

The NYC Abesha party scene is dead...

At one of the recurring NYC Abesha happy hours, a popular friend was approached by a hot girl who confessed that the girls thought that he is a Stallion. The friend, who was caught off-guard, had only “Nooooo……” come out of his mouth (in a way that does not deny or admit the veracity of the rumor). Later he confessed that he was trying not to sound ‘cocky’ while at the same time, to keep this reputation going.