What are your views on 50cr flat bought by Infosys founder?

Digital Trolls are probably referring to articles like these: - Infosys' Narayana Murthy buys luxury flat in Kingfisher Towers for Rs 50 crore - Times of India

Almost everyone—including myself—loves to hate and troll a humble brag. Narayana Murthy and his wife are practically the definition of a humble brag in India. Look no further than the (in)famous Kapil Sharma Show, where their sound bites, meant for entertainment, were heavily trolled for months

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HSsBwAU3KQ

Let’s start with a few facts: while the founders of Infosys are billionaires, the company has created scores of millionaires among its employees. Back in 2003, when I joined Infosys, employees with an "E number" under 2000 were considered VIPs. (My E# was 20K.) These VIPs were literally vested in peace—employees who held onto their ESOPs and stock grants from the 1990s.

And the millions of non-VIP techies? They launched successful global IT careers, thanks to Infosys. Over the years, Infosys has been a bellwether IT services company, paying rich dividends to shareholders. Not much to troll here.

Full disclosure: I too received “a few” ESOPs upon joining Infosys, and these shares, after vesting, continue to provide me with decent taxable dividends year after year.

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Now back to the Trolls

Forget Narayana Murthy’s contributions to offshoring in the 1980s and 1990s that propelled India’s globalization. Instead, we latch onto sound bites like “traveling by economy class” and “70-hour workweek,” which he is most (in)famously known for.

Indians love a good troll session, and the more successful someone is, the easier it becomes for us keyboard warriors to launch off on a tangent.

Make no mistake—this is a mega-billionaire. Narayana Murthy has a net-worth of ₹39,908.06 crore (approximately $4.8 billion). But, of course, he has also offloaded millions of Infosys shares to his wife, son, daughter, and even grandchildren - Millionaire grandchildren! Not just Narayana Murthy's grandson, these Infosys co-founders' grandkids also hold stake in company - Times of India

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A billionaire buying a million-dollar property anywhere in the world wouldn’t make headlines, but this is Narayana Murthy—someone we all love to hate. So troll we must.

But folks, the show is over. The 78-year-old billionarie will retire to his multi-million-dollar penthouse with soundproof windows, beyond our earshot.

Time to move on with our humdrum lives.

Today I received a royalty check 20 years after my book was published

The other day I was pleasantly surprised to receive a mail from McGrawHill that a royalty amount was due to me

This brought back memories of the grind in writing the book going through the editorial cycle and finally holding a copy in hand

My book was published much before the proliferation of self-publication and eBooks where one can simply push any good, bad or ugly piece of work online on the largest bookstore in the world with a click of a button. So here are my experiences.

Working with a publisher

Working with a publisher can be an exciting and rewarding experience, but it also requires clear communication, understanding, and patience. When you partner with a publisher, they handle many elements of the publishing process, from editing and design to marketing and distribution. A good publisher brings professional editors who help polish your manuscript, ensuring it’s free of grammatical errors, consistent in style, and engaging for readers. Editors may suggest content edits to improve structure, clarity, and pacing, and it's essential to be open to their feedback to enhance the final product.  

• About 20 years ago, I was an active blogger and columnist for Express computers – which I did in addition to my day-job as an IT manager 
• One of my popular pieces on the growth of offshoring IT services caught the attention of editors at McGraw Hill
•  They reached out to me and asked if I could write a book on the topic I had explored in my blog. After all, working at Infosys, an upstart offshoring company, I was best positioned to share my insights 
• McGraw Hill assigned, Deepa V, an editor who began reviewing my draft narrative for content flow, clarity and readability.

The publication

One important aspect of working with a publisher is understanding the contract. This document outlines your rights and responsibilities, the publisher’s rights, royalties, and timelines for publication. It’s wise to review it carefully, and even consult a literary agent or lawyer, to ensure you’re comfortable with the terms. Throughout the process, maintaining open communication with your publisher is essential. Publishing can be slow-moving, so staying proactive and responsive can help keep your project on track. 

• After initial editorial reviews, Deepa worked with the typesetting team and graphics editor to update images and diagrams I had shared. A cover was selected and we were ready to move
• The initial print run was about 1,000 copies which is normal for non-fiction works  
• The initial print run quickly sold out since the book was topical – offshoring was just taking off 
• The next print run was about 5,00 copies 
• Infosys, my employer and their marketing  got interested in this project and assigned Vijay to work with me 
• Vijay suggested I start an internal corporate blog making me one of the first corporate bloggers in India

Royalty

Book royalties are payments authors receive from the sales of their books, typically calculated as a percentage of the sales price. Royalties are an essential component of the income authors make from their published works, and they’re usually outlined in the publishing contract, specifying the royalty rate, payment schedule, and any specific terms.

Royalty rates can vary significantly depending on the publisher, the format of the book, and the sales channel. For traditionally published print books, royalties often range from 5-15% of the book’s retail price. Hardcover editions typically offer a higher percentage than paperbacks. For ebooks, royalties are generally higher, often ranging from 25-50% of the net proceeds, as digital production costs are lower. Self-published authors usually retain a higher percentage of royalties because they take on more of the upfront costs.

• McGraw Hill and I had a contract agreeing to a royalty of 15% of the sale price of a copy, which is quite common in the industry 
• Unlike popular authors with bestsellers no advance was offered 
• I began receiving annual royalty statements that was exciting for a few years when the book continued to sell well 
• If you are wondering, for most authors the royalty doesn’t pay the bills. 
• One time writers, especially in non-fiction genera rarely get rich from royalty 
• But the reflected glory of being a published author and the egoBoo that comes with it is worth the effort!

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Writing

Most authors will agree that writing is a lonely endeavor and what keeps you going is a muse and the urge to finish the project. You need to write what you know and you are passionate about

The real effort begins after the book is published –

• Thousands of books are added to marketplaces like Amazon every day. How do you stand out?
• Authors must hustle to ensure that the book stands out in the crowded marketplace
• As an old Chinese saying goes - you might make the best candle in the world but your neighbors will buy it only if they know about it.  

A young CA succumbs to work stress - Reflecting on how Work-life-balance IS a personal choice

A young Chartered Accountant, Anna Sebastian Perayil died, supposedly due to overwork. Here's EY India boss on employee Anna Sebastian Perayil's death: 'Don’t believe work pressure claimed her life'

Work-life-balance IS a personal choice

In my decades long career in corporate world, I have never been a workaholic but have worked with many such managers. I learnt to stick my personal balance early on 

If you are like me, you've got to remember the basics 

• Ignore it when your managers quotes leaders like Narayana Murthy when they preach about "70 hour workweek" 
• That's not everyone’s cup of tea
• Your health is the most precious asset you have 
• Listen to your body – it will send clear signs to if it is on the verge of a breakdown
• You are dispensable in a job; and some managers will let you go if you aren’t a workaholic like them 

Remember, you are free to chose a job that fits your personal goals and health

Some people are workaholics

Some people can take on more stress than others - For instance, those recruited as marine commandos in military or a few managers in the corporate world like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk who tweets night and day in addition to designing EVs and rockets

Some business leaders are willing to sacrifice everything for a professional goal

• Be ready with a suitcase packed to travel 3-4 times a month
• Be ready for calls and meetings any time of the day or night

The rewards are tremendous – fast track promotions, making a EY or Big-5 Partner at 30, ESOPs and bonuses, bragging rights for parents etc etc

Youngsters planning to emigrate from India should watch Aadujeevitham and Dunki first

The two movies Aadujeevitham and Dunki hold a mirror to the desperation some Indian youth have to get out of India and seek opportunities in foreign shores. Such moves can sometimes backfire as the movies vividly portray. 

Drama in Real life - Aadujeevitham or The Goat Life is a 2024 Malayalam-language survival drama film written, directed, and co-produced by Blessy. It is an adaptation of the 2008 best-selling Malayalam novel Aadujeevitham by Benyamin, which is based on the real-life story of Najeeb, a Malayali immigrant laborer, one among thousands of Indians who were forced into slavery in Saudi Arabia as goatherds on secluded farms in the deserts by the native Arabs.

Reflections on 5 years as an Enterprise Architect at a multinational

A few days ago, I was reflecting on completing five years as an Enterprise Architecture (EA) for a multinational, Medtronic. The tenure has been dynamic

• I was hired into an Offshore Development Center (ODC) when it was in a growth trajectory. 
• I had a dual focus – building teams in ODC and enabling Business Partners in Asia Pacific
• Strategy shifted when the leaders decided to outsource the ODC to a vendor
• My focus continued to be on APAC working with global EAs 
• CIO left the organization - Global EA function was disbanded. A few roles eliminated while others (including me) remained focused on our domains and regions 
• A new CIO came on board 
• The company hired another EA Leader who is bringing global teams together 
•  The new CIO wants has a mandate to resurrect the ODC strategy in India, coming a full circle

While riding waves of internal changes, the  business continues to digitize and there is a continuum of technology evaluation and investments in roadmap realization. I continue to be the ‘trusted technology advisor’ to my stakeholders and business partners.

This also brings back the key question Architects sometimes muse about

What is the average tenure of an EA?

Every new functional leader, CxO and CIO will want to leave their footprint in the organization. An EA will either align with the changes or look for greener pastures  

• Some EAs will seize transformations and take on other internal roles  
• Some will move to other organizations looking for roles that align with their personal aspirations
• A few may continue a longer tenure focused on their work-life balance 

There is no set tenure, and it really depends on the organization and individual’s alignment with the changes 

Old soldiers don’t die, they just fade away

 The other day while cleaning an old shelf, my son came across a medallion and he asked me about it. “Oh, it’s your grandpa’s Raksha Medal from 1965,” I said.

“Did Krishnamoorthy thata actually fight the Chinese in that war?” He asked. “Was he issued a gun when he was in the Air Force?” he continued excitedly recalling scenes from the Bollywood movies.

Yes and no, I hummed and hawed.

I tried explaining that my dad was indeed posted at an Air Base that provided Air support to our troops facing the enemy. And for this service, he and other servicemen were awarded the Raksha Medal.

And then I went on to reflect on the real reason he was my hero and role model.

Born in Batalagundu, a small town in South India that might just have been the inspiration for RK Narayan’s Malgudi, he grew up in a rather large brahmin agrarian family. When he did exceptionally well at school, he was offered a scholarship to study at a college in a nearby district and a ticket out of the small town. While studying for his bachelors, a lecturer suggested that he join the Indian Air force that was recruiting English speaking graduates for its education instructor’s trade.

Shortly after training and donning his Seargent’s stripes, he was deployed to the Air Base at the border to prepare for the Chinese aggression. And this is how, as a young Seargent, he was awarded the Raksha Medal.

He wasn’t content to continue the life of an enlisted airman and set his sights higher - He would be commissioned as an officer before he married the love of his life, whom he had been wooing since his college days.

He failed the internal services selection board several times before he cracked the SSB to become a “Class A” Gazetted officer with the rank of a Pilot Officer – the first from his town. The month after his officer’s training he married my mother, but just as the couple was readying to enjoy matrimonial bliss, service beckoned.  All servicemen were requisitioned to the border, this time to prepare for the aggression from the neighbor to the west. By then, my mother who was pregnant with me, her first son had to return to Batalagundu where I was born.

Dad’s eventful service over the years took us to the far corners of the country – from Bagdogra near Darjeeling where my brother was born, to Jodhpur in Rajasthan where we enjoyed three years of the Rajput hospitality and a number of other memorable stops in between.

Dad would fondly remember his secondment to command a Liaison Unit (LU) – the intelligence wing of the Air Force – during that stint. This was one posting where we stayed in a suburb in town outside the sprawling Air-base, not in the regular quarters and most of my dad’s tenure was in his civvies, not his service uniform. Watching reruns of the sleuths corner the  enemy within and outside services in tele-serials like NCIS with him would always give me the goosebumps, when some episodes would mimic war stories from the LU days.

That experience in LU would follow him when he was posted in Bengaluru – as this was during the height of the Indian deployment of the Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka. That he was an officer of Tamil origin with an intelligence background didn’t go unnoticed by the military brass, and he was drafted for that endeavor.

After 35 years of eventful service, he decided to spend his sunset years in the retirement paradise, which is how Bangalore was known then. During his ‘retirement,’ he continued to consul eligible youth interested in joining the services and many enlisted servicemen aspiring to be promoted to commissioned officer would seek his guidance in tuning their efforts. A small-town boy who retired as a proud Squadron Leader was indeed a role model to aspire to.

That old soldier didn’t die, he merely faded away at the ‘ripe old’ age of 82, nearly six years ago.

Dusting off an old viewpoint "From organization man to free agent" - How long should you remain in your job?

I was reflecting on the question of tenure in IT jobs, especially since this seems to be the most common question in tech forums and chatboards.

A copy of my article published in IEEE journal over 20 years ago

From organization man to free agent

Publisher: IEEE (Jan 2004)

Wojciech Cellary brought out a key point in his column on “The Profession's Role in the Global Information Society” (Sept. 2003, pp. 124, 122–123): Computing professionals continually face exclusion from their work because digital technology advances so swiftly. Along with this risk, changes in the global information society have led to a shift in the computing professional's role from “organization man” to free agent. Renowned management guru Peter Drucker outlined this trend in “Managing Oneself” (Harvard Business Journal, March-April 1999, pp. 65–74). Drucker advises professionals, “… and we will have to stay mentally alert and engaged during a 50-year working life, which means knowing how and when to change the work we do.”

The Organization Man

The traditional concept of the computing profession originated just after World War II, when most Western nations enjoyed a long growth spell. To cater to the emerging needs of the postwar market, corporations built gigantic factories to manufacture products and serve consumer needs. To manage these operations, organizations also started automating their systems with computers. Spurred by this growth in manufacturing productivity, governments, financial institutions, and retailers began to automate their systems as well. During this period, William H. Whyte wrote his much acclaimed book, The Organization Man (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), and the term soon caught the fancy of an entire generation of working professionals. Whyte defines organization men as

… the ones of our middle class who have left home, spiritually as well as physically, to take the vows of organization life, and it is they who are the mind and soul of our great self-perpetuating institutions. In a system that makes such hazy terminology as “junior executive” psychologically necessary, they are of the staff as much as the line, and most are destined to live poised in a middle area that still awaits a satisfactory euphemism. But they are the dominant members of our society nonetheless….

Note that Whyte wrote his book during an age when men constituted the bulk of the white-collar workforce, and I will not attempt to be politically correct by using the term organization people here.

To thrive in a rapidly changing world, computing professionals must become free agents.

For nearly half a century after the book appeared, the organization man typified the professional. In most parts of the world, huge corporations—private, public, and government-owned—employed hundreds of thousands of organization men. That era also saw the rise of the computing professional, personified by legions of IBM employees clad in white shirt and tie. Endless movies idolized devoted company men in gray flannel suits and the stable life they enjoyed. Most white-collar professionals across the world sought and could aspire to this American Dream of a good education that led to a good job, a house in the suburbs, and a wife and kids. During this age the public regarded corporations with reverence and deference, a topic analyzed by authors like Fred Harmon and Garry Jacobs, who note in their book The Vital Difference (Amacom, 1985) that “Ma Bell [AT&T] became the ultimate symbol of a benevolent corporation working in and for the public interest.”

Death of the Organization Man

The corporate world experienced a radical transformation in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when cost cutting, downsizing, and rightsizing became the new mantra. Corporations across the globe transformed from benevolent entities to profit centers driven by the interests of their stockholders.

This left the concept of the organization man dying if not completely dead. The most visible cornerstone of the organization man's existence—life-time employment—eroded as well. Globalization of business and management practices also meant the globalization of cost cutting, downsizing, and layoffs. Significantly, even Japanese companies—leading proponents of lifetime employment until recently—have revisited their ideals in light of their economy's decade-long downturn. In India, the wave of privatization sweeping through public companies has led to many so-called voluntary retirements. Asian and European companies have followed in their American counterparts' footsteps and now use layoffs as a regular cost-cutting measure.

Individuals have thus begun to realize that even if they wanted to, they could not entrust their career to a single company: Corporations themselves are regularly evolving, transforming, acquiring other businesses or being acquired by them, and sometimes going bankrupt. Professionals are experiencing what Intel cofounder Andy Grove calls a strategic inflexion point (Only The Paranoid Survive, Time Warner, 1999), with the traditional notions of work and career giving way to a new model in which individuals are expected to take responsibility for their own career moves.

Transition to Free Agent

Faced with this new reality, computing professionals have made a fundamental shift in how they view their careers. Traditional organizational hierarchies are giving way to project- and performance-oriented groups and structures, ushering in the era of gold-collar workers. These free agents are highly skilled professionals who owe a greater allegiance to their profession than to the organizations for which they work.

Daniel Pink first extended the term free agent—borrowed from professional sports—to corporate professionals in his book Free Agent Nation (Warner Books, 2002). Pink sees the emergence of moonlighting as one way professionals can hedge their bets in a changing world:

Diversification—that is, an independent worker spreading her risks across a portfolio of projects, clients, skills and customers is the best hedging strategy…. In the Organization Man era, moonlighting was a big no-no, the very name implied that you were doing something illicit concealing your behavior under the cover of darkness. No more. Today, anybody who holds a job and isn't looking for a side gig—or crafting a business plan, writing a screenplay, or setting up shop on eBay—is out of touch. Moonlighting is a way to diversify your human capital investments—and hedge against the risk of your company collapsing or your job disappearing. In some sense, we're all moonlighters, because in every sense, we're all risk managers.

Becoming Free Agents

Table 1 shows how careers in IT consulting have evolved from lifelong single-employer jobs to a free-agent model. Y2K, the Internet, and the dotcom boom brought a whole legion of professionals from varied backgrounds into the computing field. Some joined traditional companies' IT departments, but many decided to explore careers in consulting. The industry also saw the appearance of a whole array of consulting companies, ranging from small shops with a handful of consultants to large system integrators like IBM and EDS.

Table 1. Organization man versus free agent.

The industry afforded a gamut of vocational choices, from short-term projects spanning a few weeks to longterm maintenance projects lasting a few years. Along the way, computing professionals also realized that the industry was becoming increasingly market driven. Thus, getting certified in vendor technologies, being associated with professional bodies—including the IEEE and ACM—and building expertise in current skills gave them more leverage than being associated with a blue-chip employer.

Individual computing professionals have also shown their market savvy by selling themselves as experts in Cobol, ERP, Java,.NET, the Web, and other technologies the market demands, sometimes juggling multiple hats at once. The career trajectory of many computing professionals has begun to resemble that of free agents who take on a series of projects or assignments that help them market their skills to the highest bidder.

The computing professional may be taking a page from a trend already established by other professionals in vocations such as law, medicine, finance, and academia. Lawyers and financial analysts have long known that their real allegiance is to the profession rather than to individual organizations or companies where they work. Being a corporate attorney or a corporate financial analyst is perceived to be less glamorous and financially rewarding than working for a high-profile partnership or, better still, founding one's own firm. Academicians and professors have refined moonlighting into an art—consulting for large corporations, helping their clients understand and incorporate the latest academic and research ideas, and raking in huge fees—even while continuing their day job of teaching and spearheading university research.

By building and maintaining a brand and attracting a steady stream of clients, free-agent professionals can thrive by following the models established by those in the following fields: 

• lawyers and legal professionals; 
• chartered accountants and financial professionals;

• doctors and medical specialists; 

• Management consultants;

• architects, builders, masons, and craftsmen;

• artists, performers, singers, and musicians;

• freelance writers and columnists;

• athletes and sports stars; and

• academicians and professors who moonlight as consultants.

Computing professionals now realize that they need to take active charge of the direction in which their careers are headed. Whether they view a career as a series of assignments or as a mix of traditional jobs and moonlighting, all computing professionals must actively take control of their career. Today's companies value people based on what they bring to the project, assignment, or work task rather than how many years these professionals have spent at one job. Quoting Drucker again:

The challenges of managing oneself may seem obvious, if not elementary. And the answers may seem self-evident to the point of appearing naive. But managing oneself requires new and unprecedented things from the individual, and especially from the knowledge worker. In effect, managing oneself demands that each knowledge worker think and behave like a chief executive officer…. Every existing society, even the most individualistic one, takes two things for granted, if only subconsciously: that organizations outlive workers, and that most people stay put…. But today the opposite is true. Knowledge workers outlive organizations, and they are mobile. The need to manage oneself is therefore creating a revolution in human affairs.

Academia pays close attention to these industry trends. Engineering schools and universities, especially in the West, have begun introducing technologists to entrepreneurship and business fundamentals. Further, the students graduating into the field of computing are beginning to realize that courses in entrepreneurship will play an essential role in helping them manage their lives and careers.

As professionals in a workforce with evolving expectations of the employer-employee relationship, most of us will need to acquire and apply entrepreneurial and business management skills to manage our careers. Our career trajectories will thus depend on constant marketing and networking rather than climbing the ladder of a predefined career track.