Archis's Blog

“The best philosopher in India, to the best of my knowledge, is Anu Engineer, not a common dustman.” -Archis Gore

On my last day at Microsoft, Anu Engineer explained a very important concept to me – one that makes more and more sense to me the more I think about it.

The discussion was about value. What is “value”? Why do people pay for anything? What makes them pay for it? Are they bare necessities for survival? Not really. People don’t really pay a lot for food, water and shelter (well, not if you’re willing to live a moderate lifestyle).

So what is the most valuable thing in the world? It’s emotion. If there were a world where machines would grow food, and clean houses and do all that stuff, then people would not pay for anything. Machines would do everything for us. But there would still be one thing they would pay for - emotions.

You see, art is valuable only due to the sentimentality attached to it. If one were to try and evaluate the value of art in terms of the amount of mouths it can feed if it were possessed, then nobody would possess it. The value of art is in it’s pure exclusivity. Art can be copied – but not replicated (anyone who’s spent time thinking over what is a scientific experiment will know these two terms very well). There can be no other Mona Lisa. Leonardo Da Vinci is dead. That makes it all the more impossible (if he were alive there would still be that minor chance of replication).

Apart from the fact that Mona Lisa is the one of it’s kind painting in the world and only one person can possess it at one time, it has no value – at least no material value to speak of.  The canvas, the wooden frame, the glass casing, etc. should not cost more than a few thousand dollars – assuming we buy very expensive stuff for it. The medium itself is completely crap. The material on which art is built has absolutely no value.

Hence, software is like art. Software itself comes on cheap CDs costing around Rs. 10 each or nowadays a DVD costing Rs. 25. The material value of software is complete crap. The only reason the software industry survives is because of the emotional value attached to it. Software is art. Every developer has his own coding style. Every developer implements the same algorithm in drastically different ways. This is the real value of software.

Software becomes unique because hundreds of developers develop the same functionality in very different ways. This is how they innovate. This is how the world grows. This is where the value comes from. So in case you want to make a lot of money from software, remember to bank on emotions. Software itself has no intrinsic value. If what you’ve done can be copied and replicated, then it is worthless. What makes it so valuable is that only you can write it. Only you have the skills to understand it. Could not another capable painter paint the Mona Lisa once again? But it would still be worthless. Why? Because you’d say, “But it’s not the ‘real’ thing.” As you can see, what is very valuable is the “real” thing. From where I stand, this is a purely emotional issue. What makes Michael Jackson’s jeans so valuable during an auction? Is the material made of gold? Is it made of expensive stuff Batman’s suit is made of? Absolutely not! In reality, Bruce Wayne’s Bat-suit is monetarily a lot more expensive. It’s all emotional. The “real” Michael Jackson jeans are expensive due to emotions.

This is a very valuable lesson for anyone in the software industry. Software, as the name implies, is soft. It has no material existence. It has no physical significance. It’s value is emotional. Only he who understands this will become very big in this industry.

I’ve spent a significant amount of time and energy in the spread of open source and free software in the past. I spent five years working on projects, promotions and activities without any academic credits or monetary benefit – only to be mocked by the very “philosophical” FOSS promoters in the end.

If you’re beginning to wonder why it’s wrong to make students learn the internals of Linux, and why I don’t want to make them learn it, then you’re on the right track of thinking. The very words “make then learn” is an instant loss of freedom. Who are we to “make them” do anything? If they want to learn, they will learn. If they don’t, they must have the freedom not to. Who are we? Are we God? Are we santioned by God to make anyone do anything? This is the very power I speak of. The power to control people – to make them do what _you_ want. This is the temptation that even FOSS promoters are falling prey to very fast. Somewhere during discussing freedom for software, we forgot to think about the freedom of the humans who use this software.

I’ve been meaning to compose this entry for a loooooong time. However, what with all the packing to do, shifting back to Pune after a two-month comfortable stay at Hyderabad, and tolerating the cough and cold brought on by the tormenting rains, I just didn’t have the energy or mind-set to write all of this.

It is just over a week since the Grand Finale of code4bill took place at MS IDC in Hyderabad on the 31st of July, 2006. Here is my version of what happened in the final round and what really made me happy to be there.

For one, there is a strong possibility that there will only be one code4bill. This could be “the code4bill” and not “a code4bill”. Abi_k is now the one person winning the one contest of its kind held ever. But hey, don’t worry. We are all lobbying internally for a second code4bill next year too. Afterall, we’re not that that happy about losing this year also.

Since we’re on that, lets dispense with how I felt about losing. I won’t lie to you. The contestant-side of me was damn disappointed, angry, and jealous of Abi_k. As purely a contest, I would have loved to win it. However, I also know where I went wrong. I made the fatal mistake of underestimating my own project – which to me appeared to be weak and without much substance. One of the consequences of having studied in a place like Pune is that your internal self-confidence is diminished whereas the IITs actually boost it a lot. You’re always told “not to think too great of yourself” and all that here. And hence we become afraid to speak up, even when we know we’re right. The IITians have a big edge when it comes to the department of saying what they think.

However, as the day went by, I was severely frightened of winning also. I know I’m not the kind suitable for working amongst the TA’s of BillG. There are many reasons. My mindset when competing in c4b was to find research funding for my own activities and I had gone only to prove my capabilities. The second reason is that I am extremely lazy and don’t like to work all day long – the way abi_k will now be expected to do. And of course, a lot of my friends from the open-source world were already criticizing me for going to Microsoft and I would have completely lost out on a big part of my life, if I had won.

Anyways, if you compete next year, make sure you’re in it for the right reasons. Be there if you want to be in the top 20, if you want to make a difference – because trust me you get to make a lot of difference in those two months. You’re given projects which are very high priority for the company, you get to work on exciting technologies in the experimental stages, and you get to work with the top people at Microsoft. Don’t go there thinking of it as a mere contest of coding.

Code4bill is unique in many ways compared to other contests. For example, c4b combines every aspect of every contest out there – which makes it so effective. The contest has online coding rounds, online puzzle-solving rounds, one-on-one interviews, a two-month stress-test of coding skills, personality, soft-skills, etc. C4b tries to evaluate the contestant on many different levels – making a complete evaluation of the human being as a whole. Your views, opinions, ambitions, confidence, intelligence, creativity, and abilities of coding, mathematics, design, handling stress, standing up to your boss, communication, documentation, etc. are amongst the things that you are evaluated on. C4b contestants are observed very closely by a review panel during the internship round. There are weekly reviews (which are very exciting and fun), and reviews by Srini Koppulu (the VP and MD), and reviews by MSR guys (Joseph and Shankar) and reviews by Peri (our Manager at IDC). This means that lots of people with lots of different styles review you.

Moreover, one of the greatest things you can expect from c4b is to make 19 new friends. You get to meet some of the top brains in the country, only to find that none of them are geeks. They’re all just average normal people. Lots of orkutting, lots of movies, lots of discos and pubs, lots of pointless philosophical discussions and lots of pool, tennis, and fussball are amongst the things we do there. You meet very unique, eccentric and crazy people. That is the most invaluable outcome for anyone participating.

Now, let’s come to the Grand Finale. You see, one of the key privilidges of being in the T20 is that you get to present your project in front of a panel comprised of three Vice Presidents, two General Managers, bigshots like Peri, Shankar and Joseph, and of course the TA to BillG himself. Out of thousands of projects that are being done in the entire country daily, only 20 people have the priviledge of presenting it at one time in front of so many big people. That in itself is a grand prize. I mean, for someone like Alex to give you 25 minutes of his undivided attention, is nothing short of amazing.

When I went in there, I was extremely excited. And when I came out I was extremely happy. I really enjoyed myself in the final presentation. The first thing I told anyone when I came out was that I was extremely happy. I didn’t care whether I won or lost, but the fact was that at that last moment, I was myself convinced of the importance of my project and I was presenting it in a very happy mood, and was just extremely joyful.

As it happens, I did lose the contest in the end. Sucks to be a loser. But hey, now I have so many great new friends, I am one of the few people who got 25 minutes of undivided attention of so many bigshots who _had_ to listen to me, and I enjoyed what I presented. Everytime I think of the presentation, no matter how sad I am, my mood improves. There’s nothing like that experience. No presentations in your life compare to it.

One of the key benefits of that experience is that Microsoft has now given me loads of confidence that could never come from attending any “confidence-improvement coaching classes” that are out there. After you present it to a panel of such bigshots, you never feel afraid of any interview ever in your entire life. I mean what interview panel will I ever face in my profession that would be comprised of people bigger than these at one time and in one place? The fear just goes away. The minute you walk out of that conference room, you feel like a million bucks. No power of earth seems too strong to overcome. No person appears intimidating. And no project seems too small to make a difference.

Until now, I’ve made projects which make a big difference to a very small niche of people. This was the first time in my life that I made a very small product that will be making a difference to a very large number of people (I’m talking hundreds of millions, if not mere millions). Moreover, this was my first end-to-end product – with all aspects taken into consideration – design, legalities, code, effectiveness, deployment, platforms, users, etc.

I just wish I could go through those two months again. And we’re all asking Microsoft for a Code4bill reunion after a couple of years. I would surely love to meet the Numero Uno, Abi_K, the T20 and the entire team, our mentors, our reviewers, etc. They were the coolest people in the world!