THE DEATH OF GOOGLE READER

 

GOOGLE READER’S UNTIMELY DEMISE INDICATES THAT THE PACE OF CHANGE IN THE TECH WORLD ESPECIALLY SOFTWARE AND EVEN HARDWARE HAS BECOME BRUTAL

GOOGLE RECENTLY announced that it is sun setting its web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline. While it has been around since 2005, Google has not been updating it as regularly as its other products. It also happens to be a free service, which does not provide a major revenue stream to Google. It has a loyal following but its user base has never become viral and grown as other flagship products of Google like YouTube, Google+ (yes it is growing with 400M subscribers). In fact Google Reader’s average user profile is more likely to be a technology geek not an ordinary man on the street. And user habits have changed. People prefer to get their news from Twitter or Facebook where the social sharing nature of the news makes it more interesting and filtered. You get news with comments from friends and people whose opinions you respect when you go to Twitter or Facebook. Twitter Lists makes our information gathering even more elegant as it lets you make a curated group of Twitter users. No wonder users have moved away from Google Reader.

The pace of change in the technology world especially software and to an extent even hardware has become brutal. Hardware is becoming more mobile and portable while the software is becoming more social and cloud based. We are moving quickly to ipads from laptops. We consume music via Spotify, which tells us what our friends have been listening to while only a few years back we were on CDs. What these trends tell us is that new technology adoption is quicker and faster than it has ever been. The new generation user is very comfortable shifting to new ways of communi­cating, working and entertaining as he has grown up in the world at a time when change was the new normal. Examples abound - employees and employers who were on Job boards like Monster just a couple of years back have now moved rapidly to LinkedIn. In fact the job boards virtually look Jurassic today. Look at what is happening to photo sharing space. Photo networks like Instagr am, Tumblr, Google+ have taken over how we share pictures. Cameras have given way to smart phones. Successful next generation companies like Google and Facebook understand this better than older companies like Microsoft or even a Yahoo!

That is why we see that they are ruthless when it comes to killing products. New products and new versions are intro­duced and tested real time. Products and features, which do not make it, get withdrawn as quickly as they were intro­duced. Google has already shuttered many other services like Google waves, iGoogle, Google desktop, Google Buzz, Google Gears and even Google Labs. Mark Zuckerberg is famous for keeping Facebook in a state of permanent Beta. Facebook introduced FaceBook Questions a feature equiva­lent to Yahoo Answers, which has disappeared. Similarly Facebook killed its first location based offering “Places” within a year of its launch. Of course in all these cases these companies introduce the same functionality in a better and more popular way under a different name and place. Face­book location feature now tells you where you were, where you are and where you are going next instead of just “check­ing in”. Same way Google is hoping that its Reader users will shift to Google+ and use it to read and share news in a more social way. They believe their users will adept quickly to the change and rightly so.

Nassim Taleb, world-renowned thinker and author of the book The Black Swan has an interesting theory, which could describe what we are seeing in the technology world. In his most recent book Antifragile – Things that gain from disor­der, he says that the only way to succeed in a world where random, unpredictable events disrupt all calculations is to learn how to thrive and become stronger in the midst of shocks.

Perhaps the Googles of the world have understood this well. They are proving time and again that they can shock their internal and external stakeholders with events such as this announcement about Google Reader. In the process of doing so they get better and better at culling products that are past their prime and reinventing themselves time and again.

No wonder then that Taleb believes that the only anti-fragile systems now are Silicon Valley and New York restaurant industry. Both are highly innovative and are characterized by high levels of failure and upside. What it means is that great success can only be achieved by heuristic trial-and-error, not stability. We should view the demise of Google Reader in this light. It is one more way Google is try­ing not to go the Yahoo! way.

Leading from the front

YAHOO!’S CEO, Marissa Mayer, recently kicked up a huge controversy when she declared that she wanted all Yahoo! employees to turn up at office. In short, no more working from home. The memo went on to say “To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home.” The memo has gone viral, read around the world, with every blogger worth his name and every magazine, from Fortune to Forbes, commenting on it. Is she right or not right? Step forward, or step backward?

As I absorbed the import of Marissa’s move, what struck me was that here is a leader who seems to have got her priorities right, and is willing to act. Marissa Mayer has been brought in with a specific mandate – to ‘turn-around’ Yahoo!, a company with 14,000+ employees and $5 billion in revenues that has been virtually written off as a sinking ship. She is not where, say, a Meg Whitman was in 1998 –Meg was hired at eBay to steer a small company in a hyper growth mode. Marissa has the unenviable difficult task of redefining Yahoo’s mission and strategy; redesigning its market and product-mix, and rallying the 14,000-strong troops to make change happen. Her job is to establish the right culture, and provide the right environment for her employees to succeed, and thereby lift the company’s fortune. And that is exactly what she is trying to do with this memo.

Yahoo! is a quintessential Silicon Valley technology company at its core. It is the pioneer that indexed the web way back in 1994, and  provided a ton of talent in search, advertising, email, social networking, etc., to the next generation of web companies like Google, Facebook and the rest. There was a time when it tried to fashion itself as a media company, under the leadership of its second CEO Terry Semel, and failed miserably. So, it is now very clear that Yahoo!’s fate hinges on putting out cool products and services, at the same if not at a faster pace than the nimble start-ups it is surrounded by in the Silicon Valley.

Much has been said and written about the innovation culture of Silicon Valley. There is no other place in the world, which has even come close to producing the same results that this small area, with its extreme concentration of highly talented engineers, marketers, investors and leaders has produced. This is not by accident. Neither is it by a well-documented ISO-9000ish process, for then it would have been easy to duplicate. What makes Silicon Valley possible is the culture of risk-taking and meritocracy, fuelled by like-minded folks working together, learning from each other, and spurring each other on to greater heights.

It is a place where failure doesn’t deter people from taking bigger bets, and trying again. It is a place where creative destruction is part of the deal. It is a place where people and companies reinvent themselves many times over….very unlike so many other places, where there is a premium on doing the same thing with higher outcome predictability.

No wonder then that a Samsung invests in setting up a massive R&D and Innovation centre in the bay area. And it is not an isolated case, every technology company has a major presence in the bay area, because it cannot afford not to be here – the costs be damned. Why technology companies? Even the Fords and the Wal-Mart’s of the non-tech world have pitched their tents here in Silicon Valley!

So, while everyone complains about the cost of living, the traffic jams, and the 24x7 life, the place ultimately delivers an upside that is unbeatable for its residents. The upside is the unknown, and unpredictable, new innovation that disrupts how we all live, work, play, communicate and entertain! Whoever imagined that Google would design a driverless car or a Google Glass?! Did Apple know that its fortunes were going to come from not the desktop computer or even the laptop, but a telephone?

In the same vein, today, Marissa and Yahoo! have no clue as to where their next big break is going to come from! She knows it’s very possible, but how does she make sure that she has the right ingredients in place to make it happen? What does she need to do remove all the stops, and increase the probability that a path-breaking innovation comes out of Yahoo!, and soon?

The time-tested Silicon Valley recipe has been to hire the best and the brightest, get them to rub shoulders with each other, ignite their passion, show them that proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and boom, the results will come. Steve Jobs did it when he came back to Apple, by putting the best product designers and engineers together and presenting them his vision of how they could, together, bring back the old glory of Apple, and change the world using technology and sheer genius! His first big announcement was Apple’s partnership with Microsoft, clearly telling its employees that Microsoft was not the competitor to go after, and setting their sights way higher in the realms of the unknown.

The rest is history, and we see a once-written-off company now looking unbeatable and unreachable. Silicon Valley’s history is replete with such improbable success stories, and Yahoo! could well be the next one, why not, if Marissa is able to get the original mojo back into the iconic company.

Can it happen without people getting together everyday, at one place? Can it happen with people putting work-life balance and other priorities above that of the company? Unfortunately, the resounding answer is a ‘No’! Yahoo is, today, in a start-up phase, and it needs a start-up culture. It cannot afford the ‘big-company’ corporate culture, even though its numbers and public status might trick its leadership into believing so.

Thankfully, Marissa is staying out of the trap that her predecessors fell into. She understands that she is starting afresh. She knows that her competition is the garage start-up next door, coming out of a Y Combinator, not a Google. She has to recreate the same work ethics of the start-up – the gruelling 24x7 schedule, fueled by a hunger and passion to create the impossible. Vacations and family/social life will have to be on the back-burner for a few years. And to make this easier, she will provide free lunch, laundry, a nursery, what-have-you, and also more money and more stocks - in short, everything but “more time at home”!

She is going to fire up every Yahoo employee’s pride, and dreams, and remind everyone of the ‘pot of gold’ that awaits each one of them if they pull off the turnaround. Most people will not remember that when Steve Jobs came back in 1997, Apple’s stock price was a lowly $5.85 – it went on to touch $700+ in September 2012! That is what the start-up and Silicon Valley culture is all about, and that is what Yahoo! needs today. Surely, not everybody will want ‘in’ on this soul-sapping work culture.

The ones, who choose to stay on and pick up the gauntlet, will be the folks who are confident, and obsessed with making a dent - the ones who truly believe that they are game changers. And these are the folks that Marissa is trying to discover, in the haystack of 14,500 employees that Yahoo! has today! No better way for her to start, than by asking them all to show up at work first!

The free-spirited, hierarchy-less, creative, and meritocratic work-culture of Silicon Valley is unique in the degree of innovation it has produced consistently over many decades. It is not for the faint of heart, or the mediocre.If Marissa Mayer does not tap into it, sitting in its midst, she would surely fail. Her actions convey a loud and clear message that she wants innovation at Yahoo! She will sweep off cobwebs, vacuum the place, and create the right settings that will attract the mavericks and outliers to come and work, and make magic happen.

Cronyism rules

‘Recruitment scam: Ex-Haryana cm Om Prakash Chautala convicted, arrested’ read the headlines a few days ago. Chautala got involved in deciding who should be selected for the job of a lowly Junior Basic Trained Teacher(jbt) in Haryana. Of course, Chautala’s criteria for selection were anything but merit. Teachers who made it to his list were either from his hometown, from his caste, or they had paid him money. What an indictment of our hiring process!

Now, imagine the effect this selection process would have on the performance of these teachers in the school. These teachers would know that they have got their jobs because of their right connections. They would believe, and rightly so, that their career progression will depend on keeping their political bosses happy by doing what they want, which is to help them stay in power. These teachers would hardly be concerned about teaching kids better.

Turns out that this is not an isolated instance! We have had documented recruitment scams in the defense, railways, police, and several other government departments. To the extent, that we now take it for granted that most government jobs are bought, be those jobs at the highest, or the lowest levels.

Is it any wonder then that today, even in villages, parents choose to send their kids to private schools, paying through their nose? It’s widely assumed that in private schools, performance would be demanded from the teachers by their management, and hence the results will be better. We choose to go to private schools, private colleges, private hospitals, and other private institutions, wherever possible, because of our fear that merit has been given the go-by in public sector, but not so in the private sector. This is only partially true on the ground.

We have seen the same culture of mediocrity percolate down to the private sector too, because slowly but surely, this is becoming the dna of our country. Hard to believe? Consider this: Most of our infrastructure firms, which do belong to the private sector, have delayed project completions and delivered poor quality work, be it roads, bridges, or even waste disposal. They privately accept that they land these projects based on many different considerations, and not necessarily on the quality of their performance. In such a scenario, they do not necessarily focus on hiring the best people. And the mediocre results follow.

We have fires occurring at a posh private hospital killing patients (remember amri, Calcutta 2010?); we constantly experience technical snags, delays, and cancellation of our flights, with private airlines like Jet and Kingfisher competing with our national carrier in a race to the bottom; even our much touted telecom operators still do not provide us a proper working 3G connection, with acceptable data download speeds, in most parts of our cities!

Clearly our private sector also has significant performance issues, and a lot of catching up to do, when it comes to delivering acceptable standards of service quality. A lot of this blame is attributable to the quality of people hired by them, and the direction that their leadership has given to them in this regard. Perhaps, the leadership knows that the company’s survival and growth depends more on cornering resources like licences, land, bank loans,what-have-you, rather than on delivering quality, and keeping customers happy.

There’s the disconnect — between what we understand as performance, and what their internal yardsticks are! I see this so often in my area of work, viz, leadership hiring. So much importance is given to right network, political connections, ability to schmooze the right people, etc and so very little to hard core skills and expertise needed to perform!

I am reminded here of a famous dialogue from Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged, where Francisco d’Anconia explains that the reason for his family’s multi-generational prosperity is due to the fact that each new member of the family isn’t truly considered to be a ‘d’Anconia’ until they prove themselves based on their own merits and abilities — a great way to ensure that the entire family is not put to risk because of a few bad apples.

I am convinced that this same principle should apply to a country, and society too. Meritocracy needs to be given the pride of place if we want to achieve any level of sustained prosperity and growth as a nation. When merit is the basic criteria for hiring, potential candidates work towards building their core skills required for the job. They learn, train and work hard, to achieve the benchmark that is set by the hiring manager for the role they want. So, when they get the job, they are in their comfort zone. They are good at what they have set out to do, and they take pride in their work. They put their heart into it, and their passion shows in the output.

Many a times this aspect of meritocracy also reflects in the career choices people make. For instance, if they feel that they don’t have it in them to become the best doctor but teaching is something they are better at, then they choose accordingly.

In India, somewhere along the way, we have distorted the entire system. Children get into medical and engineering colleges because their parents can afford to pay. The less fortunate ones buy a seat in a teacher’s training college or a pharma college. When these children graduate, they are not committed to professional excellence. They believe, thanks to their early experience, that they will get by if they have the financial resources. So, making enough money becomes the driving force. We have corrupted the hiring system at its base even before a professional begins his career.

The last nail in the coffin is now being put in place by the government, with its ‘Promotion Quota Bill’. Interestingly, this Bill goes all out to remove any semblance of performance-as-a-criterion, for career progression in public service roles. It seeks to amend Article 335 of the Indian Constitution, which states that the claims of the sc/st have to be balanced with maintaining efficiency in administration!

Just take a pause, and think — where are we headed to? A society, where your social tag will determine the level you reach, without any incentive for how well you do or don’t do in your job! Our forefathers, who wrote the Constitution, were smart to realise that well meaning affirmative actions should not derail performance, when they put in the right checks and balances.

Sixty-three years of the Republic have dulled us into a stupor — we are now okay with a scenario where the word ‘performance’ is being taken out of our very lexicon! I only hope that we are ready to bear the brunt when the proverbial chickens come home to roost.

A New Year ode to the crooked one

As I sit down to write my first piece for the New Year, I wonder what I should write about. Should I continue writing about how we need more innovation and entrepreneurship to change the country and the world? Or about how women are set to conquer the corporate world? Or share my tips on what you should do to climb the corporate ladder even faster?

But then, how do I write as if life is normal, when it’s not? When every news medium is filled with more and more data about our depravation? The number of rape cases in the capital city is enough to earn Delhi the tag of ‘the rape capital’ of the world. Wikipedia’s entry on named scandals in India (refer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scandals_in_India#Named_scandals) lists over 40 scams in 2012 — in troubled states like Jammu& Kashmir, to supposedly well-managed ones like Gujarat. We have been moving from one protest to another over the last year, from anti-corruption to women’s safety, to God-knows-what-next; India Gate has started resembling Tahrir Square, except that we are a democracy, and, therefore, have no one ‘dictator’ to overthrow for our redemption!

Where have we gone wrong? Are we right to place all the blame at the doorstep of our political leadership, as we are doing now?

I surely don’t believe so. When we find things going so wrong, perhaps it is the right time for each one of us to sit down and introspect within ourselves. Let’s face it. Today, most of us are running non-stop, chasing higher and higher targets, without pausing much to think about the means we are using to achieve our goals. We participate merrily in the consumer revolution, without a thought for the extent that we degrade the environment around us.

We fund and sell dubious micro-finance products even as the beneficiaries commit suicide. We celebrate and deify personalities like Vijay Mallya, the Ambani brothers, and many others, even when we strongly suspect that they have bent every rule, and bribed every babu, to succeed. We feel for, and defend, Rajat Gupta, despite the irrefutable evidence against him…after all, did he not manage to climb to the pinnacle of the corporate world….so what if he had to take some shortcuts! I know…perhaps, I am being rather harsh. But I worry a lot about what example we are setting for our children, and the next generation of Indians? We push our children to do well in life. While we make sure that they know how important it is to earn money. Do we spend an equal amount of time and energy to teach them values, to emphasise that money at any cost will not do? I believe not. Neither do our schools teach them values. I remember the time when my son was in a prestigious school in Bangalore; one day he came home and told me about how their school principal had been arrested by the police for beating up his wife! I was completely horrified. But then, was I not at fault for paying donation to get my son a seat in that school? What did I expect from a school that gave away its seats to the highest bidders?

But why do I, and people like me, pull all the strings we could, and spend way beyond our means, to get our children into such schools? We are really a generation in a hurry; a generation of Indians who grew up feeling that we have to succeed — dare I say, by hook or by crook! Our role models showed us a path where you could break all rules to win the race. Idealism was for the losers. We were street smart. If we had to copy in tests to get that unfair advantage over our friends, we quietly did it. We grew up, went to college, and actively participated in eve-teasing, binge drinking, and bullying, all in the name of ‘ragging’….something that every cool kid was expected to do!

Parents looked the other way, because they did not want their kids to be ‘losers’. They wanted them to make friends at the right places, so that they would get the right breaks in life. We went to work choosing jobs that paid us the most, quite willing to shut our eyes to what our employer did, or did not do. We chose our bride or bridegroom based on his/her earning capacity, and many-a-times, paying capacity.

We ‘network’ with folks of questionable credentials, because we want their favours. We ask our sales team to do what it takes to get the orders, and we take them along to demonstrate what we mean. One board member that I met recently said to me, “We have to be practical and appreciate that there is a cost to doing business in India!” This was in response to my query, on how the board had looked the other way when executives in the company were siphoning off money.

Today, we are all protesting, feeling enraged and agitated. The cynical in me thinks this is because the cumulative effect of all our actions are finally coming back to bite us. Now, it is not somebody else who is getting killed, but one of our own — a GM (HR) in Maruti-Suzuki; now, it is not some unknown person going to jail, but one amongst us who happens to be a director of the Reliance Group; now, it is not some hapless rail passengers, but hi-fliers, who are paying the price for Kingfisher’s shenanigans; and, it is not some poor tribal girl getting raped, but a middle-class student in a residential colony in Delhi, who is with a person she is engaged to marry in a month’s time. So, we have been stirred out of our apathy, and we are out there in numbers, making our outrage known.

Please don’t get me wrong. Protest we must, most definitely. We have to continue to protest until our voice, and outrage, is heard, and taken seriously. It’s, indeed, heartening to see the extent, the spontaneity, and the peaceful nature of the protests underway today. It gives me hope that the first signs of change are around the corner.

However, for any real sustainable change to come about, it is important that we, each one of us, also start taking stock of our own sins of omission and commission, and begin taking stands. As consumers, can we start boycotting newspapers & TV channels that regularly give us ‘paid’ news? As journalists, can we perhaps take stands when our media bosses expect us to collude and bargain with businessmen and politicians? As sportsperson, can we refuse to ever throw away matches, and vow to expose those in cahoots with betting gangs? As parents, can we refuse to succumb to the temptation to pay money to buy seats in medical schools for our children?

As facilities managers, can we insist that the transport companies we engage to run buses and cars for our employees only employ trained and licensed drivers, who don’t run amuck on the roads threatening lives, every day? As managers, can we stop, forthwith, the pernicious practice of employing agents, paying hafta and commissions to get our dirty work done in order to run our operations smooth? And as home-buyers, can we refuse to pay the builder a part of the money in black, even if it means we don’t get that ‘special deal’?

If there is one thing that we should set out to do this New Year, I submit that it should be to starta process of serious introspection, and to resolve to change our society by changing ourselves first. I have made a start with my New Year resolution which is to watch what I do at work and at home so that my actions set the right example for my kids and my employees.

I am reminded of what our poet-philosopher, Kabir Das, said in one of his dohas:
“Bura Jo Dekhan Main Chala, Bura Naa Milya Koye;
Jo Munn Khoja Apnaa, To Mujhse Bura Naa Koye”

Translation:
“I searched for the crooked man, met not a single one
Then searched myself, “I” found the crooked one”

THE YEAR GONE BY

DECEMBER 2012! We are at the threshold of another New Year brimming with anticipation about the changes it will bring. Time perhaps to take a step back and reflect on the events and milestones of 2012 that impacted our professional lives. Has anything changed majorly in the year that passed? Any disruption in the way we work? Here is my take on what I saw as the game changing trends in human resource management in 2012.

Welcome the Generation Flux
We have heard of Gen X, Y, and Z. But 2012 brought us Gen Flux — the new generation workforce not defined by age but by a certain mindset. A mindset which is willing to adapt and change depending on what the environment demands; a type of personality which refuses to get set in one way of doing things; the kind of professional who can flit in and out of careers growing and learning new skills in every stint. Scary? Definitely if you are the kind who grows roots and thrives in diving deep. Exhilarating? Sure if you are a Gen Fluxer like Elon Musk who at 41 was one of the founders of PayPal, which revolutionised online payment, oversaw the construction of the first modern day electric car, the Tesla Roadster, privatised space travel with SpaceX and is now the Chairman of Solar City, a Solar Power Systems in the US. A transplant to California from South Africa, he epitomises the new age professional with his willingness to move locations, change industry while being focused on the end goal — which in his case was to solve ‘important problems that would most affect the future of humanity’. So let us toast to the arrival of the professional with neither white or blue collar who by refusing to fit into stereotypes will last longer than all his earlier Avatars.

The new look organisation is flat
It has been a long time in coming but finally 2012 has heralded the advent of the new organisation with very little hierarchy. When billion dollar organisations like Instagram are built with 17 engineers, traditional n-tiered organisations are shaken up from their roots by the after shocks. Can we justify rigid hierarchies or even the much vaunted ‘matrix’ organisation when the need of the hour is high-speed execution? It is getting proven time and again that small but high profile rockstar teams working together with minimal ‘management’ are able to achieve stupendous results. So even larger companies are now creating smaller skunk teams to work on key projects. These teams report directly to the ceo, work under the radar and are shielded from the conventional pulls and pushes, which afflict all large organisations. Eric Ries in his highly popular book Lean Startup argues passionately that it is more important to take time and get the product-market fit right than to grow big. The embrace of Agile Management will force more and more organisations to rethink traditional structures. Workflows and not functional roles will define organisations in the Agile world.

Holy grail no more
Do you really need annual performance reviews when your need is for results today and now? How material is age and experience when nobody has done what you are doing before? Can we divorce job descriptions from experience? Can we redo designations to reflect what the individual is doing? One by one well set hr traditions are being questioned and recast to reflect the reality of the fast changing work environment and demands of the new generation of workers. “Performance reviews reinforce the twisted view that a manager’s job is to sit in judgment on his employees. Your employees know how to do their jobs, and if they don’t, why are you waiting to tell them? Performance reviews make formal and stilted what should be an organic, continual conversation about the work, team dynamics, near-term and long-term priorities” says Liz Ryan, an expert in the new millennium workplace.

Innovation becomes a ‘must do’ from ‘nice to do’
Industries are getting transformed thanks to the huge push that new technologies and new ways of communication are affecting. Kickstarter has shown that crowd funding for ideas is not a pie in the air but a reality. Kiva has proven that reaching small amounts of money from lenders to borrowers, cutting out the middleman altogether is possible. The need to innovate has become mandatory pre-requisite for survival. We saw how Wal-Mart, the uncrowned king of retail is now recognising the threat it faces from an upstart Amazon. Realising that it will lose its customer base to the online retailer, it has now quickly scaled Wal-Mart Ecommerce strategically in Silicon Valley, away from headquarters, so that it can rekindle the innovative spirit it needs to fight the new genre of competitors. And this holiday season should demonstrate the effectiveness of this strategy when Wal-Mart Ecommerce puts Amazon on the defensive.

Everybody wants Rockstars
Tom Friedman, the famous New York Times columnist and author puts it bluntly when he says ‘average is over’. He goes on to say that any job that requires average skills will be done through technology or ‘offshored’ to the cheapest possible foreign location (And India will not remain the cheapest location forever). Therefore any organisations that seeks to thrive in the current innovation and disruption driven economy will demand a class of talent that is completely off the charts. These are geniuses that are going to think differently and come up with completely different way of doing things. They are going to challenge status quo and while doing so take their employers well ahead of competition. Reasons enough for the new generation of employers to look for Rockstars when they hire. They are willing to pay what it takes to get such folks but they are very clear that they do not want to settle for anything less. No wonder then that being a geek has officially become cool now. The wild success of Big Bang Theory, a sitcom around Caltech and mit folks validates and reflects this reality.

People management goes hi-tech
Every employee who walks in today is using smartphone, ipads and living on multiple social networks. It is impossible now to separate personal and professional life through walled gardens as we did before. Office gossip is public today on sites like Glass Door. Compensation to the last digit, culture nuances, personalities of various managers areall available on the web if you care to search. Same thing holds for employees as it is easy to find where they go after work to whom they befriend and what they say. So hr managers have been forced to rethink how they engage with employees. Do they use private networks or public networks as the medium of communication? How transparent should the organisation be? Should they dictate the ‘do’s and don’ts’ for what can be said and done by them on public forums? Can they even do it if they wanted to? These are all questions which have come to the fore now as new technology demolishes the concept of public and private persona.

The corner office turns pink
Virginia Rometty, Meg Whitman, Marissa Myer made news and set the trend for a growing number of iconic Fortune 500 companies to be headed by women ceos. Think about it -Hewlett Packard, ibm and Xerox all traditional technology firms concurrently having women at the top can not be a coincidence. The next generation ones like Yahoo getting a woman as the turn-around ceo, Facebook with Sheryl Sandberg as the coo don’t look like aberration but as deliberate choices. And come January 2013, we will have Lockheed Martin, which is as near as you can get to a macho technology company having Marillyn Hewson at the top. Time for men to watch out for the glass ceiling.