About
Yet Another Self-Important Blog.
Rohit Singh
Email Me
Blogs
Use as directed or at your own risk.
Links
These are a few of my favourite links.
[Wed, 08 Oct 2003]
Because its there....
Geek meets adrenaline-junkie. The new cousin of geo-caching. BTW, its
interesting that Yemen has so many confluence points, its a relatively
small country. So I checked the map: the country is almost a rectangle
with an east-west orientation- good for latitude/longitude crossings.
Career Growth in a Call Center
There aren't many phrases more oxymoronic than that title. The generic
call center job requires no real skills, apart from proficiency in the
language of interest and a general sense of phone etiquette. Conversely,
it doesn't teach you any useful skills either. And not everybody can climb
up the ladder to be a manager. So call center employees aren't increasing
their hire-ability in any significant way. So why are call centers still a
good thing for India ?
Its simple economics! Call center jobs started in the U.S., and then moved to places like Ireland and are now moving to places like India. These were dead-end jobs in U.S., these became dead-end jobs in Ireland and these will be dead-end jobs in India. But these jobs pay Rs.5000-12000 in India which is not a bad pay, especially if it is supplementing some other source of income (parents/spouse) in the family. I can't understand people who are revolted by this wave of "cyber-coolies". Do they want only i-banking and stock-trading jobs to be outsourced to India? Fat chance! Seriously, if somebody is willing to work like a night owl in a boring dead-end job for a decent pay, its his/her choice. Maybe he's a college student who wants to save up some quick money for a professional education. Maybe she's a housewife who works 2 nights a week to supplement the family income. Maybe he's a 35 year old guy who couldn't find any job until now and took English lessons for 1 year to get this job and is atleast financially independent now. And if the average Indian becomes rich enough to not want to go through this drudgery, India will be a much richer and greater nation. Until then, people should just shut up and put up.
Wilsongate?
I wonder if this (NYT, Guardian) will become as funny as the David Kelley drama in U.K.....
Topa, Cheating, Plagiarism and Declension
Is there more cheating among students these days or less? Probably more, in terms of
the information tranferred. But in terms of the effort expended, probably
not. I distinctly remember my dad mentioning a contraption with a lamp
inside a box and a tracing sheet on the top. We just xerox the stuff. Of
course, both generations have to still do the task of cultivating
friendships with people who can supply the originals. One of the reasons
for the current brouhaha, I think, is that the rules have
become more and more complicated. At IITK, in most classes, you had to do
assignments on your own. Any help was bad. Period. At Stanford and MIT, the rule
in many classes is more convoluted: discuss with your friends as much as
you want, but write the solution in your own words. Suppose somebody
finishes his pset early and shows up with the full solution. Everybody else
photocopies it, studies it, and then writes his "own" solution. How
different do you think the solutions are going to be? Similarly, in
research, who gets to be a co-author and who gets to be just acknowledged and
who just ends up in the "references" section ? Anyway, NYT has an article.
As an aside, there is a big word for the "our kids' generation is going to the dogs" mentality: declension.