Plan B

Adieu, Sun

Today (Friday, the 29th) is my last working day at Sun. My decision to leave Sun is purely due to local conditions and I remain immensely proud of Sun as a corporate and an engineering company. I'll make sure I stay in touch with Sun through OpenJDK, NetBeans and OpenSolaris. And I hope to return some day to a even more strong and successful Sun. Meanwhile, I'll watch in quiet amusement from the sidelines as Sun pounds its competition with disruptive innovations. To answer the (recently) oft-repeated question - would I recommend Sun as a company? Of course I would. It is arguably the most contrarian, free-spirited and open (in every sense of the word) company in its space. Go Sun!

In closing, I'd like to thank my colleagues (and my manager) at N1 SPS who taught me what good engineering is, and made my stay at Sun truly special. 

All the best, Sun.

 
P.S: My blogging bursts continue here.

Posted at 10:02AM Jun 30, 2007 by Bharath Ravikumar in General  | 

Fuelling innovation

Google's Marissa Mayer on what keeps Google ticking (and more importantly, attracts talent). Topics covered include 20% time for engineers, challenging engineers to think at the next (intellectual) level to solve interesting problems, how engineers take pride in working with really smart peers, absence of micromanagement, how the company learns from mistakes, assimilates ideas from various quarters etc.  Going through the video, you'll realize that nothing of what she said is Nuclear Physics and is mostly common sense. But truth be told, very few large technology companies foster such an environment or follow such practices to the T. And that explains the growing chasm between Google and the other Engineering companies. As simple as that.

All said and done, worth a watch. (The first 25 minutes are most relevant).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soYKFWqVVzg

Posted at 05:40PM May 05, 2007 by Bharath Ravikumar in General  |