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Prabhat – A true story of admin Linux

Title of the story: Only one extra ordinary quality is enough to become extra ordinary.
I feel lucky as I was privileged enough to meet many ordinary people with extra ordinary qualities. Prabhat Kumar aka admin linux is one such person. I remember him when he visited Grmtech for a placement visit, where he explained his work at his Summer job. After talking to him, I felt he will be able to help us with an IE toolbar. Also I had a previous experience working together on “Dalal Street” application during our AIMK days. He was a great help working throughout the night to finish the whole application in 2 days nights. With all previous experience I called him for interview and he was able to do well in the interview. He got selected.

He was no extra ordinary guy, he studied in average Hindi medium schools for many years. All I knew was that he was hard working, he showed his hard work all the time. He was recruited as a programmer but he always showed interest in Server administration. I must accept that in the initial days I had no faith in him for server administration. His communication skills were as high as 1/10. Even with all his limitations and barriers, he kept his interest in server management. He kept involving in some work or the other. After seeing his interest we decided to give him the job of System administration. He was guided by our boss (who is amazingly great with networking and server management). Even after handing over the responsibility, I had doubts but he was always confident. He kept working working and working (His greatest strength) without listening to other vibes but to his own which said you can. Not only he worked and learned but got up early morning 5’oclock to finish his international certification for Red hat and Oracle (Some more certifications). He was hardworking and kept working hard to see himself at a very better position. His communication skills are improved, and his knowledge level is great (now we call him to sort out our networking issues). All became a possibility because he decided to use his only quality, the quality of hard working to earn and sharpen other invisible qualities.

I congratulate him for his latest certification and even more I congratulate him for his quality of hard working, may God bless you. And I want to leave a note for others that things are possible but one will have to work hard too.

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If you think you are ……, you are

Olympics time and here is a beautiful message. Got this message today, it is really nice. Have you wondered why it is so important? We will look into some of this after you enjoy the beautiful lines.

You are a winner if you think so

If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, then you won’t.
If you like to win, but you think you can’t,
it is almost certain you won’t.

If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost.
For out of the world we find,
success begins with a fellow’s will–
it’s all in the state of the mind.

If you think you are outclassed, you are–
you’ve got to be sure of yourself before
you can ever win a prize.

Life’s battles don’t always go
to the stronger or faster man,
but sooner or later the man who wins
is the man who thinks he can.

I will let you define why it matters, why your thinking matters. Enjoy! (For a lighter node, don’t miss http://www.monsterindia.com/smile/ and http://www.microsoft.com/surface/index.html)

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Selling pubcon.in to Brett Tabke, owner of Webmasterworld.com

Pubcon India has been attracting more and more web enthusiasts in last few weeks. Everyone is excited about various events and the overall plan. I just took http://www.pubcon.in just by chance (May be because I knew pub con or hosting con).

Brett Tabke of WebMasterWorld.com, who blogs using robots.txt file. I can better introduce him as a great person who thought of opening WMW. WMW has been a blessing to many of us, I met a lot of people there, I learned a lot of things there, many memories to share about WMW and many dreams to follow. Brett has asked for http://www.pubcon.in and I am more than happy to sell pubcon.in to him as by this we can expect his entry to Indian webmaster world. We had been expecting this for quite some time.

After pubcon, what?

Don’t worry guys, we will get another domain, just suggest me some good name.

Am I selling pubcon for $1 million

Many have asked this question. Sorry, can’t reveal that :). Call me if you want to know the exact amount :), have fun.

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When did your boss become a boss?

(My apologies for not writing regularly, I am little too caught up with my new book, dawebmarketing.com and other initiatives)
I was reading “So When Did Your Boss Become an Authoritarian?” at bnet and thought of writing few lines here. I heard different stories about their bosses from many of my friends. They had huge respect for their bosses. (I am not naming the company because I am not sure of the facts but yes, I heard the same story from many people) They even recruited more than 100 people at one go. It was expanding and was a symbol of great success. But after few months people started leaving, the place became a horror story. Hiring and firing became a common daily routine. The reason, “our boss changed”. The company still exist and now they have even put a big advertisement to recruit new people. I wish it was one odd company. I head these same stories with different company name associated with it.

Some possible changes:

I can point some of the possible changes and reasons behind it:

  1. Tracking people: As the company grows, the bosses of small companies want to track everything happening. They will put more rules, reporting and everything possible to track the activities not checking the consequences and the need. Reason: They are not sure if everyone is working hard. Why it hurts: There are people who work by their own and are 80% responsible for company’s success, they get pissed off with these new things. The people who don’t work still don’t work.
  2. No time: Bosses have their own choice of work. They sometimes forget to give time to the added responsibilities. Earlier these problems did not exist, it poped up because of new developments. Reasons: Bosses don’t like this work. Why it hurts: Some people don’t answers to questions, which means a lot to them. Solution: Delegation of work.
  3. You changed: I liked this post my Narayan Murthy Sir. When you were young, new and had only one goal and that was to make your company grow, your boss liked you. But when you started asking money and time for your family, things changed. “He is no more the same person” says the boss and changes his perception towards you. He changed because you changes. Or Both changed because time changed.
  4. Communication gap: This is such a huge topic to talk about. Communication can be divided into 2 parts: “Visible” and “Invisible”. “The boss’s smile”, “Boss’s eyes”, “actions”.
    “trust” everything falls under invisible communication. When the company is small these communication happens more often. You understand your boss better but when the company grows the verbal communication takes over the invisible communication. The gap starts building up. Solution: Have lunch with them, have parties together, meet up with them, take classes etc. Even you can visit there house once in a while or start a family day in office.

There are more points, let me leave it for you 🙂 have fun.