IT salary survey in India and USA

IT salary trend in India is something we Indian professionals working here in USA watch very closely. This gives us understanding of how things will shape up in future for IT outsourcing to India. This salary survey  is taken from the website of a talent compensation data provider called PayScale. I am not sure if the data represents the true job market and compensation, but like any other survey provider, you can take it as a baseline data for guideline purposes.
I hear the discussion all the time about rising salaries for Software professionals in India, but if you look at the chart below, entry level programmers and software engineers get about 300,000 INR annual which converts to $7,000 per year. Most of these folks follow the steps and do the job but can't go beyond their job profile and usually do not have capacity to offer creative solutions to the problem. They work under the guidance of their team lead which as you can see earn double the salary. Now, how productive these entry level programmers and developers are compared to the same level here in USA, is a topic of interest.

Median Salary by Job - Country: India (India)

Compare your salary: Get a free Salary Report

One clear reason for outsourcing as we can see, the 8:1 salary ration for software engineers. IT jobs and processes that are repetitive in nature and can be done in steps are the first target for outsourcing and for these types of jobs 8 is to 1 math will always look lucrative. However, highly skilled IT jobs where Interpersonal skills, communication and teamwork are of utmost important, salary gap is not that much. That tells us something. Also most of these positions are occupied by the accomplished professionals who have gone back to their home country after working here for many years.

Median Salary by Job - Degree: Bachelor of Science (BS/BSc/SB), Computer Science (CS) (United States)

Compare your salary: Get a free Salary Report

Power plant in a box - Bloom Energy Bloom Box

Renewable energy and it's mass adoption is going to be a big GREEN trend of this decade. If you followed the green tech, you probably know that Bloom Energy unveiled their Bloom Box yesterday in a highly publicized announcement. CBS news 60 mins also aired an interview with the CEO Dr. K R Sridhar a couple of days ago.

Bloom Energy plans to have a distributed energy solution for consumer in coming year, the company compares the distributed energy with distributed computing(PC) and distributed telephony(cell phones) where consumer is in control.
Bloom Energy would like you to have one in your backyard and to prove his points, he has many customers using the bloom boxes in Silicon Valley inclusing eBay and Google. Right now, one bloom box costs roughly $700,000 which is enough to power 2 European homes or 4 Asian homes or 1 american home (we use more energy here in America per home) which is not bad. At first, the refrigerator size bloom box and it's promise seem unbelievable and impractical, but as CEO Sridhar said, he is hoping to bring cost down to $2000 a box in the future so that every home can have it in its backyard.
So why so much buzz about this, anyway bloom is not the only company working on fuel cells. This is really an innovation we all need to pay attention to for the following reasons:

• The fuel cell(ceramic battery) is made of sand, if mass produced, can be made very cheap.
• Even though natural gas is collided with oxygen to produce electricity, there is no burning of fuel hence no carbon emission at all.

Bloom energy has a video presentation at their website - How a solid oxide fuel cell works?

This technology is very interesting to me and I know I will be watching closely, how soon this becomes available and affordable in rural India where energy production and distribution is a major problem and bottleneck to the rural development.

Just Plain Hunger?

This was my second trip to Santa Barbara and this sheet on the sand caught my attention again. I wonder, if anyone posted the picture of the this income generating machine with the owner. What a creative idea - an empty plate with fork and spoon and an empty water bottle symbolizing plain hunger. I wonder if the proceeds go toward a good dinner or something else. Anyway, I made a wish that I don't get stuck in the traffic before LA and guess what, my wish came true !

Free Resources for DB2 Fundamental 730 Certification exam

I received a couple of emails last week regarding availability of Free resources for the subject exam, so I thought I will post here:

• Certification Roadmap to be followed
• IBM Developerworks tutorial, sign in and download 7 part PDF series here
• DB2 basic series provides articles and tutorials for understanding DB2 technical features
• DB2 SQL Cookbook - excellent resources for quickly learning SQL

Finally, I recommend buying DB2 Certification Guide by Roger Sanders, a proven standard book for securing fundamental exam.

Name Lufthansa's new A380 and win one million miles

Here is a chance to get into history books and win a million miles, enough to fly whole world twice in Lufthansa business class. Lufthansa is asking people to name it's new LH A380 Airbus, the world's biggest and most modern passenger jet. Very soon, we might get chance to board the huge airplane, the facts about it are fascinating..

Take a look at the picture, typical soccer field has a width between 64 - 75 meters. A380 has a wingspan of 79.8 meter. At 24 meter high, it is as tall as 8 story building. Packed with sophisticated systems, A380 is called "plane with the brain". When Boeing 747 entered into service in late 1960 it was quickly named as "Jumbo Jet", so what would you name this?

Solid State Drive(SSD) - $2 a GB

SSD looks very promising and the current price drops in considerably large size of the drive can bring the end of moving parts in a computer quickly than I thought. Currently a 64GB Kingston SSD is on sale for $146 at Buy dot com. Doubling the capacity pretty much doubles the price right now, SanDisk and Intel SSDs may be little more expensive. But once, the price comes down to $1 a GB, I am sure, there will be budget laptops and netbooks that will start using these drives. There is a lot of buzz about the Adata made whopping 512 GB SSD(the biggest so far), but I could not find the selling price for their drives.

Question is - if SSD is without any problem?
Not really, SSD made with cheap silicon and with poor read/write algorithm are not performing up to the mark. There is a lot of discussion on web about the performance degradation of SSD overtime. Here is an interesting and very informative perspective on SSD performance by James Hamilton. 
If you want to know more about SSD technology and architecture, SanDisk has done a great job of putting together a video presentation on SSD.

Who is hiring in Bay Area?

The good things about our profession are, we always have to keep our eyes open, acquire new skills and recognize the future that has already happened. Bay area is considered the place of technological innovation and happening, so it will not be unreasonable to predict the trend based on whats happening here right now. I have been closely following the IT job (Internet, Software, QA, Support) market in bay area since new year and I can see a trend emerging as below:

• Python and Ruby programming languages have established themselves as languages of choice along with PHP and Java in RIA (Rich Internet Applications) world. Startup companies like StrongMail (Email Marketing solution provider), RepairPal (online repair estimate and reviews), Voo (Social network for creativity and fun) are all hiring Ruby/Ruby On Rails developers. 
• Start-ups as expected are using Open Source software stack to minimize their initial IT investment, however they all require experienced System Admins. So there are plenty of jobs for Linux/Unix system administrators who like to work in dynamic start-up environment. Zynga (a game network company), Cotendo (website acceleration solution), Authentic8 (online security) are all hiring System administrators.
• Popularity of Facebook and other social networks have made the concept of "Social commerce" a reality and a lot of companies building the social commerce business are looking for software engineers with Facebook apps development experience. iPhone and android apps developers are in great demand too. 

Tips for job seekers:

1. If you are looking for software engineering position in an Internet startup company, building/polishing your PHP/Python/Ruby skills can be very rewarding. Take a look at the Internet Job section of Craigslist and see if your current skills "set" matches the required set, if not try to fill the gap by acquiring skills online. The best thing about these emerging open source software is that you can find plenty of tutorials and practical examples and learn yourself without going through any expensive training courses.
2. If you are looking for System Administration jobs, you may want to look for Systems/Network sections of Craigslist and get an idea of the current job market for your expertise. If you have at least 2 years of Linux system admin experience, you should be trying to get LPI (Linux Vendor neutral ) Certification. IBM Developer works provides a free full set of educational material and courses for LPI certifications. 

Good Luck and have a great day !!

Car repair estimate - online !

Try RepairPal website for online estimate for your car repair needs. Technology is enabling vast data store of parts  and labor price data to provide users a realistic estimate for car repairs. This is a cool website that provides estimate and connects the repair need to the sponsored service providers in your zipcode. The business model is impressive and overtime, when it builds the user's review, it has potential to become amazon of car repair business.
Good thing is that you do not need to register to get an estimate. All you need to key in is your car make, model and year and choose the repair service from the dynamic list built for your car model. I tried the tool for my Acura MDX front brake replacement and it came up with a range from $233 - $352 which seems to me pretty accurate. I had bargained to get this repair done for $199 at Midas a couple of months ago.

Free Case Management Software & Tools for Non Profit

Technology is the key to providing good services with less money, Non-profit and charitable organizations find hard to keep up with new technology simply because they have to use donated money very wisely. My friend has been working with non-profit organization for many years and we always discuss the opportunity to use license free software and open source tools to improve the process at these organizations. I have been compiling a list of freely available tools for such companies that can provide good value to them with minimal human costs.


(1) Metrix: is a free contact management database in MS Access created by "The Fund for the City of New York". The database is designed to help your organization track funders, clients, events and much more.
Pros:  It consists an UI in Access with underline free version of MS SQL Server support. The queries results can be directed to MS Excel for reporting. Requires someone with MS Access knowledge to install, customize and maintain it.
Cons: This may not be a good value for organization that does not have MS Office licenses.
Download Metrix here.


(2) CiviCRM for Drupal: is a freely available web based constituent relationship management system that works with Drupal CMS. It is a powerful solution with the following features:

• CiviContribute - Online fundraising and donor management, including pledges and personal campaign 
• CiviEvent - Online event registration and event management
• CiviMember - Online signup and membership management
• CiviMail - Personalized email blasts and newsletters.
• CiviGrant - Simple grants management.
• CiviCase - Integrated case management.

Pros: Free, open source and web based, can be extended. 

Cons: Webmaster experience required 

I will have more in next post. Any ideas/suggestions/comments are most welcome !

5 Things DIY - save on overpriced services

One of my friends became a proud new homeowner and he asked me, what are the things he can do himself around the house and what are the things he should hire some one to do it for him. When I bought my first home 6 years ago, I was excited about the opportunity to mow my own lawn. It took me 20 mins of my bi-monthly time to mow both my front and back lawn and with a minimal cost of lawn fertilizer. I spent a couple of hundred dollars on a good used lawn mower and other cutting and clipping machines. I enjoyed doing it without realizing how much money I saved until I rented my house last year. I had to hire a lawn mower service for $60 a month for twice a month service and I often go back to just check my lawn and it does not look any better than it used to be when I was doing the service.
Tip#1: Yes you can save $60 a month by spending 40 mins of your time and you get free exercise, make sure you DO NOT buy a self propelled mower. To me, its a good deal. 

Very often, I hear the counter arguments from my friends and colleagues that "my time is more valuable than the cost of paying someone to do the same job". While this can be true in some situations, in general question is "what are you substituting that time with?" Are you watching another TV episode or really doing highly productive thing? There are few other things like regular maintenance of your house that are fun to do and can save you a tons of money. My old house owner gave me contact# of window washer and suggested that we should get our windows cleaned from inside out at least once a year. I remember calling the window cleaning guy once and got motivated more than before after hearing that he would charge me $110 to clean my 6 windows and one patio door.
Tip#2: A bottle of glass cleaner, wind shield cleaner brush and some paper towels along with your 2 hrs weekend time will do the trick and save you $110


There are small plumbing jobs, every home owner needs to be aware of. Whether you DIY or hire someone, knowing things will save you a bundle when you negotiate with someone. Replacing toilet bowl sounds like the most difficult and dirtiest  job but believe me, I have changed twice myself, its one of easiest things to do. Replacing a sink faucet can be tricky some time, but all it needs is your weekend time and determination to do things.
Tip#3: There are plenty of you tube videos available for specific plumbing jobs, small or big. Get the minimum required tools and take your laptop to the job site(your bathroom for instance) You can easily save outrageously overpriced plumbing service of $80 an hour. 


For me doing these simple things myself  give me psychological benefits. It gives me confidence and adds to my skills set. Of course financial benefit is enormous.

History of Toilet Paper - How Americans convinced the world to wipe

This is an interesting story published in Mental Floss Magazine. Americans spent 6 billion dollar a year on Toilet Tissue. The most interesting part is that, the Scott brothers who invented and popularized the toilet paper on  a roll were so ashamed of the nature of their innovative work that they did not take proper credit of their innovation until 1902. A must read history of Toilet paper...read the full story here:
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs//archives/40088

After you read the history of toilet paper, please also read how our addiction to these disposable paper products are destroying our natural resources and impacting environment. National Resource Defense Council (NRDC), nation's most effective environmental action group claims that
If every household in the United States replaced just one roll of virgin fiber toilet paper (500 sheets) with 100% recycled ones, we could save 423,900 trees.
The council also publishes guidance for consumers and advises to choose the product wisely, see below:


To see the complete list of shopper's guide, visit http://www.nrdc.org/land/forests/gtissue.asp

More expenditure doesn't mean better quality or does it?

I always wonder why public education system in California does not understand that more money spent per pupil in California schools does not necessarily translate to the better quality education. Take a look at the data here (taken from SJUSD school record) The data is for specific school Williams elementary in San Jose. The school district spent about $9,500 per student where as this particular school spent $8,200 per student. Please note that Williams is the top school in the San Jose Unified School district with 2009 API score of 965 (a gain of 16 points). More data can be found on Ed-data website.

There are two more schools in Almaden Valley that comes close as far as API is concerned. So why $800 per month spent on a kid is not making our education system better? The table below shows the percent of students achieving the proficient level and see how kids are doing in all 3 major area of basic education. This is a 3 year comparison chart and the Williams school data is compared against data that belongs to school district and state of California.

While spending less money per student, Williams school is achieving higher score in English, Maths and Science whereas district is lagging far behind. Does this worry you as a taxpayer or a parent? To dig deeper into how taxpayer's money is spent on education, see Dept of education portal.

How do you collaborate at your workplace?

There are times when your day job demands more than 9 to 5. I have been going through such times lately and thats the excuse I intend to use for not be bale to express myself last few days. What I found last few days was that more work you need to do requires more collaboration with your local as well as remote team. In fact, collaboration is going to be the key when it comes to accomplishing tough task on time. This has always been the area of interests to me. I have done extensive research on collaboration within organization and also been part of a small team which developed a web based tool that highlights under-water organization within a company.
So how do you collaborate? I have customized and used a bunch of free software and tools that are easy to setup and use and allow you to become more productive at workplace.

1. Twiki - is a wiki platform that can serve as an enterprise collaboration platform, a document management system or a company wide knowledge base which allows everyone to use and contribute. Twiki engine is very powerful with various plugins and applications as an added options. Setup is pretty easy and maintenance is very low. If followed the simple Installation steps, your enterprise wiki can be up and running in  a day.  So what can you do with it?
• Everyone can create pages (Information) using any web browser, decentralization of content creation and ownership helps foster healthy collaboration within team.
• Full text search available to entire content
• You can have fine grained read and write access for pages based on users and groups
• Updates can trigger email notification which keeps everyone in loop
• Extensive set of plugins provide added functionalities and make it a full fledged collaboration tool.
• You can create web application using twiki engine
2. Drupal - is a web content management system that can also serve as an enterprise collaboration tool. There are thousands of live websites believed to be up and running today that use Drupal platform. You can setup Drupal on a spare server and usually get it up and running in few hours. Unlike other free and open source products, Drupal comes with a rich documentation (probably because it has a humongous user base) for example you can educate yourself on Drupal technology stack and when ready use simple Installation guide to setup. You could use Drupal to create:
• web based form in few clicks
• setup blogs and forums
• RSS feed aggregation from multiple sources
• fine grained access controls
• versatile design of your website
• and much more..
3. phpbb Forum - Email based help system and problem resolution limit the ability to reuse valuable knowledge base in any organization. A web based forum is a proven way to collaborate and create an effective repository of information that can be searched and reused. phpbb can be setup quickly and easily and it comes with a huge user based support system. 
4. Moodle - You want to create an eLearning portal for your organization and do not want to spend big money and resources; you got Moodle. It is a famous web based course management system which can be used both by educators and learners as virtual learning portal. 

There are more advanced tools and I will discuss them in future post, let me know your experiences...