How LinkedIn got me a job that I never knew it existed

This post is about how LinkedIn helped in my recent job search. Obviously, there is no silver bullet. Follow what works for you, but here are some ideas that can help you on the way.

As with everyone, I started with a resume. A simple 2 pager. I reached out to someone who does content marketing as her day job. She helped me to cut down all the unnecessary stuff & showed me how I can write the resume the way it reflects my character. I copied the same content into my LinkedIn page. I can now give my LinkedIn page URL as my resume. (Hint: you can edit your LinkedIn page URL as you wish). Step 1 - Decent Resume.

I thought of uploading it to job portals. But then there were a couple of problems. It might attract so many unwanted calls & also, my current organization (that time) might get to know about it. I didn't want a regular Mainframe architect/project manager role. Nothing against these roles. Just not my cup of tea. I wanted to work on a specific area of zDevOps. But I realized I didn't have any idea about teams doing this in our competitor places. All of them are huge organizations. It is like searching for a needle in a haystack. LinkedIn was the only place I was able to identify practitioners/experts. I immediately converted my account to LinkedIn premium. Best decision of this entire episode. Till then what I had known about "Mainframe DevOps" was a narrow view clouded by my assumptions. It is nowhere close to the full view of how other teams view/implement it. The moment I converted my account to premium, I started conversations with leaders/practitioners in the area. (You get 5 InMails per month and if someone responds, that InMail doesn't count against the 5) They gave me a totally different perspective. Many of them were receptive and there were many wonderful conversations that happened in messages. Step 2 - Linkedin Premium. Worth every penny.

I shortlisted a set of organizations/people whom I wanted to work for. I skipped recruiters/talent acquisition personnel. I reached out to people who were leading the group at a high level. The advantage that I had with premium was that I was able to reach them directly. It was not a referral. It was not a common friend or a colleague passing the resume to them. I wrote to them directly. I tried to write a cover letter talking about my passion for the area and why I wanted to join them. Remember my resume is the same as my LinkedIn page. So no attachments or lengthy emails. My cover letters were 3-5 lines at max. Step 3 - Find the right contacts in organizations and reach them via LinkedIn InMail.

I didn't know that time about my current team. Someone (actually a competitor) mentioned about my current company doing some amazing work in this area. Till then my focus was on service companies and Mainframe CoEs in them. This opened a new door for me. I tried reaching out to my friends in that product company, but none had an idea on it. Again thanks to LinkedIn Premium, I was able to do an exhaustive search, and thanks to InMail, I sent a note to someone who was leading that group and he (30+ year experienced veteran in IT) responded positively on the same day. I attended interviews and the next day I saw key leaders of Mainframe DevOps looked up on my LinkedIn profile. I knew I have hit the right spot and that increased the confidence in me to convert this opportunity into an actual job offer. Step 4 - Keep your eyes and ears open. You would never where you will hear about an exciting opportunity. 

I today spend more time on LinkedIn. I see a lot of value in taking part in professional conversations across companies and learning from others. So I would suggest using LinkedIn to build your professional image rather than just using it only during the job searches.

Thanks for reading and All the best. 

Delhi Protests - against Rape #VAW - Why you need them?

As I write this post, live TV coverage of Delhi protests is on tv for the second day.  Students are bombarded by tear gas and water cannons. Good work by those who stood up for their rights. There are some good posts covering the agitation and since I am nowhere near ground zero won't talk about how peacefully (or not) the protests is going on.  I suggest you read posts like this :   http://nilanjanaroy.com/2012/12/22/notes-from-raisina-hill/

Also, I wont talk about what the solution is. There are well analyzed posts like http://coldsnapdragon.blogspot.in/2012/12/on-vaw-rape-reform-and-living-with.html

The idea of this post is to answer few questions that are asked about the need of the protests or the quality of the protests: Like(but not just this) conversation https://mobile.twitter.com/scanman/status/282757755893342209?p=v

First question that is asked, what do protesters want? I understand most protesters don't know exactly what they want and/or why they want. For example, even a law of death penalty for rape, cannot help today's victim, as the law is only for incidents that happen after that. Most people don't understand all these. My simple point is, they don't need to. In any protests, that is carried out by big leaders, the followers don't understand all the minor details. They just say, "oh. I need separate country/state", right? Same here. I don't support death penalty for rape for many reasons. But one angry lady shouting there and asking for it, is wrong? How? She is not the lawmaker who is going to amend the law tomorrow. She is just expressing her anger in the way she knows and in the way she thinks as correct. And she is better than some "so called" leaders who have millions of people behind them. I am more worried about these leaders pointing the wrong solutions like "blaming the victim" than the innocent/not so well thought protester slogans. So please don't quote the protesters and say, "oh. they don't even know what they want and hence the protest itself is stupid". They don't need to know, the anger tells the government that you need to provide them safer country than what it is today. "How" is a problem of the intellectuals/politicians who have access to the data about the crimes and the reasons behind them. The people are there to show their concern/anger/helplessness.

Second is the undue media coverage. I agree that same level of crime elsewhere in the country never got this kind of media attention. But this is true always. We need to blame the media for this and not the protesters. My take is media is covering this more because, a. They also fear for their own safety. This is their problem too. Many of them take those buses/travel on those roads. b) Happens in Delhi where all the equipments needed are readily available for a 24 * 7 coverage. (Including cameramen / reporters to work in shifts). c. Last but most importantly, the people who are protesting are the first consumers of this 24 * 7 English media. If the media doesn't cover this today, they are going to be upset. In any market based environment, you don't want to lose your customers. Anyway, all these point to the business model of the media and if you have problem with it, you should take that discussion elsewhere, not here.

Third is that the protesters are wasting the national resources like police and blowing up the issue than what it is worth. I don't agree to this. Any discussion on Violence Against Women is welcome, doesn't matter whether it starts from Manipur or Delhi. We need this discussion to start somewhere and hopefully end in better society. If not for these protests, we (men) all would have forgot about "rape/VAW" as a problem that  is faced by this country and would have moved on. To keep this fire burning, to get the media talk about it, to get the leaders think about it, we need these protests. They should be peaceful and hopefully they will be. (Though I hear political parties are trying their level best to turn them violent).

Another point raised is that, all these people protest, as it affects them and not because it is a social cause. As in, question is, why they didn't protest when similar incidents took place in the past, when it happens to lesser privileged people on other parts of India. Yes, they (or I should say we, as I identify myself more with them) are the middle class who usually keep away from the politics and protests and don't comment on most of the topics. You protested in kudankulam or in Telegana and they didn't come there (even on a weekend) to help you. But as you have a right to protest, they do have, no? If they ask you to come to Delhi, to stand with them, please complain. Till then, please give them their right to outrage and show their anger.

I am proud of what happened in Delhi. Hopefully some kind of legislation/procedural change happens in relation to rape/VAW cases. 

ஆமீர் சார் வாழ்க

அட யார்ரா இவன், எங்க இருந்துடா பதிவு பக்கம் வந்தான்னு கேக்குறது புரியுது. ஒரு எதிர்வினை. பதிவுக்கு எதிர்வினை என்பதால் பதிவாவே போட்டுவிட முடிவு. அப்பத்தான் நமக்கு இந்தபக்கம் ஒரு கடை இருக்குன்னு ஞாபகம் வந்துச்சு. 

சரி மேட்டருக்கு வருவோம். http://www.karkibava.com/2012/05/blog-post.html  இந்த "அமிர் சார் வாழ்க", பதிவுக்குத்தான் பதில். கார்க்கி ரெம்ப பிரபல பதிவர். எழுத்தில் திறமைசாலி. நமக்கு அவ்ளோ எல்லாம் எழுதத்தெரியாது. (என்ன தான் தெரியும்ன்னு கேக்க கூடாது). அதனால் எனக்குத் தெரிந்ததை கொட்டி இருக்கிறேன். அதை படிக்கலைன்னா, ஒரு எட்டுப் போய் படிச்சுட்டு வந்துடுங்க.

இது புது கான்செப்ட்ன்னு யாரு சொன்னா? அதரப்பழசு தான்.  Oprah Winfrey  செய்யாததா. கிட்டத்தட்ட விசு/டி.ஆர் இங்க பண்றது தான். கொஞ்சம் பழைய format தான். அதை மாற்றி அமிர் செய்து இருக்கலாம் என்ற ஆதங்கம் எல்லாருக்கும் உண்டு. இனி வரும் நிகழ்ச்சிகளில் மாற்றுவார் என்று நம்புவோம். அதை அவர் செய்யாவிட்டாலும், அது ஒரு முயற்சியை செயல்படுத்துவத்தில் உள்ள குறைபாடாகத் தான் பார்க்கப்பட வேண்டுமே, தவிர முயற்சியே தப்பு என்றோ, இது வெறும் ஒரு பணம் சம்பாதிக்கும் வழி என்பது சரியாப் படல. நிகழ்ச்சி பற்றிய சில குற்றச்சாட்டுக்களும், அது பற்றிய என் கருத்துக்களும்:

1. அமிர் தனது brand imagai வளர்க்கத்தான் இதை செய்கிறார்: இருக்கலாம். இருக்கட்டுமே. என்ன பிரச்சினை இதில்? அவர் புத்திசாலியாக காட்டிக்கொண்டு , தவறான தகவல்கள் தந்தால் அதில் உள்ள பிரச்னையை புரிந்துகொள்ளலாம். ஆனால் முதல் நிகழ்ச்சியில், தகவல்கள் தவறாய் ஒன்றும் இல்லை. How one wants to show their image is their own choice. Masala movies have all stupid things in world and we just say that they are "masala" and don't read into them. Sameway, Amir has his right to show as different from your regular masalawalas. இந்த பணத்தை அவர் மிக எளிதாக  வேறு ஏதேனும் ஒரு நிகழ்ச்சி செய்து  சம்பாதிக்க முடியுமே? 

2. Reliance/Airtel sponsor: இது பற்றி நிறைய விவாதிக்கலாம். I see this as a compromise that he does for getting the bigger picture seen. இன்று நிறுவனங்கள் தான் நம்மை ஆளுகின்றன.   வினவின் கருத்தாழம் மிக்க கட்டுரைகள் நம்மால் எத்தனை பேரால் ஏற்றுக்கொள்ளப் படுகிறது. ஒரு சமூகமாக நாம் அனைவருமே ஒரு வலதுசாரி வாழ்க்கைமுறையை சரி என்று ஒத்துக்கொள்ள ஆரம்பித்துவிட்டோம். (பிடித்தோ பிடிக்காமலோ). எனவே இனி வரும் சமூக மாற்றங்களில்(மாற்றம், புரட்சி இல்லை) , நிறுவனங்கள் பங்கு இருக்கும். 

3. அமீர் தான் தெரிந்தார், நிகழ்ச்சி தெரியவில்லை. ஒரே வார்த்தை தான். 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder 

4. // இந்த நிகழ்ச்சி நிச்சயம் அமீர்கானை அறிவாளியாக, பொறுப்புணர்ச்சி மிக்கவராக மக்கள் இடையே அழகாய் இன்னும் ஆழமாய் நிறுவும். அதை தாண்டி எதுவும் செய்யுமென்ற நம்பிக்கை எனக்கில்லை. காரணம் அந்த எண்ணமே அவர்களிடத்திலே இல்லை. // இதற்கான பதில் உங்களுக்கும் எனக்கும் என்றுமே தெரியாது, கார்க்கி. 

பல நேரங்களில், ஒரு சில விஷயங்கள் தப்பு என்ற உணர்வே இல்லாமல், நாம் வாழ்கிறோம். இந்த மாதிரி நிகழ்ச்சிகள் ஒரு சமூக அளவில் ஒரு பாதிப்பை ஏற்படுத்தும் என்று ஒரு சின்ன நம்பிக்கை. இந்த மாதிரி நிகழ்ச்சிகளில் ROI கிடையாது. நல்லது நடக்கும் என்ற நம்பிக்கையில் செய்வது. அவ்ளோ தான். 

ஆமீர் சார் வாழ்க

YOU and Google's new privacy policy

I am sure you have seen the new privacy policy agreement from Google that was flashed on the home screen of Google, on your Gmail and any Google service that you might be using. If you still haven't read(who reads those any way),

http://googleblog.blogspot.in/2012/01/updating-our-privacy-policies-and-terms.html

I am not gonna talk about western world that lives in its own dreamland and also has much better cyber laws. This article is about people who live on countries that have close to zero cyber laws and where you can buy anything with money. Full disclaimer: I am a Google Fanboy. So read this with a pinch of salt. :-)

There are two major implications of this for common people like us in developing countries.

Google data integration across domains:

Google is integrating the data collection about YOU across its all the Google services that you use. Their argument is they will be able to provide more personalized service for you. A "like" in a youtube movie may be used to show you an advertisement, as you read your emails.

This is essentially not bad. Few reasons:

1. None of us till today has complained about Google advertisements and we in countries like India want "free service". Paying for emails is just going to shut the usage of Internet. So we will have to take this pill. 

2. Google always says they never sell the data to others. In the sense, advertisement regarding a "discount on soap" that you use may come as you search for something, but your retailer or the manufacturer will never about YOU as a person and what you like.

3. I (as a fan boy) believe on Google's "Don't be evil" until today. There are few concerns (that you will see below), but overall Google is better than other companies. If I ever was "forced" to surrender my data to someone, It will be Google. So you can be assured that any deviation from these policies will be known to people before they get implemented. Transparency is the key.

Where do I think this data integration is not good?

1. Giving bits and pieces of information to someone is lot different from having them integrated in one place. You can't wear a mask to google now. Common man doesn't think a lot about privacy and uses same email address  (usually gmail) across internet. What music you like to when is the last time you searched about malaria, where you like to Dine, everything is known to Google. Think twice. It is like a magic box that if questioned about one's tastes, it correctly lists out. There are lot of privacy concerns here. What if Google is hacked?

2.Bending for the governments is something all the corporate companies do. They need to answer to their shareholders. Google can't run away from a market like India. (China is a different story). This is exactly where volume is, tomorrow's growth is. Google is already redirecting blogspot.com to blogspot.in, so that it can ban something in a specific country. Now with all this in mind, think about Indian Government asking for a specific person's data. Google will oblige and we all may not know about it. Can it be used in court of law? May not be today. But what if Government changes laws to do that, what do we do? Ok, that might sound like a far fetched story. Now think this way. You are a popular person in a small town, someone wants to spoil your name. They bribe the Indian government folks and indirectly google hands the data to these criminals. (This "could" even contain the information about your health.).

3. Google turning into a regular corporate company and "dont be evil" stays only on paper. Though I dont believe this, as Google becomes a bigger company, there might be people who might take short cuts. (There is already a story in Africa where google did a nasty wok). There might be things that are done in not so transparent way and we might never know about it. Google might be selling data to P&G and you might be getting direct emails from them. This relates back to point 2 as well. Google Indian team might take different stand from corporate to show growth in India.

G+ Over others:


Apart from the data integration, second impact is that, google came up with how it shows the search results. Now G+ takes more precedence over Facebook, Twitter and other results. This is most probably not harmful to you as end user. But this is a trap. This forces you to use G+ to be more social. Basically Google is using it's search capability to force you to use it's other products. You should use a product, because you like it. Not because Google forces it. Gmail was good example. People switched from yahoo and hotmail as the product was better, not because Google forced it. So making G+ better should be the way to go and not this. Many tech journalists feel Google overstepped on this one killing it's "Don't be evil" policy.  I think I agree to an extent here.

One suggestion to you is, make sure you log out of people, if you are going to do some search, some net surfing that you don't want Google to track. Remember this because many of us don't logout of Google at all. Incognito window would be better.  

Need your help

Summer of 2004 was an unforgettable one for me. It was the hottest summer, as I saw the sun more than in any other summer. Times when I thought I am on a verge of something,either i am gonna be very successful or utter failure, times when i thought my life was more like a lottery. Yes, I was searching for a job. The general thought is that "if you have the talent, you should get a job easily". If India's 1990s had BComs and BScs storming the job market, 2000s had BEs. I agree that hiring was on its high in 2004s. Even then we(most of my friends and yours truly) weren't 'fully qualified' to be readily hired by the 'Indian biggies' in IT, even by the smaller companies, forget those MNCs like IBM.

I came from a college where campus interviews were unheard of. A college which is located just outside Madurai. Those days, we didn't even know what kind of work is done in IT companies. When we all set ourselves to start job search, it was more like how you will search a house for rent. Nothing planned, no definite path setup. We knew one thing, we should get a job before next time we go to our town or village. We all had good scores in colleges and a little bit of technical brilliance in us. We knew C and C++ better than English. We thought to work in Indian IT that is what is needed, right? My father works in postal department where language of communication is English. So we thought a little more English that my father had should work. Little we know that we are almost disqualified moment someone hears our English.We didn't even think about other options like higher education. Even within IT, we had less knowledge on areas like Testing where many of us would have shined easily.

Again and again many of us failed in interviews and came home with a dropped head. The entire room will brainstorm on what went wrong in that Interview, but we could never come out with definitive answer. Because we simply didn't have the understanding of what was the selection criterion were. We answered that our hobby was reading(because that sounded decent than cooking or gardening, which was the real hobby). When the interviewer started asking about "What exactly you read", the only answer we had was "Kumudam and Aananda Vikatan". We declared ourselves as sportsperson without even knowing to play any other game other than cricket. Even in Cricket, which was supposed to be our passion as per the resume, we didn't know to point out the "square leg" or a "point" position on a cricket ground picture. Looking back, I feel it was a sheer luck and that my peer community didn't have better standards than me that got my first job. The interviewer most probably thought Senthil's analytical ability was good enough to hire him in spite of his bad body languages/communication skills and everything else that was going against him.

So where am I getting here? Yes summer of 2012 is 8 years ahead of 2004. But little has changed in colleges around Madurai. We still have students who don't understand IT companies and who don't have confidence/communication skills/data points to face the Interviews. I wanted to help them out. With the little experience I have on this Industry, with a lot of help from others like you. There are already people who are working for this cause, we can talk to them, learn from their experiences and do our part. I wanted to something about this in 2009, but I was in USA and didn't pursue this. http://ponniyinselvan-mkp.blogspot.com/2009/11/blog-post_23.html was the triggering point that time.

So what are the next few steps I am planning?

1. Talk to the placement officers of few colleges around Madurai.
2. Try to get a weekend session organized in these colleges and meet the students first. Talk to them about their plans and take couple of sessions(totally unorganized sessions, no ppt) on resumes and Interviews.
3. Understand what they want and then try to organize more people who have that kind of capability to help them out.
4. Follow up with them as they start this summer with job search.
5. If possible forward some of those resumes to HR of the companies where we work/where we have friends.

I know that this is more of open ended idea than something which is fully formed. But my past experience says that when I close out an idea with all the ends decided, it is usually ends up in a dead end with not much of support. So this time I will listen to all the other ideas. I want to start it somewhere around Pongal, so that we have enough time before the educational year comes to an end.

Why Madurai? The first set of people who said OK to me for this idea are from my college and from Madurai. So if you want to do this in other areas, we can do it and learn as a group.

Why is this post in English instead of in Tamil? I am hoping that people who are non-tamilians who are in TN   will also participate.

Thanks for reading. Shoot your ideas in comments section or at reachsenthilnathan @ gmail dot com

Thank You - My Turtle Neck CEO

It was a morning that I will remember for a long time. Woke up to my tweets as any day and saw one tag occupying more than 50% of tweets, #RIPSteveJobs. Steve has made a big impact on me in the last few years. This will be my tribute to Steve including some instances where I thought he should have done it differently.

Steve Jobs was someone who kept most of the things about him in private. For someone who was well known for his stage presence, we don't have many videos of him on this digital age except for the famous Stanford speech of 2005. He told his biographer that he was doing the biography for his children to understand how much he loved them. Imagine you understanding your father through a book. So what we are left with is just perceptions about him. Many of his fans believe that his biography will come out with the message that Steve wanted to give to this world, I don't think so. He preserved details about him in private for the time he lived and he was not going to leave that to fall apart after he is gone. This big disclaimer para is because, some of his fans may not agree with some stuff mentioned here.

Steve was a great example of how your passion for work can take you to heights. I don't think he even considered his life at Apple as work. He lived through it. You can argue on how lucky he was in 2007 for the technology to improve to get a phone that can be a mini-computer. But life has been tough on him than it was easy on him. Being fired out of the company he founded, getting back into the company when it was in worst phase of its entire life and then his cancer. He fought all of them and he did come out as the most successful (i)CEO of the last few decades. Steve will always be remembered for making Personal computer & Mobiles accessible to the common person who didn't understand what programming is. Yes, he didn't sell as many Macs as PCs or as of today his iPhones don't sell as much as Androids, but both Google/Microsoft did learn a lot from Apple products. Nothing to deny on that. (Same way he has taken notes from them as well).

Thank you Steve for those perfect products.

Steve means perfection in tech world. A product from Apple may be costly, but it will be perfect based on the technology available at that time. Every Apple product was an apple with the first bite consumed by Steve. And he always wanted the best. Anything lesser than that will go to trash. I thank Steve for leaping ahead with iDevices. I do think Google/Microsoft would have done it, but he pushed everyone years ahead to come up with new technology. There are stories around Internet how hard he was on his employees. He didn't even think his customers know what they want. He did have the intuition of what will sell/what will be in need. He just saw the future as clear as we see the past. I think there would be few decisions that he regretted in his professional life. (I am not talking about his family life, as none of us will ever know how much he loved them & stories on Internet about someone's family are the last one's you should believe).

Thank you Steve for setting the standards high for entire Industry.

Steve was one person who had instincts of future. He did know to create an ecosystem that so many liked(though I have different thoughts on that ecosystem). He did Innovate on hardware/Software/iTunes/Retail model/App Ecosystem and many more. Many articles have been written on other Innovations he did, but less on the Retail outlets. Retail outlet is one for which he is credited less. But he was so bold to put Apple retail shops on towns & cities of US, with so much of risk attached to it. On hindsight it looks like the perfect move, getting those Apple products on the hands of people. It did make them realize that it just works. :)Apple didn't pay dividends for shareholders in the last decade. Apple has taken risks that would have reduced shareholder value to nothing. Steve did practice different type of capitalism where he didn't run to show quarterly results. His shareholders just have to believe him like his customers believed him. And as his customers always got a product that works, his shareholders saw their share value go up as years passed by. Apple was valued at $ 7Billion in 1998 to $ 340Billion today. That talks about the confidence of his investors on him and Apple. Steve had Eric Schmidt of Google on Apple's board even when both the companies started building capabilities in overlapping areas. So either Steve believed Eric completely not to use the info that Eric learned as board member to use against Apple or he did not even share many of his visions with the board as well.

Steve has been criticized for his lack of philanthropic activities when compared to Gates.(Though I don't buy it. Give a break. He earned every dollar of it).

Steve was a good CEO. Steve created a cult culture for digital products. Steve was good in marketing. He was known to sell things. Even though I have said above that Apple products of high standards, there are cases where Steve did hold on to a feature because of various business reasons. Apple has a closed ecosystem of apps which has hurted app developers sometimes. (Lead times/Rejections with no reasons/Censorship). I also think Apple as a company didn't help much to the entire ecosystem of digital world. In most cases, Apple either wanted to use the standard that it says or just won't support it. Flash is an example. When there were millions of pages on Flash, Steve strictly said no to Adobe flash. I am sure he had his own reasons like battery life, HTML5 is way forward and so on. But it did hurt so many flash game developers. 30% cut that he wanted on everything that is sold through iDevices just shows his business skills. He acted like a shrewd businessman in many a times than as a Innovator who brings the world the magic of his innovation. Ideally he should be the case study of Harvard Business school than of digital innovation world. To me his legacy after all the dust settles after many years will be his talent as a CEO than as a digital icon. He recruited good talent, did know how to get work done from them, had an intuition for the future, did know to market his products and did know to build a business model on top of it. Mostly they are CEO thing, not a techie thing. Hopefully you will understand that I don't add him as just another person, but he is also not someone who is like super hero. There are lot of things that he would have done in a better way. Still,

Thank you again Steve.

If you know tamil, please read on, else thanks for reading till here.. :)

ஆப்பிளின் சீனா மூலமான உழைப்புச் சுரண்டல் குறித்து ரோசாவசந்த் கீச்சுக்களை மறுடுவிட் செய்த பொழுது, "இன்று இதை பற்றி வேண்டாமே" என்று பதில் தந்தேன்.. அதை மதித்து இந்த பதிவில் அதைப்பற்றி குறிப்பிட்டு இருப்பது கண்டு மகிழ்ச்சி. நன்றி ரோசாவசந்த். அவரின் பதிவு 'நுகர்வு கலாச்சாரம்' பற்றி அற்புதமாக பேசுகிறது.

சுட்டி : http://roza-thuli.blogspot.com/2011/10/steve-jobs.html

Mangalore Flight Crash - run(a)way

Tamil version is here. This is for my non-Tamil friends.

Flights crash every now and then. When it happened in Poland, when it happened Libya, it was a news to me. I read it, felt bad for the people who died or injured, even before I would try to dig more details of the victims, another news in Google News will capture my eyes, may be that HTML5 which Apple/Google tries to promote or that "Ravanan" movie that is gonna get released next month. The accidents like this don't affect me as much as they did few years back. They are becoming part of daily news that I read and i am developing a resistance to these news. They don't break my heart or make me feel bad for the entire day. Is it good or bad? I don't know. It might sound like inhuman to accept this feeling in public. But to whom am I hiding this? why should I artificially sound concerned, if I am really not? I don't know. May be a topic of discussion for another day.

First my prayers for the victims and condolences to the family members who lost their dear ones. Life is not replaceable. I pray to god to give them strength to overcome this.

But this particular crash brought my concerns back. With so many of my friends using this Airport so frequently that, the thought of 'probably' losing one of them strikes me so hard.I am forced to learn more about this. Why would this happen? Is it because of the uniqueness of the TableTop runway or is it just a human error? Because the pilot is a contractor instead of AI employee? Will we ever know the truth here? I can blame it on that god, when something like an earthquake/Tsunami happens. But whom will I blame here? Yes, I hear you. Statistically Air travel is still safer than all other modes of transportation. But that doesn't mean we lose our focus to correct the problems here.

Given below is the map of the Airport:



The horizontal runway is the older one and the one with 45 Degree inclination is the new one where the flight landed. It is at least 8000 Feet long and is enough for the flights in the caliber of Boeing 737-8HG, the one that is involved in crash. Pilot has landed the same flight in same runway 19 times and the co-pilot has done that 66 times. So the terrain is not new to them. Even with the 2000 feet overshot, he should have enough runway left to land the flight, may be he would have hit the sand dune at the end of the runway. (This dune is not big or wide like it is in other airports,
but it is there). But looks like he moved out of runway due to some reason. Most channels blamed the Pilot for the accident. But to me that is just to find the instant scapegoat for the accident. It is very sad that media who are supposed to play a constructive role, play this kind of cheap publicity stunts.

Anyway i just have couple of questions. Hopefully we will get answers for it...

1. People sitting in different areas of the flight have survived? If we had any better technology/survival mechanisms, was there a possibility to increase this number?

2. Was there any problem with this particular airplane? I never believe companies like Boeing, as they might sell not the best-in-class stuff to companies like AI which has very less accountability.

While the English channels where finding scapegoats, there was one good analysis in a Kannada Channel. It was simple enough for anyone to understand. Good job guys.

Links for that analysis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ0xhPpMFz0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYBppKIGd2Y&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuP8apl9uR8&feature=related

You will understand most of it, even if you don't know Kannada.

Hopefully we will get the correct answers for all unanswered questions.