Soft Corps

"I don’tfeel obligated to contribute my brains only to the place where I was born. Youcan make use of your brains anywhere. I have personal freedom in the US, both athome and at work. That라이브 바카라 important for me. I am not cut out to makesacrifices, fight the odds, engage in a lot of battles, wade through a lot ofpaperwork. In short, face crap and still work wonders."
-SriramRajagopalan, senior engineer, Microsoft

"The year Ileft India, Subramanian Swamy held a lecture at IIT Madras on the brain drain.Every time I go back, I talk about it to my cousins, who are all entrepreneursin India and making much more money than I am. I think the fault in India liessomewhere in between the people leading the country and the system. People wholeave do so in search of challenges currently not present in India. And oncethey see what라이브 바카라 available elsewhere, it라이브 바카라 very, very difficult to goback."
-Russ Arun,Windows 95 programme manager

They are theWindians 95. The brains India was drained of, but whose guts and grey matterwent into the most awaited, most hyped product in software history. MicrosoftCorporation라이브 바카라 Windows 95 has already sold seven million copies since itsAugust 23 launch. It will definitely be history라이브 바카라 largest selling softwarepackage, running the basic functions of PCs across the planet. And of the menand women at the very heart of the adventure – Microsofters who held toppositions in the Windows 95 core team – many were Indians. Numerically, theyconstitute only 2 per cent of Microsoft라이브 바카라 17,000-strong work force but,qualitatively, they are the cream. Even Microsoft god Bill Gates acknowledgesthis. "Indian professionals are more able to compete in the global market withtheir skills," he said at a Washington press conference on November 28.

The Win95 teamhad three divisions: programme management, development and testing. Russ Arunwas programme manager responsible for evolving the Windows 95 operating system– the vital programme that translates software commands into language the hardware cancomprehend. "On Win95, I wasresponsible for approximately one-fourths of the product...for three very key areas, eachof which could have recalled the entire product if there was a hitch."

Harish Naidu, development manager, supervised the creation of drivers (controllingprogrammes) for storage devices like discs and CD-ROMs. Srivatsan Parthasarathy andShankar Subramanium worked on developing Wi n 95라이브 바카라 ‘windowing’ system,which allows the user to work on several applications simultaneously.

Shanmugham Mohanraj was responsible for utilities— the programmes that take careof the housekeeping functions in the computer— and some other critical areas inmemory management. Sriram Rajagopalan worked on file system components— theprogrammes that manage the work that one uses Win95 to do. Sandeep Sahasra-buddhe라이브 바카라area was designing software to run input devices like keyboards, mice and communicationsgadgets like modems.

Yusuf Mehdi, half-Mexican and half-Indian, headed the PR unit for Win95— whichmeans he steered the massive pre-launch hype. Charu Kalyan was a sort ofsuper-roadie— smoothening out the channels of communication between individual teams,organising distractions for over-worked engineers, catering meals and even keeping an eyeon the 63 Microsofter babies, born to in-house couples when Win95 was itself in itsprenatal stages.

The Indian component at Microsoft was enlarged in the late ’80s when a companyvice-president went headhunting in India. Many top-ranking engineers were lassoed in bythe prospect of going west and working on the Microsoft ranch. Others were Windows-shoppedright off the top layer of US universities.

"Indians bring us expertise we just don’t have here," says Ronee Dunn,in charge of Microsoft라이브 바카라 PR for India. "There 라이브 바카라 a serious shortage ofskilled persons in the US. India seems to have a high rate of technically skilled people,largely because the schooling system seems much better than ours."

Only, the equation seems to turn turtle thereafter. The Windians 95, down to the lastone of them, don’t have India on their agenda. "You just can’t conduct thiskind of research and development in India, largely because India relies too much onimporting solutions, not developing them indigenously," says Naidu. "Here, Idevelop solutions to new technologies that emanate from hardware and PC manufacturers.This won’t happen in India."

THEY were months into the project before the Windians 95 began to realise the sheerscale of what they were doing— trying to create the new standard for computer designand usage, a programme that could theoretically be soon running on every PC on earth .Sahasrabuddhe had his moment of truth while holidaying in Mahabaleshwar. He found himselfbeing interrogated meticulously on Win95 by a cactus cultivator. That was when it dawnedon him that he was working on something ‘big’.

So how did it feel? Tough, but "also very humbling", says Arun. The team wastaking decisions that would affect industry worth billions of dollars across the world."It was also thrilling because I could pick up the phone and call the president ofany major company if I had a problem. And he would talk to me, only because everyonerealised we could be affecting their lives."

"I’d say it라이브 바카라 much easier to pioneer something in California than inIndia. To set up a business, you have to be able to borrow and the costs for doing thatare tremendous in India. California is a hotbed for entrepreneurial activity, venturecapitalism is alive and well. Good ideas are grabbed and people are willing to put theirmoney on them."
—Sandeep Sahasrabudhe

Talk to a Windian, and he shudders at the memories of the "crunch modes", ashigh-stress firefighting phases are referred to in Microsoftspeak. These happened in theembryonic stages, during the project라이브 바카라 first two years. Thereafter, says Naidu, theteams concentrated exclusively on "ironing out the kinks". "It takes 10 percent of the time to do 90 per cent of the work but 90 per cent of your time for theremaining 10 per cent," says the 31-year-old engineer.

Naidu, who worked on Microsoft라이브 바카라 earlier operating system, DOS 5, faced thechallenge of his life as soon as he came on board Win95. "I was all psyched up when Itook over the team from the previous manager. Our part of the project had almost beengiven up for good. We worked seven days a week till one or two in the morning, so it wasgreat when we managed to turn it around."

Naidu라이브 바카라 high-terror moment came when, smack in the middle of the firstpresentation he made to Gates, the PC he was using to demonstrate his programme suddenlyfailed. "Oh my God, I thought, here라이브 바카라 my first opportunity to show off to theCEO and the blasted machine reboots. But Gates realised this was pre-pre-Alpha(Microsoftspeak for "very preliminary"), and immediately switched to the whiteboard I’d been drawing diagrams on and didn’t bother about the stallingmachine."

Windians are no different from other Microsofters (‘ Microserfs’ for theanti-Microsoft populace) in their wide-eyed admiration for Gates. "A year intoWindows I held a demo for him," says Arun. "Suddenly, he fired eight questionsat me, one after the other, like rocket fire. I answered three but had to think about theothers and send in my response later. But that라이브 바카라 what라이브 바카라 so incredible. A guy sofar removed from what I’d been working on up to then, and he could still find holesand p roblems that hadn’t even occurred to us."

"What could, or would I do in India that would affect not a handful of people, butmillions, like from here? If you’re very rich, India라이브 바카라 the place to be in, butif you’re starting out in life, then everything here is so much easier to speed youalong your way, the basic necessities, lifestyle, everything."
— Russ Arun

While the engineers were doing their job, Seattle - born Charu Kalyan was playingmother. It라이브 바카라 not hard to see why the bubbly 26-year-old was selected as groupcoordinator and assistant to overall manager David Cole. She tirelessly liaised betweendevelopers, testers and programme managers and was a kind of central information centre.From the first "kick-off milestone" party for Project Chicago (the originalcodename for Win95) to the day when the package was ‘shipped’ or officiallylaunched, Kalyan was there.

Apart from her routine duties, she got rolling a day-care programme— the first of바카라 웹사이트 its kind at Microsoft— for employees’ kids and catered a meal a weekdayand three over weekends for 225 people. In fact, the day-care centre is such a hit, it maystay for good. She organised small events to force the engineers to take a break and lettheir hair down. And she even dared train her eyeliner on Cole라이브 바카라 face to paintwhiskers and blacken his nose, when he sportingly dressed up in a bunny suit for an Easterparty. "I just kind of helped everyone through the crunch modes," shrugs Kalyan,who has a degree in speech communication.

THE last and the biggest party was the day Win95 was finally launched, slightly behindschedule but nowhere as late as it had been rumoured. That night, the engineers at NumberOne, Microsoft Way, in Redmond, Washington, lost their invaluable heads. People ran aroundthe Microsoft premises, jumped into fountains and doused one another with a cocktail ofchampagne, whipped cream and paint. Some rammed mobikes into buildings. Unfortunately,there were Seattle Times reporters disguised as groundspersons in the crowd. Allthe while, choppers hovered above, with photolenses zooming in on the part y. "It wasa very sheepish moment to see ourselves splashed in the papers the next day, lookinganything but dignified. Many of us went on long, long vacations," says Arun .

How do they feel, being Indians, and at the heart of the company that epitomises theGreat American Dream? "Many of the positive and negative cliches about Indians aretrue— like the view that we are hard-working and intelligent, and that we, by andlarge, don’t make good managers. There are times when we should stand up and fightbut we just take what is dished out," says Arun . "This is a very, veryhard-driving industry. Nobody means to walk over you but it happens all the time. I thinkwe come from a culture where we expect to do the right thing and for the right thing toautomatically happen to us. Here, you have to do your stuff, but you have to toot yourhorn, too, as a manager once told me."

But the Windians are definite that they remain more of strangers in a strange land inIndia than in the US. Arun, who was high school cricket captain back home in Madras andwhose friends at UCLA shortened his name (Rasipuram to Russ), typifies the breed. He andhis wife Radhika, an ex-Microsofter who quit to "spend more time with the kids",are happy to be right where it라이브 바카라 at, in Microsoftland.

In fact, it is for Kalyan and Mehdi, who have had little to do with India other thanperiodic visits, that the vision of India remains a rosy one. The Seattle-born Kalyan andMehdi (whose mother is from Mexico City University of and father from Vishakapatnam) havean American identity, but still yearn for their roots, wherever and whatever those may be.Kalyan is fluent with her Hindi, lists Indian folk and semi-classical dance as part of herrepertoire and founded an annual youth fest called Camp Bharat in western Washington.

The other Windians wrenched themselves away from their roots in search of freshanchors, thousands of miles away. Mehdi and Kalyan, on their several visits to India, cameback with predictions of a boom, a great future. Naidu and Arun, back several times since,come away each time with intensified deja vu.

"I would say yes and no to the brain drain concept," says Parthasarathy."In the short-term, there sure is a brain drain; but in the long-term, no. I feelengineers who leave India for the sake of lifestyle, if nothing else, are after allcontributing to the global economy. The software industry here is so huge; there are majorprice wars going on. To stay competitive, many firms are moving a large chunk of theiroperations offshore. For Win95, we had developers even in Israel and the UK."

What about entrepreneurship in India? After all, these men and women work in thebiggest entre p reneurial success story of the century. Naidu says he drew up manybusiness plans for India but ultimately fought shy, largely because of corruption. Thiswas something Gates, for instance, did not have to contend with, he points out. The othernegative, he feels, is a weak work culture .

But apart from the way they view the Indian conditions, there라이브 바카라 also what isreferred to in jovial insider parlance in Microsoft as "the golden handcuffs".The corporation pays lower salaries than most others but gives new employees a certainnumber of stock options when they start, adding more every year. A quarter of theseoptions is automatically ‘vested’ at the end of each year— that is, theholder becomes entitled to sell them on the open market and pocket the difference betweentheir original value and the current market rate.

But when an employee leaves, he has to forego all stock options other than the ones hehas "worked off" in terms of years of service up till then. Thus, many aremillionaires on paper, only as long as they continue to stay with Microsoft. The minutethey leave, they lose most of that.

"We all have fond memories of India but at the stage of life we are in,there라이브 바카라 no motivation to go," Arun confesses. "I had originally planned toquit Microsoft after Win95. But now that the Microsoft stock has performed so well,walking away would be walking away from a lot of money. It라이브 바카라 just easier to be whereyou are and not change anything than change something." So that라이브 바카라 that.

"For me, the biggest negative is the rupee devaluation. I fear the thought thatwhen I take back my money, I’ll find that I am worth only half of what I imagined.All the other things that a lot of us talk about— corruption, pollution, densetraffic— don’t bother me. If I could live with them for 17 years, I can livewith them again."
— Srivatsan Parthasarathy

Parthasarathy watched the Wi n 95 launch on television as his own wife was about todeliver their baby. Maybe it라이브 바카라 the newborn who has influenced the software engineerinto thinking about going back to India when his child is of schoolgoing age. Hedoesn’t feel that he has the entre-preneurial spirit, but muses that a consultancy inIndia—" on a lesser stress scale"— may be the right thing to do. Hisis the non-typical Windian sentiment. "I would like my kid to grow up in India, Iwould like to retire there, and I would like to pay back my parents in kind for all theydid for me."

All the Windians watch the economic liberalisation process avidly. All are greatadmirers of Manmohan Singh. Only, they wish the pace was faster. "But I’m surehe knows the ground realities much better than we ‘ armchair quarterbacks’do," admits Arun.

One of the ways India can tap these brains is by allowing dual citizenship. Minus anyIndo-US pact, a green card holder has to come back to the US every six months. "TheUS has such agreements with many other countries. If India would only allow it, it wouldbe a great incentive for us to come back. It would be the best of both worlds,"stresses Parthasarathy.

It라이브 바카라 hard to grudge the Windians their success. But the writing is on the wall:getting Indian brains back will mean having to lure them away, just like the others did.For migratory birds to return for good and for those contemplating flight to stay, thecountry will have to, paradoxically, open up. Gates, doors, windows, et al.