Advice to Elon Musk

I am writing this post with a “tongue-in-cheek” frame of mind. This is meant to be more on the humorous side and not meant to be a hot topic for debate regarding the merits and demerits of Elon Musk’s decision. 

Elon Musk has ordered Twitter employees must work 80 hours a week. Therefore, employees are resigning in droves. Here is an opportunity for Indians in India. My advice to Elon is to move his entire Twitter operations to India. 

They will work for 100 hours a week for ¼ of the salary paid to American employees. If a Software Engineer is getting $100k a year in USA (Rs.83 lakhs per year), Indians will work for $25k a year (Ra.20 lakhs per year). That is Rupees one lakh sixty-seven per month.

Provide them with free breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And, free beer every Friday evening. They will become Musk’s obedient servants. 

Government of India will like it because they will be getting lot of foreign exchange. 

Just thought of another Idea. Outsource the entire thingy to Mr. Narayana Murthi. He will hire people with lesser salary and get the job done. 

I am not a technical software guy. Twitter is an app that allows people to write 280 characters and express their opinion. Does it need 8000 employees to maintain an app?

UC Davis (Part 2 of 2)

Whenever I visit any College/University cafeteria in USA I am amazed how excellent they are and so many varieties of food to choose from.

By contrast when I was doing my college in Chennai, my dorm (hostel) canteen was just mediocre. They had two wings. One for vegetarian and another for non-vegetarian. It was OK for me. My wife went to a reputed college, which was considered India’s Radcliffe College at that time, HATED the hostel food. 

At UC Davis, the cafeteria food was very tasty and had so many different varieties to choose from. It accommodated all religions and all cultures. You are able to get food from steak to pure vegetarian to vegan.

There are 4 cafeterias at the campus. Here is the picture of the cafeteria I went. 

Here is a sample section of where you pick up the food. 

Here is the eating place. 

Being a vegetarian, I chose a falafel burger and fries. (Falafel is similar to masal vada between 2 buns.)

Every food section has a notification board.  Here is one for Rice and Choley.

Here is my plate of Rice and Choley.

Of course, the dessert section. 

And there were sodas of all kinds, ice creams, milk, tea, and coffee. 

Enjoyed the cafeteria food very much.

UC Davis (Part 1 of 2)

I visited University of California at Davis last Friday. Unfortunately, it was a Veterans Day Holiday and therefore not much crowd. Almost all the buildings and classrooms were closed and locked. I wished I had gone there on a working day. 

University of California has 10 campuses all over California. The most famous are UC Berkeley and UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles). Third in line is UC Davis.

Someone told me long time ago that "at Berkeley the professors don’t teach and the teaching is done by the teaching assistants. At Davis, professors teach. Therefore, Davis is much better than Berkeley”. I do not know how far this is true. 

First item I wanted to see was their football stadium. But I could not go inside the stadium because of the holiday. Here is a photo from outside: That stadium can accommodate 33,000 people but you will never know looking from outside because the football field is surrounded by tiers of seats for the spectators. Just like an amphitheater. 

Here is a building for classrooms. This building was donated by Robert Mondavi, an American billionaire and a wine maker. I was joking with my host the Mondavi family will not have any difficulty in getting admission to this University. 

One particular thing I did not like is the dorms (hostels) are only for the first year students.  Second, third, and fourth year students have to rent apartments outside of the campus.  I think this is ridiculous.  They also should have an option to stay in the dorm if they so wish.

The dorms are located far away from the classrooms. Therefore, all the students staying in the dorms have a bicycle to go to the classes. 

I met a few students who stayed in the dorm during this long weekend. They were very friendly and easy to have conversation. 

Stay tuned for the next blog post about the UC Davis cafeteria.