Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

The following post on Quora caught my eye earlier where this person asks that their boss purposely makes every candidate wait one hour past the scheduled interview time as a filtering method and if that was legal.

My boss purposely makes all interview candidates wait 1 hour past the scheduled interview time. This is their “filtering” method, as they refuse to consider anyone who leaves during the 1+ hour wait. Is this legal? by Patrick O’Neill

I am pretty sure this is legal but it is extremely unprofessional and a major red flag for people working under/with this boss. They don’t care for the candidates time and wasting it like this doesn’t show/prove dedication. Someone could have scheduled an interview during their lunch hour or they might have booked a babysitter so that they can come in for an interview. By wasting time like this, you don’t know how you are impacting their schedule and plans. Unfortunately, too many people think that the only thing people should care about is working and the more time they spend at office the better it is.

This is especially true in the Startups where people joining are expected to put in insane hours. I have worked with a lot of startups both as an employee and as part of the various incubator programs, I remember one startup owner that proudly told me that they ask their candidates if they are ok to work 7 days a week without exception and reject anyone who says no because they should be as dedicated to the company as the owner was. So I asked them if they are also going to get a part of the profit that the company makes and they responded with an empathetic NO! When you are not going to share the profits the owner is making then why would the employee work the same hours as you? You need to give them the same incentives if you expect the same amount of effort 🙂

For the most of my carrier I have had great managers and bosses who respect peoples time. I have been scolded about logging in during late nights and over the weekend unless there was something urgent that needed to be done. If I was in a situation like this, I would normally ask for a reschedule after about 30 mins, if it was a phone interview I would drop after 15 mins and send an email stating that the panel didn’t join.

People who this kind of screening are the ones who will call you on Saturday at 10pm and expect that you drop everything and come to the office for work. People do have a life outside work and we need to respect that. If there is an emergency, absolutely call me at anytime and I will log in (if I can). But for BAU (Business As Usual) work that can wait, you shouldn’t be calling.

– Suramya

Using images/costumes/concepts from another culture as a sort of fancy dress can be a tricky thing and if done incorrectly it can be incredibly offensive but if done with the right attitude and respect it can be awesome. Whenever we travel if there is an opportunity to dress up in the local dress, try the local food etc we both jump on it as it is a way to experience the local culture.

The following was posted in one of the Groups I am part of:

Would you mind if someone wore a sari as a costume to a Halloween Party?

My answer to that is that if it is done in a respectful manner then why not? On the other hand if the person wearing it is playing on the stereotypes and negative connotations then they should be called out on it. You can easily figure out what the person wearing the dress is trying to portray and depending on that they should be called out if needed. Do note that there are times when people will unintentionally make a faux-pas or propagate stereotypes and that should be handled differently by explaining to them why something is not appropriate.

If you are planning on wearing something from a different tradition, you should think about asking a native from that tradition if something is appropriate or not. I have answered multiple questions on Indian ethnic wear when I was in the US and while visiting other countries. If you don’t know anyone from that culture you should do a basic search on the internet to understand/check if a particular costume is ok.

What I find interesting is that in a lot of these cases, the native (people from the original culture) are ok with folks dressing up in their traditional wear but there will be a bunch of people (usually white) who will claim that this is cultural appropriation and create a fuss.

I am not saying that cultural appropriation is not a big problem (It is) but the solution to that is not gatekeeping and stopping people from exploring other cultures.

– Suramya

There is a new chili in town that has wrested the crown for the spiciest chili in the world from Carolina Reaper which was the previous record holder. Ed Currie, the creator of Carolina Reaper outdid themselves and after a decade of effort created Pepper X. Pepper X measures an average of 2.693 million Scoville Heat Units whereas the Carolina Reaper averaged ~1.64 million SHUs. Since the Scoville scale is logarithmic that translates to it being three times hotter than a Reaper.

I really really want to try it, but considering that the reaper was almost too spicy for me to eat, not sure if it is a good idea 🙂 When I told Jani about this, she told me that I was crazy to want to eat this and to stay away from her if I am eating the chili.

Although I don’t think I would ever want to eat the chili raw, instead I would make it into a pickle and then eat it just like what I do with the bhut jolokia (Ghost Pepper) which used to be the spiciest chili in the world till 2017 and is now the 4th spiciest chili in the world. Every time anyone I know goes to North East India I ask them to get me some of it which I then send to my mom to make into my favorite pickle. (Indian Pickle not the US Pickle)

I wonder if I can get someone to carry it from the US for me. Not sure that will be allowed because of the bio containment rules. Unless I get it in a dried/powered version which is usually not that good. But lets see…

Source: BBC: Guinness World Records crowns new hottest pepper

– Suramya

There is an ongoing thread on HackerNews talking about why Blogging is not as popular as it used to and asks why people no longer blog for the hell of it. The post itself is interesting but one of the comments on the page caught my eye and prompted this post:

I to some extent agree. A blog can be an attack surface for someone wishing to doxx you, a point of failure for potential employers, or perhaps an opportunity to open yourself up to criticism for the local equivalent of your knitting community when they’re having a purity spiral.

You could, of course, keep to the driest topics, the most tamed opinions, nothing spicier than an animal cracker, but for some this self-censorship of “your most honest, primitive, real thoughts” (to quote Naked Lunch) is tantamount to a sin, just one step up from lying to your diary.

If you are trying to keep it safe, are you truly communicating what is on your mind, or are you pasteurizing your output, homogenizing it, adding a touch of gamma radiation and a run through the freeze-drier, until the final result is palatable pablum, certainly inoffensive and low-residue, but ultimately unworth either consumption or production?

Blogging seems to have shifted on the risk/reward scale and people have responded as such. A pity.

I see that a lot of people agree with this idea that the only way people can blog without being ‘cancelled’ or being called out is to post bland ‘non-controversial’ posts instead of “your most honest, primitive, real thoughts”. In my experience most of the people who are complaining that they can’t write what they want without getting called out or getting into trouble are folks who want to post racist/misogynist/mean posts with impunity and are upset that they are being called out on their posts and are facing the consequence of their actions. In the past week I remember reading about 2 people who got fired because they posted racist crap on the web and got called out for it. These are some of the examples people quote when talking about not being able to post what they think.

Over the past 19 years, I have posted on a lot of topics that can be deemed controversial such as my thoughts on Vaccination, gender equality, race, misogyny etc etc and so far not much splash back has occurred. I have gotten a few folks you have reached out and yelled at me for stuff I posted that they didn’t like but overall that has been rare. (I do have the advantage of being a guy and not someone who is famous so I have managed to avoid the troll farms/targeted harassment campaigns).

I am not saying that I am not careful about what I post online especially when I am being sarcastic or being a smartass, as John Scalzi famously said “Failure mode of Clever is Asshole”, so I try to ensure I stay in the clever part of the equation :). I do run some of my posts past Jani when I think I need a second opinion on how they can be interpreted but that doesn’t mean that I censure what I say. I just ensure that posts come across as clear as possible while remaining non-inflammatory/rude/non-obnoxious. There have been times when I failed in this and there will be times I will fail in the future as well. I just need to ensure that I own up to any mistakes or issues caused by my posts, apologize and ensure that they are not repeated.

What some people call cancel culture, is basically people having to deal with the consequences of their actions and they don’t like that much…

– Suramya