Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳

Software developer, blogger, passionate about software engineering and technology

[Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳 @maruhgar]

@MoPNG_eSeva @PetroleumMin @IndianOilcl Why is my LPG booking getting cancelled automatically? I can understand delay, but with reasons like delayed delivery? Is this a new scam?

[Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳 @maruhgar]

@kansaratva If you tried the Member Services Portal, you will hold Passbook site in high esteem. It is well designed to prevent you from logging in, no matter what you try

[Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳 @maruhgar]

@code Congratulations #vscode #VS50M #sweepstakes My favourite extension is WSL. When team members ssh-ed and scp-ed, I had Ubuntu shell scripts running in WSL2 on my Win 11

[Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳 @maruhgar]

@BBMPofficial Current state - sewage inflow, stink, non-functional STP #bbmp #bbmpcares #DKShivakumar #bbmpchiefcommissioner

[Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳 @maruhgar]

@BBMPofficial What’s the point of this? Sewage still flows into Lake in Vibhuthipura. STP is non-functional for a while now. All the silt is piled up next to the Lake.

[Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳 @maruhgar]

@Kadi_khichadi … we have “life of guarantee” (as per recent Govt ads)

[Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳 @maruhgar]

@VivaShastri @digilocker_ind @DrSJaishankar Aadhaar & PAN original & xerox needed though not specified in appointment letter. Also even for renewal everything is printed and we need to sign.

[Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳 @maruhgar]

@vajrabhrt @tirumuru_87 All good, SP. I do Sunday Times cryptic. And also do https://t.co/FmUCWPvj4x

[Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳 @maruhgar]

@vajrabhrt @tirumuru_87 My interaction with it was for crosswords and sports coverage, including chess puzzles - borrowed from neighbour. Stopped once I was old enough to understand their leanings 😄

[Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳 @maruhgar]

Finally someone calling out the Emperor (viz-a-viz cloth) 😄

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

What is ailing the software job market is not AI taking away jobs (not yet anyway).

Here is my thesis, as a participant and observer of software for 30 years. Over those 30 years:

1. Massive over-capacity steadily developed in enterprise software due to a flood of VC, PE and IPO money.

2. Software vendors applied liberal doses of marketing spending to spread Fear (of missing out) and Uncertainty ("tech is changing, you need us") and Doubt ("are you confused? trust us") among corporate customers and the result was ever growing IT spending. Enterprise IT budgets kept rising because which CIO or Board would want to be seen as lagging? Major corporations in the West have layers and layers of duplicated IT systems, lots of money spent to acquire them and even more money spent to get the disparate systems to work together. The more inefficient IT systems ended up becoming permanent resource drains, requiring vast human resources to simply keep them running.

3. Large enterprises in the West found those needed human resources in India - transferring those inefficiencies to IT services firms in India, often multiplied by 3 or even 4! That "multiplied inefficiency" happened because IT budgets were kept fixed in dollar terms and more people got hired in India to "get more done".

Result? A large number of IT jobs in India came to depend on those original inefficiencies and the multiplied inefficiencies.

4. Note how Indian banks and financial institutions are more IT savvy, while spending far less, than established financial majors in the US - Indian firms did not have the budgets to splurge! Necessity made them highly efficient and today India's financial institutions are able to fend off foreign competition easily.

5. One of the deep facts about software is that often a 2 person team can solidly outperform a 20 person team and a 10 person team can do the work of a 200 person team. This is not just due to talent disparity - even when the large teams have equivalent talented people, they can easily end up being wasted on unproductive projects.

6. When people are billed by the hour or by the staff month (input metrics), as it happens often in IT services, there is zero incentive to remove those inefficiencies, to empower the 2 person team as opposed to hiring 20.

It is those multiplied inefficiencies in IT, built up over decades, that is facing a reckoning now.

Now enter AI. A large amount of code is boilerplate code in many projects and AI can eat such code for breakfast. Depending on the nature of a project AI can offer 10-20% productivity gains. Significant but not the 10x or 100x leap yet to destroy jobs on a vast scale.

But those AI gains of today pale in comparison to the "multiplied inefficiencies" built up over decades.

This reckoning nearly happened in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC 2008-9). It got postponed because the central banks flooded the world with money and a part of that money flooded into enterprise IT.

The pandemic unleashed another flood of money into enterprise IT.

Those floods are now history and we have a serious drought.

That is why I am pessimistic about the software job market, even before accounting for AI.

[Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳 @maruhgar]

#BigBoss announces new contest - “how long can you stare at your spouse” #LTChairman #90hourWeek Two high profile industry leaders to be judges

[Bengaluru Post @bengalurupost1]

What #Bengaluru Missed in 2024: A Thread 🧵

As we step into 2025, let’s reflect on Bengaluru’s infrastructure misses this year. From metro delays to stalled flyovers, here are the top 18 projects that kept the city waiting. 👇

1. Namma Metro – Yellow Line (RV Road-Bommasandra)

Expected by Dec 2024, the Yellow Line won’t be operational until March 2025. Only 1 out of 15 six-coach trains is under testing. #nammametro #yellowline

[Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳 @maruhgar]

#INDvsNZ Some sense of humour with the win probability

[Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳 @maruhgar]

User unfriendly #error #message #balic #bajajallianz

[Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳 @maruhgar]

@atherenergy @tarunsmehta @swapniljain89 No sight or mention of #payasam specifically #paladapradhaman - no #onasadhya complete without it

[Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳 @maruhgar]

@emo_ananya कब्रिस्तान

[Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳 @maruhgar]

#INDvENG Basheer asks for #DRS after being clean bowled 😂

[Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳 @maruhgar]

Happy to have participated in #canwalk2024

[Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳 @maruhgar]

Got to write about my recent #driving #licence #renewal experience #morth #rto https://t.co/kLhzZTqnga

[Raghuram Bharathan 🇮🇳 @maruhgar]

@GabbbarSingh If you fancy Malayalam, try this light-hearted comedy Perilloor Premier League https://t.co/3k2eCSuANV