Uttam Kini's Blog

  • The curious case of the permanent contractor

    When I first came to the UK, I found the concept of the IT contractor was very different to the Indian IT contractor. In India, an IT contractor or ‘contract employee’ is like a daily wage labourer. Let me explain why. The wages are much lower compared to a permanent employee. You work for a… Read more

  • Stuff that Microsoft must stop doing

    I recently moved off .net after 3 years. Now I am working in the wonderful world of linux (more on it in another post). Looking back and reflecting on .Net and windows, I feel windows is a pretty decent desktop OS (nobody else can beat it’s driver support). I still use it for my personal… Read more

  • Fighting my JavaScript demons with domain driven JavaScript

    For quite some time now, I have been a bit uncomfortable with javascript. It is language which most developers think they they know, but in reality they don’t. It is a very forgiving language in many ways (or at least appears to be, until it bites you). It has a syntax similar to C++, Java… Read more

  • People still don’t know how to write resumes

    When I look at some profiles on Linked in, it makes me cringe. People write statements like. ‘A highly committed professional with 10 years of experience’. There are 2 problems with this statement 1. 10 years is going to roll over to eleven (I bet 9 out of ten people will forget to update it).… Read more

  • Code Coverage for functional tests…. there is no such thing!!!

    Recently I somebody told me that we need to check code coverage for functional tests and try to get it as high as possible. Seriously ??? I am not a big fan of code coverage even for unit tests. In most cases, the build ends up being red after some refactoring and then people try… Read more

  • Are Software Developers ‘real engineers’ ??

    When I joined an engineering college, I chose Computer Science. All my peers whose chose the so called ‘pure engineering branches’ (mechanical, civil, electrical, electronics etc) said “Oh that’s not engineering, any person who does an NIIT course is as good”. To add to that it was right after the dot com bust and IT… Read more

  • Inheritance Sucks (most of the time)!!!

    Gattaca is one of my favourite movies. I see it as a powerful social commentary on discrimination and the will to overcome all odds. The message of the movie is completely unrelated to  the agenda of this blog post. Let me come to the point.  The film talks about a dystopian society in the future… Read more

  • Agile : Practices over Principles ?

    I know that the title sounds like it contradicts itself, but let me make myself clear. There are 2 kinds of software organizations in the world today… one  who don’t know/do Agile (and don’t really care as long as the cash registers ring) … the others who have heard of this new messiah called Agile… Read more

  • Every Developer should take the red pill

    In the software industry today, we have well defined roles. We have developers,  testers, managers and technical support. The tech support role is less sought after and therefore doesn’t pay much (At least in India). The recruitment process for tech support is not stringent as it is for developers. People are expected to do repetitive tasks… Read more

  • Life of a typical IT professional (read Drone) in a ‘Big Company’

    After being in the software industry for over 5 years now, I can confidently say that the quality of service/software sucks and most of all the work culture sucks big time. (well, most of it at least). I know that I will be hounded by the nationalists and india shining maniacs. Sadly, patriotism doesn’t change… Read more