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Less Work, More Pay - Dream IT/ICT Jobs in Public Sector

Over the last 1+ years, I was in multiple interview panels at several government organizations, and had the opportunity to talk to ~50 applicants. The experience has been puzzling. While it is understandable that the top candidates won't apply for a government job, knowing the remuneration will be bad compared to the private sector, most of the candidates we interviewed were hopeless. Before explaining why I say so, following is a background on type of candidates these organizations were looking for. All of these organizations handle money some way or another. While some organizations were known for having good remuneration, they are no way comparable to the remuneration by the private sector. These organizations had state-of-the-art enterprise systems developed by reputed vendors (local and foreign). While they managed to get these systems (don't ask me how), in many a cases, they are struggling to keep them running smoothly due to the advanced technology, scale, 24x7 operat
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5+ Years Since Returning to Sri Lanka...

Now that 5+ years have passed since our return to Sri Lanka, I wanted to write this for a while. We are now stable and basic materialistic things are well achieved, thanks to lots of running around. Semi-government school option didn't work, while we gave up the idea of public schools early. So Son is at a private school and we are largely happy about it. Teaching, research, & consultancies all have reasonable success. Initiated a start-up & learned a lot, despite not being commercially successful. I am lucky to establish many professional connections through quality work so that I can stand up on my own. Most importantly, we have a new member in family & she's distracting us from all daily chores while giving renewed hope. While I said "we are still overwhelmed & lost" after 1 year, now things are far better. I'm still overwhelmed with work, partly due to red-tapes & inefficiencies in the system, as well as due to my inability to say No. O

Adobe Kickbox - Structuring the Innovation Process

Adobe Kickbox is a well-planned and easier to execute Innovation Program consisting of 6 steps that anyone could follow. Content is useful from  individuals to companies who wish use a well-structured approach to innovate. The perfect pitch is specially useful to anyone preparing for a pitch, let it be an elevator pitch or a more longer one. Contrary to many innovation programs, both the process details and all material are freely accessible.

Publish a Survey Paper Based on Literature Survey - The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

Yesterday, I reviewed a survey paper which was perhaps done by a student of a graduate program just after his/her literature survey. How do I know? Because it was just a summary of a set of papers, and lacked a critique, comparison, identification of burning questions/challenges, and any insights for future research directions. My decision as reviewer was easy, "Strong Reject", as several such papers I rejected in the past. Today, one of the students told me "I hope to publish 2 papers based on my research as mentioned in one of the seminars. First, as a survey paper after literature survey and second after finishing research". The idea of trying to publish a survey paper just after a literature survey looks so wrong to me. While I have had a couple of debates regarding this with my colleagues (both who agree & disagree), I guess it's time to document this so that I don't need to repeat myself again. Let's start with the most important person whe

Describing Experimental/Simulation Setup

Sometimes the results of a performance analysis may depend on the computers used and/or specific features of software/libraries. In such cases it is extremely important to describe the experimental/simulation set up in details. It enables others to repeat those experiments as well as check whether the results are rigorous, statistically sound, and unbiased. Unfortunately, "Simulation Setup" is the shortest section in many research papers where authors try to save space by cutting down as much as details. Here are some tips on what to include (in addition to describing the experimental/simulation setup) based on my experiences: Type of Simulation Are the results based on Experimentation , Emulation , or Simulation ? If simulations also mention further details like whether it is Discrete Event , Montacarlo , Stochastic , or Deterministic simulation.  Are the results for Steady , Dynamic , Starting/ramp-up , or Terminating state(s)? Number of Exp