Dilum Bandara

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...

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...