Teach Sparrows

I find it mentioned quite often that one must have great/good programmers.

Maybe in the US, with an educational system that allows for a great deal of flexibilty, with more opportunities to play around with computers at a very young age, with electronic hardware being a smaller fraction of the average household income (as compared to India), it may be possible to determine proggrammer suitability at induction.

Most Indian looking to become software professionals have not had these advantages. So looking for great programmers is not a viable course of action. What we have to look for is the desire to prove oneself; the fire in the belly. That was a belief of my late friend, and boss, RR (the late Wg Cdr R Raghavan). I do not remember him to have ever asked a single technical question of any inductee.

Many of the people whom we took in at acmet (and earlier at Ergo) could not make campus placement. I am sure I am not wrong when I say that, today, all are with the some of the best brands in the business of electronics and software. They had the desire to prove themselves acmet (and earlier Ergo) provided the opportunity.

Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth guru of the Sikhs, said, ""I will teach the sparrow to hunt the hawk" .(quoted from Khushwant Singh's article).

My friend RR taught sparrows.