Things to take care when you are leaving your job

You have decided to leave your job to join another company. You are all excited but do you know what all you need to take care before you leave your current company. I am sure you would be thinking 'There is not much and I have taken care of everything' but please take a look at below mentioned points to be sure.

 

Medical Insurance

Usually, we do not worry about Medical Insurance as most of the company provides it for all employees. But when you join a new company, Medical Insurance provider also changes. It means your medical history is not carry forward in the new company. This becomes a problem if you ever need to take Medical Insurance for yourself or your family from outside as not only the premium will be very high but lot of things won't be covered in first 4 to 5 years. So if you have been in your present company for more than couple of years, it is better to continue the Medical Insurance to make sure that your medical history is maintained. Before leaving, you should talk to the Medical Insurance provider and take a policy such that your medical history from your current company is still maintained.

Term Insurance

Again, this is something companies take for their employees but it may not be sufficient. So before joining a new company, you should find out about the 'Term Insurance' and take more if you think its not good enough.

Tax Related Documents

Your tax related documents would have been given to you but you may not have stored them thinking that they are available with the company. So before leaving your current company, it is a good idea to download all the Form-16 and Salary Forms.

Promotion and Performance related documents

You have received multiple promotions, recommendations and special mention of your performance, it is a good idea to download them. These can be used to substantiate your viewpoint. I am sure it will also bring in a smile when you look at these in future.

Ask for recommendations 

You have done a good job in your current company and so you should ask for recommendations from your juniors, peers, seniors and most surely from your manager. You should also offer to provide recommendations to your juniors if they want.

Take a vacation

You should take a vacation before you join the next company. I am sure you would want to prove your worth and won't take/get a vacation for first couple of months. You should spend this time with friend, family and unwind yourself.


I am sure there are lot of other things which you should take care. Some of them are very obvious. I have tried to compile those things which are not very obvious and people generally miss. Let me know if you have any such thing which you think are not that obvious and I will try to update this list.

Why should I vote in India?

I saw quiet a good response for my previous post on What-To-Do-With-AAP, and realized may be I should write couple of blog post on the upcoming election. So here we are with something that is very close to my heart.

Every body want us to vote this election but till now I have not seen a single person asking what should we change in our electoral system that will make sure you vote. While I have voted in all the election since I got hold of my Election Id but still I want to see some changes in our electoral system. I feel these changes will make sure people vote and vote for a better India. Here we go:

Accountability 

 

All the people who fight election is visible only for 3 months in 5 years. There is no accountability of their past performances and no punishment for their failures to do something they promised. There is no appraisal system. If you talk to them, they will say 'Janta will decide how they have performed in this election'. But here is what I wish:

• An agenda for the whole 5 years of term.
• Yearly Goal Settings - What they want to achieve in the coming year.
• A yearly appraisal to find out what they had promised and how much they have achieved in the year.
• A yearly appraisal to find out how they are working on their 5 years agenda.

Is it possible? I think yes. Can we implement this? I doubt it very much. It has to come from the candidates which is difficult. But things may change if 'Janta' starts demanding this.

 

Eligibility

 

Should their be an eligibility criteria for people to apply for becoming a MP/MLA etc.? I am sure almost all the people will say 'yes'. What should be the criteria? Apart from basic eligibility criteria, I wish it should include following:

• A person should be between 21 to 65 years of age.
• A person should have a graduate degree in any discipline.
• A person should not be convicted.

Apart from the above, I strongly feel:

• A person should fight election from the place where his election id was issued.
• A person should not fight election from more than one constituency.

How can this be done? I think we, 'Janta' need to demand that our constitution is changed to include these eligibility criteria. Will politicians agree to this demand? I am sure they won't but we need to do this for the greater good of our country.

 

Casting your vote

 

Currently elections are fought on caste, religion and money. Somehow we, 'Janta', needs to change this. It cannot be changed overnight. We need to look at who is a better person in terms of the work he has done in the past.

 

I think we can do this

 

I think we, 'Janta', has the power to get all this implemented. Can this be done fast? Nah!  Will political parties allow this? Not a chance. We need to be patient and work towards it. How? That is something I still need to think. I will try to put down my thoughts on this in another post.

 

Please do vote

 

I won't request you to vote for a specific party but I will surely request you to Vote. Please do vote this election and all future elections. Your one vote can bring the change. I am sure a day will come when some of my wishes would come true and our electoral system will be lot better than what it is today. If you have any such wishes, please do leave a comment. May be, we can make this a place to collect all such wishes and discuss how to go about implementing them.

Struggle of heart and mind over Aam Adami Party

During Delhi Assembly election, my colleagues, friends, relatives and I had discussed numerous times whether Aam Adami Party (AAP) will be able to get more than a couple of seats. But I think we all had a nice surprise when AAP got 28 seats that is just a little short of majority. We thought that finally people have a new option which if not now, may be in future, will provide a corruption-less (or less corrupted) government.

As the BJP also did not get a clear majority, we were again surprised by 'AAP' when they decided to form the government with support from Congress. Now is not it amazing that AAP who won these many seats because of Congress, got support from them to form the government. This is why I say 'It happens only in India'. The best part I liked is that they asked all Delhiwalas before saying 'I do' to this marriage. While some of my colleagues, friends, relatives and I felt 'AAP' should not have formed the government but then we thought, may be, 'AAP' felt that they can bring out change by forming the government.

So far so good. Delhi government started doing things which they had promised in their election manifesto like free water, lower electricity charges, a phone line for handling corruption complaint etc.. I liked the last one most though not sure how much it really helped. 'AAP' tried to table their own Lokpal Bill. But because of some constitution issues (which I really do not understand), 'AAP' could not do it. So 'AAP' decided that they should not be in Government if they cannot fulfil their promise. This is something that triggered a change of heart for some of my colleagues, friends, relatives and definitely in me. We started speculating on why 'AAP' formed the government if 'AAP' did not wanted to run it? We came up with lots of different theories and one which almost every one mentioned was that 'AAP' wanted to fight the upcoming Lok Sabha Election and so they decided to dissolve the Delhi Government.


One big question which keep coming back to me is 'Why 'AAP' decided to dissolve the Delhi Government without asking Delhiwalas about it?'. While I agree that they cannot go back Delhiwalas for all the decisions they want to take but I think this is not just any decision, this is a decision which will affect Delhiwalas one way or the other.

At this time, the struggle between heart and mind started over 'AAP'. My heart goes with 'AAP' while my mind says 'Don't even think about it'. Let me put down some of the points here:

1. We need corruption-less (less corrupted) India. (Heart)
2. We need a party that has experience in executing a well planned strategy to provide corruption-less (less corrupted) India and unfortunately though 'AAP' wants to do this but their execution strategy does not look good. (Mind)
3. We want a different Prime Minister. (Heart)
4. We need a Prime Minister who speaks, has experience and has some track record that he/she can provide a good government and unfortunately while Mr. Arvind Kerjriwal can speak, he lacks in all other points. (Mind)

I compared 'AAP' with a large software development (This is what I am good at) and came up with following points:

1. In large software development, we are very particular about Scalability. Scalability has to be thought through during design and needs to be handled every step of your development cycle. Also it is very very difficult, complex and time consuming to fix this. Some time people advise to start from scratch. Now just map this to what 'AAP' is trying to do and see for yourself what will happen in future.
2. It is a well know fact that you should be very very careful when you are expanding your software company (or Team) because it will effect the whole company (or Team) if you are not recruiting like-minded people who understand and appreciate the vision/mission of your company (or Team). I feel 'AAP' should not be giving Lok Sabha Tickets to anyone who they think make a right candidate.

So can you help me decide whether I should listen to my Heart or my Mind? As of now, I am going with my Mind but I am open to any suggestion/argument you may have to make me go with my Heart.

A promotion you would never want

On fateless morning of 21th November I lost my Dad. He was very sick when we admitted him in a Delhi Hospital. He was immediately admitted to ICU. I was pretty confident that its a matter of days when we will go back with him. But on the fourth day, I was told that he is no more.

I was not sure what to do. My cousin brothers were with me and together we took care of all the things in Delhi and later in my native Ramnagar. Lots of relatives and friends came to pay their condolences. Most of the talks were that me and my big brother now have bigger responsibilities.

I was just looking at this like a promotion which I never wanted.

Writing Technical Blogs in routerfreak.com

When I started this blog, I had no idea what I am getting into. I just had this vision that I will write my blog posts in a simple language so that more people can read, understand and comment and we all learn in the process. But one of the immediate challenge was to popularize the blog so that more people reads my posts. I did following:

1. I shared my blog through mails with my friends and family. 
2. I updated my blog in Linked-In and shared every blog post in Linked-In.
3. As suggested by one of my colleague, I created a twitter account for this blog to get to wider audience. I started following some of my friends and collegues so that they can retweet my tweets to get my wider audience.

Even after doing the above, I find traffic to my blog was not as much as I wanted it to be. I thought that I should write guest posts for some popular blogs as a guest editor to get to wider audience.

When I searched through Internet, I found couple of good technical blogs. Most of these blogs are Network Administrator oriented. One such blog is Router Freak and it provides tools, tips, review etc. for Network Engineers. Router Freak also provide oppourtunity to other people to write for them. I contacted them through their web-site. They very kindly agreed for me to write for them.

I wrote my first blog post on IP TTL Security on 8th August. I followed it up with SSM and ASM on 2nd September. Please do read these two blog post and send me any comments you may have.

As I was showing enthusiasm in writing blog post and I think Router Freak liked the two blog post I wrote for them, we decided to get into an agreement. We discussed and decided that I shall write Technical Contents realted to Networking only for Router Freak.

I think its a win-win situation for both of us. I get the wider audience for my posts and Router Freak hopefully gets the good technical content. I request you to please subscribe to Router Freak's RSS feed or for Network Engineer's Newsletter or both so that you can be notified about new blog posts.

Reasons to start this blog

I am not sure what to write in the first blog entry when you start a blog. You see, I am doing this for the first time. If I ever create another blog, may be, I will have the required experience to write something different.

I had been thinking to start writing a technical blog on Data Communication domain focusing on IP routing and switching, IP Multicast and what it takes to develop routers/switches. This has been in my mind for quiet some time now (around couple of years to give you some clue :( ). I hope I am not too late.

During a discussion last week, one of my colleague mentioned that people who take actions only succeeds. So here I am. Writing first entry for my blog.

I was thinking about the reasons why I would like to start a blog when some similar blogs are already there. So here are the list of reasons:

1. Its being written by me. So anyway there is a difference.
2. I think that using this blog, I can help myself and others who are trying to figure out things in Data Communication domain. I will come back and check on this in a year time.
3. While I can get opinion from some people on some topics but I thought a blog may be the best way to put my views about various technology topics. I think this medium will also help me find are others who have some say on the same.
4. I think I can use this to connect-in people with similar background, experience.
5. Last but not the least, it will help in improving my english writing capabilities and presentation skills as well.

I am sure I will figure out whether I am able to achieve what I set out to in couple of months time. Till then, please help me by commenting, sharing and criticizing my posts as much as you can.

Please say 'Best of luck Bharat'.