THOSE WHO KNOW PERL MAKE 54% MORE THAN AVERAGE DEVELOPER
54.2
Perl is followed by Scala (+42%), and
Go (+33%). The high pay association
with languages like Perl, Scala, and
Go is due in part to the demographic
that knows them. For example, about
10% of senior developers polled knew
Perl, but only 2% of junior developers
did. Scala and Go showed similar
patterns. And since senior developers
tend to earn higher salaries, the
average salary associated with each
language is elevated.
Laptops made transition to WFH
easy, but they are still expensive
IT services
companies also
have client
mandates on
using desktops
Avik Das & Akhil George | TNN
T
he demand for laptops
went through the roof in
the past two months as
thousands of companies
scrambled to make work-
from-home arrangements for
lakhs of employees. Many wanted
to buy PCs, many more wanted to
rent. And there just weren’t
enough available.
Companies that already had
most of their workforces on lap-
tops transitioned work to homes
far more easily that those with
many desktops. The latter involved
logistical challenges of transport-
ing the monitor, CPU, USB, along
with the wires. It took time. Extra
workforces were needed to trans-
port and then set up the systems
in employees’ homes.
So, will this pandemic transi-
tion the world to a pure mobile
device one? Harish Kohli, manag-
ing director of PC maker Acer In-
dia, says that while laptops have
evolved, there still remains func-
tions that are managed better on
desktops than mobile devices.
“These are largely processor-linked
jobs. If one is coding, doing large-
scale data crunching, analysing
data or video rendering, then the
processing power of the computer
becomes very important,” he says.
However, significant advance-
ments have happened in laptops.
About five years ago, there was no
gaming laptop, and heavy gaming
was dependent on high-end desk-
tops because they required ad-
vanced processors, graphics card
and 2-3 coolant fans.
Freshers preferred
because they are
very fast learners
Arpita.Misra@timesgroup.com
T
wo third-year computer sci-
ence students of RV College
of Engineering, Bengaluru,
who are to begin their two-month
summer internship with a software
company, have been offered month-
ly stipends of Rs 1.2 lakh each.
Companies are trying to catch tal-
ent young and are, therefore, will-
ing to pay even during internships,
says KN Subramanya, principal of
the prestigious institution.
With technologies changing every
quarter to six months, students are
quick on the uptake and that’s what
works in their favour. “Age is with
them and they are fast learners, and
companies always look for such good
candidates,” says Subramanya. In
fact, during placements, a lot of com-
panies quickly revise their offers to
catch the best talents from the pool
of freshers, he says. Computer sci-
ence & engineering, information sci-
HEAR THE PROF
ence & engineering, and electronics
& communication engineering have
been the institute’s top three branch-
es for more than five years now.
Subramanya, who has been with
the institute for 25 years, says in
the last five years, RVCE has seen
a significant change in the way dif-
ferent branches are heading. Now-
adays, most innovations are inter-
disciplinary and collaborative, and
the college has been adapting to
that. “In the third and final year,
we have something called global
electives. Students are required
to choose three other electives
from other branches based on
their interest,” he says, empha-
sising: “The future is interdis-
ciplinary.” The professor be-
lieves how students balance
depth and spread of knowl-
edge will be crucial in deter-
mining their future.
To work in emerging
areas like e-mobili-
ty, IoT, and Smart
Cities, a re-
search bent
of mind will
become im-
perative, he
41.6
33.4
Perl Scala Go
COMPUTE POWER
We now have reached
stage 4 of our coolant
technology by which we
have been able to
miniaturise a gaming device
into a laptop
Harish Kohli | MD, ACER INDIA
We have very powerful
laptops based on Nvidia
Quadro GPUs and TGX remote
workstation software. But large
IT companies will continue to
use desktops as they are
cost efficient
Rahul Agarwal | MD, LENOVO INDIA
We were already prepared to
have about half of Intel’s
employees work remotely
at any one time. Intel’s
workforce has been
using mobile PCs for
many years
Archana Deskus |
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND
CIO, INTEL
Kohli says Acer has been work-
ing on the laptop coolant technol-
ogy and has seen some success.
“We now have reached stage-4 of
the coolant technology by which
we have been able to miniaturise
a gaming device into a laptop,”
he says.
Lenovo has very powerful lap-
tops based on Nvidia Quadro GPUs
and TGX remote workstation soft-
ware. Vikram Mulye, product head
(SMB) at Lenovo India, says laptops
have narrowed the gap with desk-
tops when it comes to front side bus
(FSB), RAM and hard disk. FSB con-
nects the computer’s processor to
the system memory (RAM) and
other components on the mother-
board. Security too is less of a con-
cern, but desktops score better in
hard disk expandability, Mulye says.
30% ONLINE TEACHING
Digital technology will rule
educational transformation post
Covid-19. At least, 20-30% of
teaching will move online.
Institutions must draw up digital
roadmaps by brainstorming
with stakeholders and
understanding the best practices
followed globally.
RVCE is rapidly expanding its
R&D activity and industry-
academic collaborations.
Companies have set up labs on
campus for students to continue
their projects under
them. Faculty and students are
involved in executing industrial
consulting works.
With the technology landscape
fast evolving, human behavioural
studies need to take a front seat.
Otherwise, technology will grow
at an exponential rate but
behavioural patterns will
progress at a linear rate.
says. Here, commitment from the
management and faculty is impor-
tant to inculcate a research cul-
ture. And this, he thinks, should be
topped with a good mentoring sys-
tem, with industry and academic
experts. “Today’s ‘digital natives’
learn in new and different ways.
So, educators need new approaches
to make learning real and rele-
vant,” he says.
While the world fears retrench-
ments and pay cuts with
the cur rent crisis,
Subramanya thinks
t h e re a re m a ny
green shoots too.
“Organisations
will have to learn
to pivot to newer
areas of demand.
The business acu-
men required pre-
Covid will be different
post-Covid. For those
with passion, the
post-pandemic
era will throw
up many new
opportuni-
ties,” he says.
SALARY INCREASE BASED ON LANGUAGES KNOWN
Over global average salary of $54,491 (in %)
32.3
22.4
19.6
15.2
13.1
Ruby Objective-C Swift Pascal
In India, the demand
from students for
laptops may be
increasing, but cost is
an issue. So leasing
laptops may become a
better way to access
compute power
Ranjit Atwal | RESEARCH
DIRECTOR, GARTNER
But high-end laptops cost about
15-20% more than similarly con-
figured desktops. A Dell G3 15 gam-
ing laptop, for instance, costs
$1,050, compared to $850 for a G5
gaming desktop.
For IT service providers, which
have thousands, in some cases
lakhs of employees, a large-scale
shift to laptops is an expensive
proposition. In companies like TCS,
Infosys and Wipro, a large percent-
age use desktops also because cli-
ents mandate that. Many customers
are uncomfortable about their work
being done on mobile devices that
leave the workspace. Rahul Agar-
wal, MD & CEO of Lenovo India,
says large IT companies will con-
tinue to use desktops as they are
cost efficient.
Software startup Appnomic
I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING BACK TO OFFICE
Sindhu Gangadharan at her home office
On a
conference
call with SAP
colleagues
This UST techie is a writer & stand-up comedian
Ardra.Shankar@timesgroup.com
A
s a techie, Nipun Varma
has had his share of amus-
ing moments. From neigh-
bours who expect you to fix any-
thing that remotely resembles a
computer, to being quizzed by a
relative about their distant cous-
in’s nephew who works at the
same IT park.
“It’s all too familiar for
techies,” says Nipun, who’s
been in the industry for over 18
years now.
These experiences inspired
him to pen a book, Adventures
of an Indian Techie, that was
published a year ago. A collec-
tion of short stories and anec-
dotes, the book offers a tongue-
TECH I’D LIKE TO SEE
Speeding up justice
F
ans of Isaac Asimov will be fed to a vast deep-learning
know that it isn’t the best network to make predictions
idea to have robots writing about legal compliance and
or enforcing our laws, but can be used to drive regula-
emerging technology has a tion-based innovation in areas
place in our legal system. The with potential. It will allow for
11.3 Indian legal system now relies real-time predictions on the
7.3 6.8 5.4 on manual processes. This effects of laws on various in-
4.0 2.2 1.6 system could be rebuilt dustrial sectors, thus affording
R Prolog C# Kotlin Typescript Python JavaScript C++ on a distributed both regulators and corporate
Source: 2020 HackerRank Developer Skills Report
ledger-based heads a useful tool to assess
framework, the impact of regulations.
to keep a Deep learning will also
decentralised improve transparency, and
record of all the speed up legal processes.
changes to and This framework could be
breaches of vari- built on a network of
ous laws. This data, quantum computers
secured by post- to handle the
quantum cryp- volume of
tography, can processes.
Krupesh Bhat | FOUNDER, LEGALDESK
receive, at the discretion of manag-
ers. SAP said that as its entire cam-
pus in Whitefield in Bengaluru is
wi-fi enabled, laptops also allow its
employees the flexibility of moving
away from their desk and working
anywhere on campus.
Intel’s workforce has been high-
ly mobile and using mobile PCs for
many years. “Employees are accus-
tomed to working with a broad set
of communication and collabora-
tion technologies that help them
work effectively and productively
even away from the office,” senior
VP and chief information officer
Archana Deskus wrote last month.
Ranjit Atwal, research director
at Gartner, said that there has been
an increase in demand for laptops
across all countries as companies
We are considering moving undertake business continuity
plans that require laptops for work-
TI engineers make
everyone to laptops.
Where we need more at-home schedules. Atwal and Le-
compute power, like novo’s Agarwal both believe that
in testing, we will look this demand will come down as
ultrasound, MRI
at pooling more global demand slows down with this
hardware, in our lab, pandemic. But once economies start
recovering, laptop prices fall, and
or on the cloud
companies start using the power of
systems affordable
Pranav Jha | HEAD, the cloud, desktops may become less
R&D, APPNOMIC and less relevant.
says that while 20% of its engi- Laptop+VR headset
neers are on desktops, it is consid-
ering moving all to laptops, at a
- the future? Sujit.John@timesgroup.com
We have innovated for
F
cost, to enable a better work-from- Laptop screen sizes are limited by or close to 20 years, a team X-rays, ultrasound and
home experience. “Some have the need to be portable. But if at semiconductor company MRI systems, and increasingly
desktops because they need bigger virtual reality (VR) headsets go Texas Instruments’ R&D for wearable devices. We now
configurations, and 24x7 running mainstream, the user can centre in Bengaluru has been understand signal
systems, for example, to test the immerse herself in 360-degree helping to improve the quality characteristics of medical
product. In such cases, we will views of movies, presentations, of images obtained from ultra- devices so well that we can
look at pooling more hardware (in and business applications. More sounds, CT scans and X-rays. design circuits highly
our lab, or on the cloud), so that intuitive and productive enterprise And they are doing it at lower optimised for a particular
resource demands are not high on applications too could emerge. and lower cost, using smaller application
the laptop,” Pranav Jha, COO and and smaller devices. They have
head of product and R&D opera- Dual-screen laptops reached a stage where in an ul- Sandeep Oswal | DIRECTOR,
tions, said. Dual-screen laptops have emerged trasound, much of the process- ENGINEERING, TI
But many large global compa- over the past year. While watching ing happens in the hand-held
nies like SAP and Intel have made streaming video, the second probe – and not in the big com- digital (ADC) converter, and fi-
permanent strides towards laptops. screen could be a place for puter connected to it – and the nally the digital processing cre-
The German software major said subtitles, contextual information final image is viewed on a tablet ates the image.
the majority of its employees are on or social interaction with others. or smartphone. In between, there are other
laptops, as working from home is Companies are experimenting The devices are simple and issues to be solved. ADCs are
among the benefits SAP employees with different use cases. low-cost enough today for even not as good as the human ear
small companies – and not just yet, so they can’t hear analog
the GEs, Philips and Siemens signals, which are very small.
Sindhu Gangadharan, MD of the
– to build. And they are porta-
CUTTING EDGE
MADE IN INDIA
They need to be amplified. Also,
since other noises interfere
with the sound signals needed
for the ultrasound image, lots
8,000-people strong SAP Labs India,
of filtering is required.
says working from home was initially ble enough to be taken to re- These are TI’s focus areas.
overwhelming, but she soon got mote rural areas. Sandeep Os- The more transducers used, the
into a rhythm wal, TI’s director of engineer- faster and better the signal qual-
ing for the medical and imaging ity. But if each transducer needs
DISCIPLINE & FOCUS NEEDED product line, says Covid-19 is an integrated circuit (IC) with
By 8.15, I’m at my worktable, in an demonstrating that such cheap, an amplifier and ADC, a lot of
attire that I would go to work in portable devices are becoming power is dissipated, the PCB
It’s important to keep a schedule.
invaluable. becomes big, and cost rises. Os-
Almost all of TI’s work wal’s team has been innovating
Otherwise you think you are always in the area of parallel process-
around medical sensing chips,
available, and the day could start right from its conceptualisation ing – of signals coming from
early and end late and design, happens now in In- multiple transducers – to keep
You need to focus more. Focus also on dia. TI works on the analog side. the IC numbers down.
the small things, like finishing off the In an ultrasound, transducers Another of their break-
convert electrical energy to throughs has been in eliminat-
to-dos from a call before the next call
sound energy, which goes into ing the high-quality wires that
LOTS OF CALLS your body, and then reflects go from the probe to the com-
I’m on calls back to back. Today I have back from different interfaces puter that supplies power to the
some seven calls scheduled. Each call – bone, tissue, blood. This re- probe and does the calculations.
can be between half-an-hour to an hour flected sound is converted back They did this by making the
Calls are with teams in India, teams into electrical energy by the electronics so small that it now
outside India. Calls with Nasscom, transducers. These are then fits into the probe. This too has
Zinnov, Indo-German Chamber of converted to the digital format reduced the cost and power re-
Commerce, to share best practices of 0s and 1s by an analog to quired dramatically.
BEST PART
The lots of intimate moments I had with
my kids. Going in between work to check
on them. They had online classes, which
was new to them, so I’m glad I and my
husband were around for them
HOME CAN’T REPLACE OFFICE
I’m a people’s person, I’m looking
forward to getting back to office. In a
physical meeting, you look at people’s
eyes, understand the emotional things
that are part of such meetings. In a call,
you can’t be spontaneous, you can’t
gauge people’s body language TI India’s medical & imaging product line team in Bengaluru
dotes for a column in the com- and launched his own tech start- them enhance the quality of
INSPIRATION pany’s internal newsletter. “I up, which unfortunately failed education and impart essential
received a great response from to take off. A couple of jobs later, computer skills. “We also organ-
in-cheek peek into the world of my team and coworkers, which he joined UST in Feb 2010. ise practical training sessions
techies. “Along with the humour- inspired me to convert them into Nipun’s love for teaching and visits to tech organisations,”
ous experiences, I also wanted to a book,” he says. came full circle when he took up he says.
share the fears and insecurities A graduate in mathematics, one of UST’s corporate social Nipun also performs standup
that many of us have,” he says. he aspired to become a teacher responsibility ar ms, called comedy at corporate events and
Nipun, a Keralite, is an off- during his college days. But the Adopt A School. As part of the writes scripts for a comedy show
shore delivery manager at IT tech industry seemed fascinat- initiative, the firm has adopted that airs on Surya TV. Nipun
services fir m UST Global’s ing, and then there was societal around 20 government schools says it’s important to pursue
Kochi office. He manages a pressure, so he decided to enroll i n a n d a ro u n d your passions, even if you have
150-member engagement spread for an MCA course at Bharathiar Ko ch i , h e l p i n g a 9 to 5 job.
across various geographies, University, Coimbatore. After
helping one of the leading finan- graduating in 2004, he took up a Most freshers are clueless about their
cial services players based out teaching job, but quit a year careers. My advice is, go out and
of North America build an in- later to move to Bengaluru explore, experiment and experience as much
ternal software product. where he started working as a as you can. Who knows, you might discover
Nipun has long harboured a technical support engineer at your hidden talents in the process!
passion for writing. He first Microsoft’s web portal, MSN.
started writing the techie anec- Later, he moved back to Kerala Nipun Varma | DELIVERY MANAGER, UST GLOBAL