Bring me the subtext of Opal Mehta
Hippies swarm to Kali images like flies to cow patties. Now self-published author Kay Stoner has chosen one such picture for the cover of her print-on-demand opus Bring Me the Head of Opal Mehta. Stoner, an embittered techie in an outsourced world, saw Kaavyagate as an opportunity to link the Harvard student with a screed against the quality of outsourced software.
Bravo, I say, bravo. I’ve written entire posts with thinner links to brownness. And that connection is? After much throat-clearing, that thesis is?
Nada online. Kay Stoner is a tease.
In other news, Kaavya Viswanathan’s Lehman Brothers internship fell through for reasons at which we can’t even begin to guess:
The 18-year-old student has been busy… working at 85 Broads, a network founded in 1999 for female Goldman Sachs employees… “Kaavya is incredibly talented and has many gifts that we will make considerable use of,” Janet Hanson, the founder of 85 Broads, wrote in an e-mail to the Crimson. [Link]
Two bucks says the new internship involved making copies.
Like Tammy Faye Bakker, Viswanathan is undaunted. And rightly so. Shame is highly overrated:
… Harvard administrators maintained that the college’s policies against plagiarism only applied to academic course work. The college looked into the plagiarism allegations, but Kaavya was spotted on campus throughout the remainder of the semester…
Kaavya’s friends say she hasn’t given up her literary goals, but will wait for a few years before approaching publishers… [Link]
As Jana notes, ‘Hang in there, Kaavya. There’s always (self-publishing).’
on Wednesday, August 9th, 2006, 1:53 pm in Literature › 
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hang in there, kaavya. there’s always lulu.com.
you’ve got to be kidding me– that’s an Olympic Non-Sequitur Long Jump record, making the leap from an American-born plagiarist to blaming the outsourcing movement with all that is wrong and blameable on brown.
Who bets another $2 that she would balk at making said copies?
The title combined with the book cover cracked me up. Too bad the book itself sounds so lame.
Well, I guess everyone will just have to read the book to find out the real truth ;) The Lulu preview actually does have content in it - you just have to page past the first couple of opening pages. A little patience goes a long way. The whole book is actually not an “Olympic Non-Sequitur Long Jump record”, but it’s actually an (essentially ethnographic) analysis of the dynamics at work in the arena of poorly managed production processes. It’s a complex subject, this offshoring business, and admittedly there’s much more to it than will fit in 142 pages, but someone needs to start talking about this stuff honestly, or we’re all going down.
For those who are unwilling or unable to read the book, here’s how it shakes out:
1) A corporate entity (in Kaavya’s case Little, Brown, in the corporate case, upper management) decides that they want to create something for sale (a book or a software product)
2) They acquire a producer (a young author or an offshore technical resource) who is willing to produce their product.
3) They assign a team of trained professionals to shepherd the producer through the process of creation (in Kaavya’s case, Alloy Entertainment, in the corporate case, project managers and onshore team leads)
4) They follow a process to produce the creation and package it for sale
5) The producers who are inexperienced, or not managed properly, or don’t understand what the expectations are, or don’t have ultimate accountability for their work product, fail to produce, and management fails to oversee the work and double-check its quality (or they can’t, because in the technical case, they’re not qualified to do so)
6) In some technical cases, onshore developers do the work for them, cover up the problems, or silently refuse to assist offshore folks, resulting in either an overworked and stressed onshore workforce in constant fear of losing their jobs, or faulty product that needs to be fixed, or subtle sabotage of what *could* be a streamlined process. In Kaavya’s case, all her packagers and promoters backed away and left her twisting in the wind to take the blame herself. That’s a rotten thing to happen to anyone.
7) In the end, the real losers are the people who were drawn into the dynamic with promises of great success, a better life, fame, fortune, etc. They take the fall for lacking management and they suffer from failed cross-cultural communications. Offshore technical folks get a bad rap, without anyone asking why it’s happening. Kaavya gets fingered as a plagiarist. And onshore techies become overtly hostile to their offshore counterparts. Nobody wins, except the people arranging the whole deal.
I’m actually not embittered (any more ;), and I’m not ranting (much). Rather, I’m saying what a lot of onshore technical folks have been reluctant to say for years — that the Indian offshore outsourcing system is too often broken and desperately needs to be fixed. I am indifferent as to whom I work with, their nationality, their gender, their class background — so long as they are capable of doing the job and they can contribute on the level that’s needed. I have worked with highly qualified, excellent Indian techies (as well as Chinese, Russian, Brazilian, Mexican, Ukranian, Pakistani, Irish, Israeli, and Canadian), and I’ve had great working relationships with just about all of them. I cherish the melting pot that the international technical community encompasses. But we need to uphold standards, if we’re to survive as a community… and if our work product is going to be the best that it can be. The literary world did that, when they exposed Kaavya’s book, and the technical world needs to start doing it, too.
But we need to start talking about these issues as peers and colleagues, not just lob insults and generalities at each other from across the oceans.
I’d love to discuss any of this with anyone who can and will e-mail me at kaystoner@yahoo.com. Or join me at the blog http://darwinsweb.blogspot.com.
Cheers
Kay
P.S. The choice to go with Lulu was because they let me publish immediately. I couldn’t have even found an agent in the short window of time this subject is pertinent, let alone worked out negotiations with a publishing house AND gone through all the editing cycles. I based my decision on time (and money - I set my own price and royalties) and control (I have full editorial control), and the fact that Lulu does a good job for a very economical price. I needed to move quickly, and Lulu was a no-brainer. ~K~
Tera Kya Hoga Kaavya
Relax, Kay. It’s a blog, these are opinions, and nobody has accused you of murdering kittens or abducting children or otherwise insulted your character as a human. Much as it’s your right to publish your book, it’s our right to disagree, question or dislike it…