"A Dream that has gone too long"

After coming to the US in 2000, I along with my cousin Subash, drove to Berkely to meet a family friend Laxmi. In the midst of our discussions, housing market came up and Laxmi mentioned how eager she was to buy a home which is considered to be an 'American Dream'. Her husband, Dhruv whom I was meeting for the first time was not for it with the justification that housing prices were too high and some day they have to come down.

Well at that moment, based on my minimal knowledge on economics, I did support Laxmi stating real estate will always have its cycles but over a long run, it is one of the safest investments'. Added to this was the fact that friends and neighbours who had bought homes were reaping the benefits of house appreciation and eugolizing their investments. To this Dhruv's reaction was 'thu tho bache hai' in Hindi meaning, you are kids. Having got introduced couple of hours back, I decided to not argue any further. But for Dhruv, a Harvard Graduate, he knew how little knowledge we had on the macro-economics.

I continued with the my belief in safe returns on real estate investment, added to which was the fact that living in an apt is a dead investment, especially given the high rental rates in california. The same money if I would invest on a home, I would rather reap long term benefits. With this mindset I have always looked out for purchasing a home. Probably the first visit I paid to a home and got the brochure was in Oct 2003, a KB Home in Rancho Cocomonga, Southern California, where I had moved on job. Although it was a new community with a 3-bed home costing less than 300 K, I decided to opt out from the 'American Dream' for personal reasons - impending marriage.

After marriage, I started to see a steady and slow increase in the rate at which people around me - friends and cousins were buying homes. Although enticed into the dream, I decided to wait until the finalization of my wife's graduate school. In 2006 she finalized and got admission in Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. We moved to San Luis Obispo and were attracted to the serene beauty of the place and community. I was very eager to have my dream realized here. But, what stopped me was the real estate market itself - its high exorbiant housing prices. Also, by this time, I started to feel a eere or un-easiness around the housing market and that it is probably getting stretched.

We moved back to Los Angeles after my wife's graduation and now we started to see in quick succession few of my colleagues buying homes in Chino, CA. The desire to realize the dream made me look up again and shop. Now, with people having seen the contineous rise of the housing market, for so long, had enough justifications that this was not a bubble and even if it was it would never crash land. But the eere inner feeling helped slow down the thoughts and procastinate the dive into the dream. The last visit I paid to a housing location was probably in May 2007. Probably some time around July 2007, I believe reality started to unfold and the housing market started to slow down and credit slowly tightened up.

Today, reflecting back, what comes to my mind is probably what was going on in Dhruv's mind in 2000 - Macro-Economics. The steeper and longer the slope the harder is the crash. Some may argue he was conservative especially in a place like Berkely the house prices are still above the prices in 2000. Probably true, although I do not have hard facts and can not weigh on that decision. But on personal end, probably the price of the first home I saw in Rancho Cocomonga, may be back or around the price I was offered in 2003. In which case, probably if I would have invested in the home in 2003, I would not have lost much money and infact save on my rent. As a counter argument, when I consider the indirect costs of buying the home - the flexibility to move to San Luis Obispo - without any hassles of renting out, cost of gas ($4+ per gallon) and the time, in hindsight, it was not a really bad decision to not have bought the home.

All through these years I always thought of 'my American Dream having gone too long'. But with the sequence of events that have been unfolding since this July, I now feel, 'It is THE American dream that has gone too long - stretched un-interrupted and un-regulated'. The blame game will go on from bankers to brokers to regulators to economists to politicians and to many more. But let us not exclude some of us on the main street whose extravegence & greed, spreading ourselves very thin and purchasing more than one home are equally responsible for where we are today.

Opening an offshore development center - ensure you check off this list

If you are planning to open an offshore development center, there are few points that could help you ensure a reliable and durable business. Below are some of the points that I list from my personal experiences.

- If you are starting your new operations offshore, always start with few people. Optimally try to have 3 people per division / team to begin with - a lead and 2 product experts. I have seen companies recruiting big with each team constituting more than 10 people which ended up with more politics and little output.

- Identify people from your on-shore team with a good understanding of the culture and society of the place. If none are available, try to recruit an agency that can help. It is worth the money upfront than failing totally. Understanding the local culture and people is important to identify the right talent and doing business in the future.

- Your first team should be the path leaders for the future team that would be recruited. So ensure you put your future money on safe bets - the best possible talent.

- Look out for people with talent - dirty jerseys, and not people who can talk great. To my knowledge the best talent in India are not great talkers or presenters.

- Provide necessary training for these leaders. Ensure the training session is not crowded with too many people. Get the best experts from for the corresponding products from your on-shore team to train the folks.

- Lay down a process for communication between the on-shore and off-shore teams. A process on who or which team members, when and how the team's would interact.

- It is important for on-shore team to identify key members and engage them as the team grows. The old guard or some times a new guard could bring in politics. From my personal experience, there can be people who specialize in politics and in turn destroy the team. It is difficult to identify these talented people given that the place could be culturally different but the effort in trying to identify people is worth the effort.

- Keep a tight tab on the status and expectations. The work culture of the two teams could be different and hence expectations on what each party states can be different. It is mandatory to document explicitly the expectations to as much detail as possible. For eg: if a feature has to be delivered, it has to be coded, documented and tested.