Wednesday, August 18, 2004

The Yaksha's question and its equivalent today

In the famous 'Yaksha Prasna' in the Mahabharata, the Yaksha asks Dharmaputra to answer a few questions and stipulates that if he does not give proper answers, he would be killed the same way as his other Pandava brothers were killed.

The last question he asks is "What is the most astonishing thing in this world"?
The answer was something along the lines of "People see people dying all around them all the time but they dont realize that they are going to die themselves sooner or later."

So whats the answer to that question in todays context?
I think it is "We see people losing their jobs all around us, but we dont think we are going to lose our jobs anytime soon" :)

There is a nice article about keeping your job at the pp website . Though it assumes an american audience, it holds for all programmers and is well worth a read.

1 comment:

Vishal Grover said...

People have been used to job security - explicit (as in India or Japan) or implied (as in US, while the economy was doing well). The change has taken over people in such a startling fashion that they can't really comprehend whats happening. One day they'll get it.