Really, who am I?

Okay so I kicked off my blog yesterday and thought I'd introduced myself pretty well. Is that the best I can do? Come on, blogging is all about openness & sharing. Expressing one's self as openly and shamelessly as possible. How else are people going to trust you, or respect the content of your blog...You cannot remain anonymous forever. Be a bit more open like Jeff Jarvis :-)

So here goes ...


What's in a Name?
My name is Muhammad Junaith Khan, on the web I prefer to use my name Junaith and go by the handle khanmjk. I thought khanmjk is unique enough, trying to copy from GNU Gnu's not Unix and the like, the k in khanmjk is meant to be recursive looping back to khan. It turns out however, that my handle khanmjk isn't that unique after all and so I have to share it with others from Pakistan, India, Phillipines & South Africa to name a few...Google for khanmjk produces a mere 96 results, and thankfully though you'll find me showing up on the first results page: My Linked In profile and some other long ago posts I submitted on forums...so 96 isn't that bad, and still unique enough :-)

Googling Junaith on the other hand reveals 19,800 results - surprising - because I thought I was really unique in that my parents misspelled my name, which should've been transliterated from Arabic into English as "Junayd" after the mystic and saint Junayd-al-Bagdadhi but the name Junayd also means soldier/warrior according to the folks at BabyNamesFamily.com. According to them, it's not a popular name, but still it has a presence of ~20,000 results online.

Muhammad is a common name for boys from Muslim families. Google for Muhammad and you'll find just over 72 million results. Lets narrow that down a bit: Google Muhammad Khan produces 780,000 hits, and further Muhammad Junaith Khan 2,200 results and guess what?? I am first on the list - wohoo! My LinkedIn Profile tops off the other 2199 Muhammad Khans out there... Anyway, my friends call me Mo. My home name is Junaith. My school and work name is Muhammad. I prefer my handle khanmjk.

A little deeper

I was born in a small suburb called Northdale, city Pietermaritzburg, province Kwa-Zulu Natal, country South Africa in 1978, so that makes me 33 years old as of today (2011). Five or Six generations of my family heritage in South Africa, with little or no trace history back to our original birthplace of India, whence in the 1850s the British colony was shipping Indian slaves/labourers to work in the sugar cane plantations in Durban...

I am now living in the UK, and a naturalised British citizen. I had to emigrate because at the time it was impossible for me to earn enough money to support the needs of my family. Overseas exchange rates helps a lot when the you can get at least 10 South African Rands to the British pound. So with a stroke of luck I immigrated to UK and been away from home for 10+ years...

But I find myself wishing to go back home to SA, as things have changed and looking more hopeful now - besides I miss my family very much, and my kids are missing out on growing up with a people and family network so important in the overall experiences of life...

As you can tell from my name, I am Muslim by birth and try to be practicing one. I am open and objective to all ideas, and peaceful in my ways. In fact, I subscribe to the school of Sufism who's core tenets are based on love, obedience and service to humanity. I'm not one of those people yearning for an Islamic state, neither am I one of those wishing for a central Imam or Caliphate. I do what makes sense to me, and most importantly feels right...If I am honest, I sometimes find myself debating in my mind about blaming religion for all the problems in the world today, if only people could get along with one another :p

I am a fan of the Halveti-Jerrahi Tariqa Traditional Sufi Order, and I long to be re-united with a once-close Sufi friend/sheikh who's been estranged in the last 7 years, but nevertheless thankful for having found this order, and the prolific Sheikh and author Muzaffer Ozak al-Jerrahi

So I'm an open, broad-minded and normal guy... I also wish the world will one day live like the utopia of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek - co-operative, open society with the sole purpose of striving to maintain peace and social evolution...So I'm a trekkie! On the political side my other heroes are Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln. The American Civil War and the SA Apartheid Struggle (Madiba is a legend IMHO) are close to my heart, revolutions as a result are inspiring. Nelson Mandela in my opinion should be voted as best leader of the century...







I also grew up on American TV: Tundercats, HeMan, She-Ra, Gummy Bears, Tom & Jerry, Transformers, MacGyver, A-Team, AirWolf, etc. Big fan of the trainers and jeans...One day I shall visit America, especially always dreaming of working in Silicon Valley or even having my own start-up there!

What else?
I am married to a wonderful and beautiful woman, Fathima who is talented in so many ways and a wonderful mother to our 3 children: two boys aged 5, 4 and a baby girl 1.5 years old. I'm an engineer by profession, specialising in software projects around the consumer device industry. I've spent all my professional life working on Digital TV products, especially Set-Top-Box software, the Electronic Program Guide you use to control and navigate your 100s of channels - so perhaps you've got satellite TV and using my software: For example, Multichoice in South Africa, DirecTV in USA and Latin America has some of my code...

Getting more personal
Read details of my personal journey here.

What do I look like?
Opening up a bit further, here are a few pics to prove I'm embracing the age of openness:

A walk at the local park, feed the ducks

Here's me trying to show junior the head-stand

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10 minutes is never enough - Late working - Don't do it!

Ten minutes is never enough. I had some unfinished work to get through on Friday evening, but because I was depending on an architect to finish updating his document, I couldn't send out my email to the development teams on the Friday as planned. Instead, I told the guy don't worry I'll send it out on Sunday...that's because Sunday is a work day in Israel, and my company being geographically dispersed throughout the world, it's not unusual for people to do so...but for a number of years now I've made a lot of effort NOT to take home work as it eats into my family and leisure time, time that is lost and cannot be regained again. Besides being a software project manager doesn't help, because the culture assumes that one works late hours any way, without being rewarded - in contrast to a development or integration engineer, where generally it does get noticed when that individual puts in the extra hours...anyway, 10 minutes is never 10 minutes.

What I thought would take 10 minutes, has now been two hours for a Sunday afternoon...The kids were asleep and the wife and I were looking forward to catching a nice movie together. Kids are now up from their afternoon nap, I've got one waiting in the loo for me to clean up and the other two munchkins are downstairs waiting to watch their own Sunday movie Marmaduke. Marmaduke [DVD] [2010]

The way my 10 minutes turned into an hour:

• 10 minutes to switch on my laptop, waiting for network connection
• 5 minutes spent wondering why my wireless isn't connected
• 7 minutes to enable my router to filter my laptop's mac address. I forgot I did some security checks a few days back where I removed some unknown MAC address from my access control list, it turns out that MAC address was in fact my work laptop!
• 5 minutes to get my VPN connection to corporate network up and running and then another 5 minutes to download and checkout a document from our document repository system (everybody hates it, but lives with it. Surprising that 5000 employees can tolerate a slow, clunky application but our products and customers give us so much grief for performance issues)
• Remainder of the time spent reviewing the document I was hoping would be in good shape, but had to make some changes, and then writing an email to send out to 200+ people - has to be read, re-read a few times to make sure the story is good, etc...and after a few more minutes of scrutiny, I hit the send button and gone!
• Of course, 15 minutes to write this blog post

Personal Efficiency and time-keeping at the workplace

I try to maintain a high degree of personal efficiency. For those of you not familiar with the basic time management tools and tricks, or you're looking for motivation and new ideas, then I urge you to get a copy of The Personal Efficiency Program: How to Get Organized to Do More Work in Less Time Admittedly, most of it should be common sense, but the secret is consistency in planning. I pride myself being a good time keeper and efficient in my planning activities, but I found it actually led to my being further overloaded and burdened by more work.

Recently I've switched to working just the hours required of me: 9-5, 7-4 etc, i.e. just do the 8-to-9 hours, without slacking. However in a time of recession and the company mantra of "Do more with less, be efficient", it's not stopping.

Coming from a recent project from 2008-2010, I worked very long hours. Days on end I'd be working from 7AM-10PM, getting up at 3AM to publish reports in time for the morning meetings. I'd wake up in the middle of the night thinking about the work or issues I needed to resolve. I had ideas at odd hours in the morning, switch on my PC and mind map my thoughts to present to the VP the next day. Most of the project managers were working really mad hours, compared to the rest of the development managers. I wonder who is more valuable to a company: A Development Group/Line Manager or Project Manager (a topic for another blog post perhaps)....Anyway, it was my knack at keeping all these multiple tasks at bay simultaneously that my manager did praise me, saying he didn't know how I did it...well it's all down to personal efficiency, but also stupidity and misdirected loyalty to company and project...for in the end, all my hours and effort went largely unnoticed, and taken for granted as just being part of the remit of being a Senior Project Manager.

Once the project was over, I decided to look elsewhere for more fulfilling and meaningful work....and I'm still searching.

I believe lack of planning and lack of listening from senior managers results in unnecessary pressure down the ranks. Did I really need to send that email out today? Are people going to respond to me in time by the deadline enforced? I wonder....but because I'll be OOTO Monday and Tuesday, it made sense for me to do that....

Unless I'm really passionate about my project's value, and know that my work is meaningful, I try not to spend extra time and effort, and the expense of my personal and family time, doing company work. Over the years I've seen many people make similar mistakes, causing unnecessary stress. 

Whenever you run out of time, or being asked to work the weekend or stay late to send out a report, always ask:

• Why is this so important that it can't wait till tomorrow?
• Who is going to read the email or memo if I send it out now, at 11PM or 3 AM in the morning?
• Even if I send it out now, will people have read it and reviewed it in time for the 9AM meeting the next morning?
• What value will this be adding to the company?
• Will my effort be rewarded or go unnoticed?

Work-life balance is important. Company time is also important... striking the right balance is key....

Review: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell has attempted an ambitious project in analysing the secrets behind successful individuals, "Outliers" - providing wide coverage including hockey players, rock bands, software entrepreneurs like Bill Gates & Bill Joy, European Jewish Immigrants success in Law, challenges with schooling, misconceptions of relating high IQ with success, cultural legacies & social differences, & other interesting tid-bits that forces the reader to think & question, generally acknowledging Gladwell's logic of analysis in most cases. Gladwell ends accounting for his own personal success, an exercise I'm sure most readers will no doubt apply to themselves.

This book by far does not solve the puzzle of understanding talent, intelligence & success; but it definitely is a very good attempt backed up by research & accompanying references that sets it apart from being the unsolicited opinions of the author. However I'm inclined to challenge some of the cases put forward by Gladwell. I agree talent & IQ doesn't make one successful - hard work, dedication & the will to succeed - grit are those qualities that really pay off. Indeed, the timing counts, environment, cultural heritage also do play a part... There are 6+ billion people on this planet, success is measured in different ways - it means different things to different people; examples cited are indeed popular & well known figures in western society, the sample size for the research should extend to outside the US, for example Africa & India; Nelson Mandela for example would've made a good citation for Outliers...The 10000 hour rule is also an interesting observation....

I'm glad I came across this book as it forces one to gain perspective; re-affirming most of what I already know & learnt through experience myself. For example, how does a someone from South Africa of Indian descent - born to a family of labourers who's parents had no high school education (Mother's education stopped at age 8, Father's age 12), growing up through the apartheid era - work his way out of the ghetto to become a relatively successful professional now living in the UK, continuing to support more than one family??

If you want to learn more about my background, click here to read my own Outliers story, or continue reading my personal story here:

Following Gladwell's analysis, we start by going back to understanding a bit of my cultural heritage: Indians started to arrive in South Africa during the early 1860s from the British colony of India - mostly labourers to work on the plantations, but some traders & skilled people also tagged along as it was an opportunity. Sadly not much is known of my heritage past my parents: my father was orphaned at the age of two & took the name of Khan under his foster family. Growing up, I vaguely remember my father's foster family as he liked to distance himself from them. My mother's family tree stops at her father, her mom died when she was 2 years old, her father remarried. I grew up listening to stories of difficulty, sadness, hardship but the underlying message was always honesty, taking pride in what you do & working very hard. Mother lived in a village, with African neighbours side-by-side, houses were made of mud. Mom would walk 5 kilometres to fetch water twice a day...her house got destroyed by floods, when it rained they would be busy patching the walls...under Apartheid they were dispossessed & relocated to an Indian area under the Group Areas act, whatever land they could claim they had was gone...Father's foster family seemed to be slightly better off, city people, street savvy - he'd recount stories of how everyone would be afraid of the Khans, the fights he would get into - he was part of a gang, etc - to this day, he stands for what is right & single-handedly patrols his neighbourhood watch...My father worked all his life in a shoe factory, earning the same £20 a week for 30 years. Five siblings in total, a brother & 3 sisters. None of my sisters finished high school, just my eldest brother & I did...I started reading at an early age of 5 years old - my eldest sister thought me to read, would take me to the library, I still remember my mom reading to me the newspaper, she could barely read & write herself, but she tried her best. Growing up I had the support of my older sisters & brother - I being the youngest, was taught by them. My parents weren't teaching me after hours, they would stress on the importance of education & made sure the homework was done, etc...We were not well off, I remember not being able to go for school excursions or even pay for school photos...

My brother started working part-time at the age of thirteen, I would do grocery shopping & go to pay the bills when I was 10 years old..we would walk 4kms carrying bags of groceries, sometimes with a 10kg bag of potatoes...I finished primary school with flying colours taking most of the awards, went to public, state-funded school, where most children were of a similar background as me - i.e. most of us had someone in the family working for a shoe factory...Enter high school, I meet a whole different bunch of kids from different backgrounds - all Indian - but this time, I was the only one in my class who's father worked in a shoe factory - the rest were middle-class families...In high school I met my best friend Zeyn (His mom was a high school physics & Maths teacher, his dad was an Accountant. Zeyn was absolutely brilliant at everything - he grew up in completely different circumstances to me - but for some reason we became best of friends, he was pushed by his parents to excel at school & sport, passing whatever he learnt to me, helping to advance on my own...for example we’d finished much of the maths and physics courses a year in advance of the final high school year...During holidays I would be working part-time or helping around the house, whilst my friends would be enjoying their vacations - I was always bitten by the practicality of life. Knowing what it takes to survive in this world, that one has to work hard to succeed, nothing comes for free, one has to determine one own’s future through sheer hard work. Despite my humble conditions, I was fortunate enough not to join the wrong company, diligently living through teenage years with the goal of finishing high school, studying to become a doctor, earning lots of money to support my parents one day...I finished high school with distinction...

It was this environment that challenged me & kept me motivated to strive to break through the barriers of my heritage...but as Gladwell proves in his book, dig deeper & I'm not singularly responsible for my break in life..My brother, through his hard work managed to complete high school, enter university & become an accountant, the first university-graduate in our family! He's a true outlier himself - through his working through high school, he impressed the local businessman, a Mr. Asmal who funded his 4 years of University tuition fees. Over the years my brother would marry, leave home & fall out of contact with the family, leaving me to figure out how to deal with the situation...So when it was my turn to graduate high school (it was still tough then, I couldn't afford going for the school prom, I'd just enough for Physics tuition & couldn't afford buying a suit for the ball), I finished with an A-average. I'd applied to Medical school & got a place confirmed for a university in Johannesburg, 5 hours away from my home - I'd never been to Joburg. Like Chris Langdon as Gladwell explained, Chris didn't have the wits or family support required to help him break through the obstacles he faced. Here I was unprepared to know how to make my decision - do I accept the offer on the phone or not?? Medical school costs R20000, plus food plus residence - I didn't have that kind of money, neither was anyone in my family able to take a loan or stand guarantor for me for a student loan. Besides my estranged brother I didn’t know anyone else that went to University. My parents were not equipped to deal with the situation. I had no one present that could offer me guidance on what my options were; I had not lived away from home - a life-changing decision awaited my response, the admissions officer was pressing me for an answer on the spot, so what happened? Based on the financial reality of my situation, I turned down the offer! Sadly, no medical school for me then...maybe even no university at all...I was set on looking for a job and figuring out a way to work and pay for my studies...

Then a surprise came my way - my estranged brother (my eldest sister made contact with our brother & urged him to help) managed to talk to his friend Mr. Asmal  into calling me in for an interview & offered to pay my tuition fees through university. By that stage I missed the medical school boat, so settled on Engineering (Eng was 4 years compared to 7, so I could start earning money faster contributing to the family by being an Engineer). Mr. Asmal funded my first two years of University...Again, drawing from Gladwell's analysis, I got lucky - there was an element of timing that helped me out: I was part of the transition out of Apartheid, in 1990s there was a big push for equal opportunities & affirmative action grants - where companies would seek out individuals offering scholarships/bursaries & work placements. Late in my second year, I received a surprise phone call from university finance department saying that Vodacom were giving bursaries to students & I'd been chosen (what wonderful news this was to me since I'd been sending letters to hundreds of companies each year) - so I got three times as much as what Mr. Asmal was offering - it allowed me to live on my own, be an independent student...In the spirit of Gladwell, dig a bit deeper & we might find that the year I was born played a part too: people born between 1976-1979 would see the transition of Apartheid & new opportunities for tertiary education, although competition was still tough...if I remember correctly, all my classmates from class of 1995 had distinctions in Maths & are also living quite successful lives today...

After university though, Vodacom had no jobs to place me in so I was left in the lurch as I'd not applied for jobs elsewhere...it would be a good few months till I landed my first job after graduation, with UEC...After 13 months with UEC, I applied for a job with S3 in Ireland (advert in Sunday times newspaper) - I had never been out of my country but jumped at the opportunity - got the job, went to a land where I had no family, knew no one & started on my own with just £500 in my pocket, although S3 did a nice job with relocation assistance...18 months from S3, moved to the UK with NDS...Wait, could this be another stroke of luck? Indeed, my specialty is in Digital Television, a technology area that was only coming of age at the turn of the millenium. Had I not gained experience with UEC, there wouldn’t have been any opportunity to leave SA. S3, a small Irish company had received money from the EU to increase its workforce, investing in employing foreigners, and companies were targeting places like South Africa at that time!

And getting the role at NDS had a bit of good timing in itself as well. At S3 I had just come off a project to implementing an end-to-end software stack for Digital Terrestrial TV and my experience from that project had direct relevance to NDS at the time. Not to mention S3 was well known for its professionalism and competency, so that reputation helped as well. Within NDS I’ve spent the last 8+ years, climbing the ladder every 2-3 years, always interested in learning more and trying out new things. My overall ambition is to learn and experience all facets of software product development in practice, from the early grassroots ideas that start-up projects, moving on to continuous product development and maintenance, supporting customer projects and delivery. NDS provided the platform to grow, opportunities presented themselves, due to sheer hard work & determination, I was able to move between departments to pursue my personal interests at the same time adding value to the the company. No luck breaks from that point on I’m afraid ,continued success is a result of consistent perseverance past the point that got you there, something that Gladwell fails to present in his book.

I continue to support my immediate & extended family. I paid for my father's driving lessons & even bought him his first car (how often to you see a son setting up his father, almost as if the father/son roles were reversed)....In my journey I was able to achieve what some might've predicted as next to nigh on impossible given my cultural legacy - but as Gladwell's chapter on European Immigrants highlights, the family tree that I'm about to start should set the stage for my kids, nieces & nephews to become equally successful, if not more successful than me or my brother...So as Gladwell points out, no one is singularly responsible for one's success: Thanks to my brother, my parents for teaching me about grit & patience, Mr. Asmal, Nelson Mandela for succeeding to bring change to SA, Vodacom, UEC & Sunday Times, S3 & NDS...I am always striving to move forward, hopefully this will be enough motivation for my children, and it is my hope they are more successful than I am, which according to Gladwell should be a natural progression...

Who am I and Why in the world did I start this blog?

So it's Sunday morning, 20th February 2011, 08:00AM GMT. I've been up for a couple of hours (my kids like all children are early risers, up at 5AM) on the computer, setting up my first public blog. It's been on my mind for a long time now, growing day by day... and finally, decided it's about time to take this plunge into the brave new world. Yes, blogs are not for everybody. I certainly don't want to use it as a medium to share intimate details of my personal life. I also cannot avoid the urge much longer as it goes against my personality (more about that subject later)... Inspired by Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do? and Seth Godin, author of  Tribes I am making that leap, and entering the world of openness...


I will try and share my thoughts both personal and professional (academic and practical), insights, experience and research from a variety topics really. For starters, I've got the following categories in mind (which should mature and shape up over time), but here's a starter for ten anyway:

• Job Market - I've been surveying the job market for some time now, and have some interesting experiences to share that should hopefully help other people in a similar situation. Likely topics: Preparation, Tactics, Recruitment processes particularly increasing use of character profiling.
• Entrepreneurship - As you'll find out from my own Outliers: The Story of Success review, my background has moulded me to be a risk taker, as curious as a cat, always wishing to try out new ideas. I am facinated by stories of Start-ups and find myself always looking out for new ideas. I've not made any breakthroughs myself, apart from leading an innovation at my company, but some of the ideas I did have, in all honesty actually turned out to be not so bad afterall...more about those later.
• Book Reviews - I'm an avid reader and will be posting and linking to books I recommend.
• General Tech Stuff - Although I love gadgets, the reality is I'm very practical and live by strict rules of budgeting - I don't like debts and credit cards. So I won't be getting the latest gadget just because I have to, neither am I an early adopter. However when I do invest in a gadget, there's a good reason behind it: either it offers some value and solves an immediate need of mine, or is need to increase my knowledge and skills.
• I will try to keep my personal, political and religious views to a minimum - but what is the point of having a blog, if not to express your individuality? ;-)

You can find me on LinkedIn if you want to check out my professional background.