A good read about one person's experience. Despite being fairly well-to-do, this fellow seems to be taking the train/bus home and living in a 2 bd apartment with his parents. Doesn't seem like a spendthrift ITvity sort - that lamp in his living room is a SDRE $15.- Walmart lamp, same one that I have
However, some parts of the article are truly Booby Jindal-esque:
He thought everything important in life was American 
— from Baskin-Robbins and Nike Airs to the Hardees’s and Domino’s in the food court at the shopping mall. When in the car, he and his older brother played a game, naming all the things they could see that came from the United States.
He started at Google in August 2003, as a product manager on the teams that developed Google News and the Google toolbar, then worked on the look and feel of the video search, and on the early versions of Google Maps for cellphones.
He has been with Google for 6 years and moreover has been in US since school. Wonder what visa is he under and why his GC is still ongoing? One of my friends had a similar issue (he is from Lebanon)...he came to US during teen years, went to school, college here but after graduation had to move to Canada as he could not get a work visa. Really a shame since his entire family is in US.
But back in late 2006, maps produced by the service were taking too long to download and appear on phones. As customers waited for the maps to form, they racked up huge bills from cellphone providers, which at the time were charging for every minute or every byte of data transferred.
Enter Mr. Mavinkurve, who floated an alternative: cut the number of colors in each map section to 20 or 40 from around 256. The user would not see the difference, but the load times would be reduced 20 percent.
Sorry fella! But Google Maps on cellphones (esp. non-TFTA QVGA displays) look horrible.
That innovation of yours notwithstanding.
But why 20 or 40, why not 16, 32 or 64???
Mr. Berry says his skills and education — a bachelor’s degree in computer science from California State University, Sacramento — are denigrated by an industry that asserts that the best talent comes from overseas, via Ivy League schools.
Mr. Berry seems to have a chip on his shoulder. Maybe he wants US companies to institute Arjun-Singh-style quota?
He does not believe that skilled immigrants are essential to innovation. In fact, he argues the opposite. “In my experience,” he said, “foreign software programmers are less likely to step out of the box and present alternatives to management.”
Yes quite true. We SDREs are "conservative caste-bound onlee"
Then Mr.Berry needs to be asked how come so many SV companies got founded by these 'furriners'?
<jealous icon>
should reduce hydrodynamic