Interview with Joydip Kanjilal on Software, Technology, Book Authoring and Employee Attrition

Learnxpress had a chance to catch up with Joydip Kanjilal and asked him few questions about his career, .NET Framework, technology, book authoring. He also opens his mind regarding the sudden removal of employees from reputed companies. Read this interview and find out his take on various issues

Can you share you opinion about the future of .NET Framework?

Now that .NET has already become open source, this cross platform managed framework from the software giant Microsoft would have a more wider reach as far as the development community the world over is concerned. I hope WinRT and .NET should be a viable future for business application development. Cross platform development using .NET Framework will become more and more popular in the years to come.

What kind of Gadgets we can expect to be available on the market after 10-15 years from now?

Electric car, Solar Powered Mobile Phones and Laptops would become popular soon. The mobile phones of the future will be more than just phones, they will be all of your mobile devices combined into one – transparent, flexible, with more and more amazing features. In the decades to come, the world will see lot of advancements in virtual reality and artificial intelligence.

We can see that you have authored numerous books on .NET Framework. What prompted you to write books?

After my first ever article was published at ASPAlliance, I continued writing articles for many reputed websites like, ASPAlliance, DevX. I wanted to write a book in .NET but didn’t find much of a chance till 2007. I did send a few book ideas to some publishers world wide with a hope that I would be followed up by the acquisition team of a publisher to turn one or more of my book ideas into reality.

I didn’t have to wait for long though. It was Douglas Peterson from Packt Publishing who approached me in 2007 with a proposal. He wanted me to share with him some of my book ideas that he was keen to flesh out into book projects.

After a series of discussions that followed, I was selected as an author – it was a dream come true for me. My first book was “ASP.NET Data Presentation Controls Essentials” for Packt Publishing. Douglas reviewed my book and guided me a lot. I owe him a lot for what I am today – he inspired me, motivated me and at the same time sent me his valuable review comments.

Can you share about your early days when you associated with ASPAlliance?

I started this journey by writing articles for ASPAlliance. I was thrilled when my first article was published at ASPAlliance on 20th February, 2006. It was nice working with Steve Smith and Anand Narayanaswamy at that time – I did learn a lot from both of them. Their review comments on my articles were extremely valuable and helped me a lot in becoming a better author.

What is your view about dismissal of employees from companies like TCS?

I would say that there isn’t any harm in letting the under performing employees go. If it is that a company has a robust and unbiased system of performance measurement, such decisions are always welcome. For this industry to move ahead in the decades to come, it has to let go the under performers.

Having said this, I would like to state that if an organization has a proper methodology of screening candidates before they are recruited, chances of having under-performers in the system is minimal. I admit that there is always a trade-off but all organizations should have a proper recruitment strategy to mitigate issues of this kind.

We at SenecaGlobal have a stringent process of recruitment and we hope not that we would ever have to let our associates go due to non-performance. Added to this, we do have a continuous process of learning – the associates are provided training on the technologies they work on and also on the latest ones to ensure that they never fall behind the industry trends. And, the outcome of all this is simple – we have an excellent team here, a great working environment and most importantly, the attrition rates are also very, very low.

Who was your main source of inspiration?

My father who taught me that honesty and integrity are the best guides for a succesful life.

You have been selected as Microsoft MVP. Did the award really helped you to achieve success?

Yes, definitely. The MVP award helped me in reaching out to the technical gurus world wide. I could sync up with many leading professionals in the industry – I did learn a lot from them. The MVP recognition also opened many doors for me in my career – I started getting invites for being a speaker in leading conferences worldwide and also started receiving more and more proposals to write books.

Can you please share about your background?

Joydip Kanjilal was a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional in ASP.NET, as well as a speaker and the author of several books and articles. He received the prestigious MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award at ASP.NET for 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012. He has more than 18 years of industry experience in IT, with more than 14 years in Microsoft .NET and its related technologies. He has been selected as MSDN Featured Developer of the Fortnight (MSDN) and as Community Credit Winner several times.

He is the author of eight books and more than 250 articles. Many of his articles have been featured at Microsoft’s Official Site on ASP.NET. He was a speaker at the reputed Spark IT 2010 event and also at the reputed Dr. Dobb’s Conference 2014 in Bangalore. He is also worked as a judge for the Jolt Awards at Dr. Dobb’s Journal. Joydip is currently working as a Principal Architect at SenecaGlobal IT Services Private Limited, Hyderabad.