Sumer Johal
Latest: Currently (March 2005) he seems to be the CTO at Pivotal Systems based in Pleasanton, California.
Sumer Johal was Jeffrey Klein’s ho. Johal was not cheap, though. Bob Burnett and Robert Oliver perhaps spent million dollars plus for the pleasure of his company by investing in Xamplify. However, by remembering the glow on Bob Burnett and Robert Oliver’s faces after hours-long sessions with Sumer Johal behind closed doors, discussing who knows what, I suppose it was all worth it. Even Andrew Rudd after spending a few minutes with Johal generously opened up his coffers for a million dollar! Sumer made short calls to potential customers too but it appears that he was not that successful there. Finally he and his pimp Jeffrey Klein got kicks on their butts around mid-2002. Love is indeed fickle! (Note: Above paragraph’s description is figurative. For example Jeffrey Klein is NOT a pimp and Sumer Johal is NOT a whore as is traditionally understood. Crooks – yes, pimp and ho – cannot be certain but most likely no.)
Sumer Johal at Xamplify
While the brains stayed behind waiting for their investments to become 50X, Sumer was the quarterback of Xamplify team. Not only did the management loved him for his ability to mislead potential customers but also the white males at lower ranks loved him for taking care of business by making Indians like me do most of the work at rock-bottom wages while being extra-nice to them. Johal was destined to be the best ho that whites could buy.Sumer Johal’s Resume
Some people pad their resumes and then some Sumer Johal-ify. After graduating from a high school in India, apparently meant for rich, spoilt brats, in 1988, Sumer Johal joined MIT as a freshman 3 years later. Perhaps, he spent those years studying for MIT and practicing bhangra - a Punjabi dance. At MIT Johal’s MS thesis was titled "A Study of Cost and Performance Trade-offs in a Semiconductor Wafer Fab". However, the Xamplify website mentioned that at MIT Sumer Johal "specialized in programming techniques, scalability, and computer architecture!"After graduation Johal seems to have worked for Analog Devices for about 18 months. His claim in a MIT classnote about starting an operations research group there is highly dubious. Claim about Sumer Johal’s work at Analog as published on Xamplify’s website too should not be taken very seriously.
On Xamplify’s site it is mentioned that Johal started a consulting firm that did some impressive-sounding work for large multinationals like ATT and Nortel.. It turns out that Sumer Johal did indeed register a domain name psgconsult.com and signed some sort of agreement with a simulation company. Checking the archives of his website, I find that all the clients were acquired right from start with no change in that list over years. The site has seen no change except once or twice when contact person’s name was changed. Essentially it claims to supply contract workers for accounting software. Seems like Sumer Johal has a history of exploiting Indians. No wonder he was so popular among bosses at Xamplify, word gets around.
Sumer Johal as a Bioinformatics Expert
I could go on about Sumer Johal’s background but will cut it short by saying that while the company’s website claimed that Sumer Johal was an expert in real-time information transfer and scalable, secure design (ha ha), about two months after he was forced to leave Xamplify, his name appeared as a bioinformatics expert on internet. It has a long list of expertise areas that I didn’t know Johal had. He he he.Sumer Johal and Technical Skills
Sumer Johal did graduate from MIT as he often used to remind us. He seems to know quite a few buzz words related to IT, that I will grant it to him. Not being exactly in his area I can’t comment on his computer skills (didn't think that he had good programming skills, though), but his lack of statistical knowledge was remarkable. That didn’t prevent Sumer Johal from acting like an expert in that area too.Sumer Johal and Loyalty
While Jeffrey Klein was busy hiring his own people, Sumer Johal didn’t waste any time in forming his own team of loyalists. Sanjay Dayal, Anupam Bordia, Basalat Ali Raja seemed to be part of Sumer Johal’s team. Some of them were brought from C-tribe where Sumer Johal last worked.Sumer 'Khalistan' Singh Johal
Sumer comes from Punjab where many Sikhs are clamoring for a separate country. You must have seen those cabs with signs of 'India Out of Khalistan.' Anyway, Sumer managed to escape India, probably through the US Family Unification Program - where sister marries a US resident, sponsors her mother for US citizenship who in turn sponsors her son who comes here to conquer the hearts and souls of people like Bob Burnett and Robert Oliver.
Anyway, while I was at Xamplify, there were a few employees from the Indian subcontinent. Basalat Ali Raja, a Muslim from Pakistan Punjab; Anupam Bordia, a Jain; Sanjay Dayal, mother Jain and ex-wife from Harayana, a neighboring state of Punjab and who probably had common friends with Sumer Johal; another technical worker of minority religion, and me - an Indian who is NOT of minority religion. Earlier too it seems that Sumer might have hired religious minorities like Amit Jain (McKinsey, Stanford, Berkeley) and Fawaz Altaf Chaudhry (MIT) at C-Tribe. On first glance it might appear that Johal has strong anti-Indian and anti-Hindu (and anti-IIT, anti-talent, ...) bias, but you decide. After leaving the job I complained about him to Jeffrey Klein but it was useless.
Note: While growing up in West Bengal I knew many Sikhs and was impressed with their work ethics and loyalty. As members of a minority religion they were the object of many jokes and I totally disappove of that. I think that there is validity to their complaints. One of the person closest to me currently is of Sikh origin and I respect their religion. However, I totally disapprove of behavior by creatures like Sumer Johal who seemed to me as a fanatic person.
Sumer Johal and Me
Jeffrey Klein and Sumer Johal decided to screw me from start. I responded to a job ad for a "senior position". I have received my undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from IIT Bombay in 1980, have graduate degrees in computer science and MBA, and other impressive credentials (see resume) and I was paid $1000 per week in high-cost San Francisco Bay Area! Without any benefits like medical or pension. This salary was considerably less than the median salary of fresh graduates in computer science, around that time. ($75,000 + benefits was that number for graduates from a nearby university, around that time.) I needed the money and had to tolerate scumbags like Jeffrey Klein and Sumer JohalMoreover, Sumer Johal decided to place me under two white, lazy and competents - Thomas (Tom) Emerson, who showed up for work around 10:15 AM, was frequently absent and whose quality of work was laughable, and Julian Brookes, a spoilt brat - a literature major with absolutely no technical background but hired as the Director of Research! I worked during nights, during weekeends and was the only contract worker in the company. Well, they were having good time. Partly becasue of this Sumer Johal became quite trusted among the management of the company and was promoted very quickly to the second highest position in the company with rumored salary of around quarter of a million. He had bought a house for around $800,000 in Walnut Creek. Life was good for Sumer Johal.
Special: Check out details of a meeting Sumer Johal and Jefrey Klein held wih me soon after the tragic '911' event.