The title is a tribute to Maurice Sendak whose birthday is today.

Maurice wrote and illustrated amazing children’s books. And his famous “Where the wild things are” is a classic – if you have read it as a child (and actually even as an adult) the images of wild things and the little boy’s reactions to them leaves an indelible mark on you.

Where the wild things are is about a boy (Max) who fell asleep in his room and his dreams. He dreamt that he travelled to a land far away where the wild things are. He conquers the wild things with his look and becomes their king. But he starts missing his home and decides to come back home. When he wakes up he finds his supper waiting in his room.

So what’s the connection between a custom software company in Bangladesh and the children’s picture book? There isn’t a lot really, but I really wanted to introduce Maurice (many of my readers are based in Bangladesh and may not know him that well) and made up my own little connection.

The land of the wild things represents our fears. For a software company like us, that hires the best in the market, the biggest fear is the fear of loss. Our fear of losing our talents to other companies locally is not that great – because we are genuinely a great place to work in Bangladesh and thus represent a top choice for people to work. Thus we rarely lose our talents to other Bangladeshi companies. But those wild software companies in far off lands in the West are a different thing altogether :(

The West has a magical hold on the imagination of people living in developing countries. We tend to think of the West as the fairy tale land where every wish comes true. Our constant exposure to western media from movies to songs to news enhances that magic every day. And in the tiny world of software, is there any other monster more awe inspiring than the likes of Google or Microsoft or thousands of other fabulous software companies that we read about, hear about and watch pictures of everyday?

So where the wild things are for us is the West – those beautiful magical shores of California or fiery autumn forests in New England. And the wild things are those monster software companies that live in that land.

See that’s a good connection! And to extend the connection even more, I hope that our children will one day come back from the land of wild things again to their own little rooms in their own land where their supper waits for them.

Side note: So how many of our talents have we lost to the wild things? Too painful to answer accurately, so let me just say “many”. We’ve lost so many to the wild things like Microsoft, Amazon or LinkedIn that I keep seeing their logos on Maurice’s drawings every time I turn open his book to read to my sons…