I am sure this is not a news but I wanted to write a post telling explicitly that we are in need of smart people and are conducting interviews aggressively. Though we are looking to hire all kind of people (the commonality being - everybody needs to be smart ), the stress is more on hiring people who are ambitious enough to see themselves as growing into a role of great significance soon enough. And the vacancies are not only for Tekriti but also for other ‘not talked about’ ventures that Tekriti has gotten into as partners with other respectable organizations (more on that when you talk to us).

Following are the brief Job Description of a few positions that we are trying to fill:

1. Product Managers: You will be responsible for the product management of an ambitious Tekriti product that is in the pre-alpha mode. You will be responsible for all aspects of a product development including, but not limited to, brainstorming on the product roadmap with the management team, participating in technical architecture sessions, interacting with the Information Architects and the front-end team for the prototyping as well as creating / tracking the product schedules for the team members. Somebody with a technical background, particularly in .NET architecture, is a big plus.
2. Project Manager / Group Project Manager: You will be responsible for the project management of one or more Tekriti projects being carried out for clients. An ideal person should be a multitasker, process-oriented and a great team builder. You will spend a lot of time on talking to the clients, creating business proposals, creating / tracking schedules, interviewing candidates and generally think about team building. Strong communication skills is highly desired. You should be a good user of technology, and be curious enough to try out various web applications in the web 2.0 space.
3. Interface Designer / Information Architect: Your responsibility will be to coordinate the content, navigation and design for a variety of Internet business solutions. A strong ability to conceptualize and develop all aspects of software interface designs is required, with special emphasis on handling the project single-handedly without much of a supervision. Good communication skills (written and verbal) is important.
4. HR Manager / Training specialist: If you are an exceptional HR manager who is looking for a challenging task of refining the HR processes of a fast growing company with a strong belief in the “people are our greatest assets”, we are very interested in talking to you. You should also be prepared to conduct soft skills training, refine the New Hire Induction programs as well as training need assessment for other trainings and help organize it, potentially with the help of external trainers.
5. .NET Developers - If you are passionate about building world class products (doesn’t everybody say the same!), that has the potential to change the way certain businesses happen and have expertise / experience in .NET / C#, we are very keen on talking to you.
6. PHP Developers - If you live and breath open source and have expertise in applications created usign PHP language, we are continuously on the lookout. At Tekriti, you will find some of the best PHP developers in the region.

You can continue to look at our careers page (to be updated soon) for job-openings, but I will make sure that I am personally involved in most of the hiring for the above positions for the next few weeks. Apart from the fact that we are a group of passionate people working towards a goal, have way too many parties / outings, have high energy with a great work environment - another advantage of joining us / helping out with forwarding the job descriptions is that you will help me find more time to blog

To apply, either send an email to careers@tekritisoftware.com or personally to me at ashish@tekritisoftware.com

I received a comment on one of my blog-post from Sameer who came for an interview with us 10 days back talking about his post-interview experiences at Tekriti. His comment goes as:

I don’t know whether I should I write here or not but I posting my comment here. I am writing here just after reading these Mountain high and ideal talks.
My experience with Tekriti Software is not good or can say pathetic.
My Experience-

28-Aug-2006(A Call from Tekriti Software)

28-Aug-2006 was the first day when I saw Tekriti Software the reason is I had call from Tekriti Software for Written test and Interview. I cleared written and interviewed by Mr. Ashish (I think it was u). After interview Mr. Ashish assured me to disclose result in a week.

A week has passed

That week has passed I didn’t get any mail from Tekriti Software. May be the reason I couldn’t clear the interview. But I think I deserve result what ever it was.

I wanted to know the Result

I want to know result what ever It was .So I drafted a mail to Ashima on 4-Sept-2006 and requested for my result ASAP. Today is 8th September and still I didn’t get any reply from Tekriti Software or Ashima.

I was seriously disappointed after this whole scenario. I think a promise should fulfilled may be one can say promises are made to be broken. I think in Software Industry a promise is every thing. … I can write more but ..I am ending it here in the hope … that I think here is no need to write what it is …

I immediately showed the comment to Ashima and Kirti who look after the recruitment and was told that a regret email was indeed sent out to you.

Sameer - let me thank you for the comment. I have always been a fan of people giving feedback - it pleases me more if it is constructive. If we had indeed made a mistake there, I would have never known if you hadn’t commented. I just want to tell you that we indeed practice what we talk about but there can be delays at times because of other factors. After all, we are human too…

And, BTW, Sameer - it might be a good idea to check your spam folder, just in case.

When I was returning back from my 1st US trip after having started Tekriti, I met a Director of Technology of a big software company on the flight. I introduced myself after asking for his introduction and after his first look of “oh really?”, the first question he asked me was “So, are you having trouble retaining people?”. My answer was “No, we are having trouble hiring people.” and that was a very true statement then. We were in a very small office, were very new to the business, had very few people and were not somebody who could have given market-beating salaries. In nutshell, the work-place was something not exactly inspiring until you talk to somebody who actually worked there. The positive way of looking at the same is that we never had to start in a garage (not that I think it’s bad) - we always believed that we will do the best possible that we can afford for people at Tekriti, even though it meant going into our pockets to begin with. We didn’t exactly have a state-of-the-art office and had our share of some embarassing moments when some guests came to our office. But one thing that we have always believed at Tekriti has been keeping the work-culture healthy. Knowingly and unknowingly (to be fair), our focus at Tekriti has always been to create a company with the best culture than be religious about a certain technology or domain. I believe we are very different from a lot of companies in that way.

That discussion was almost a year back and we have come a long way after that. Our hiring problems have definitely reduced since we have moved into a newer place and, if not state-of-the-art, it is something better than a lot of companies with small to medium sizes. We have spent some time in business, made some name for ourselves, learnt how to present ourselves better, are 30+ team and we all look very cheerful and young Having said that, it doesn’t mean that we don’t have our share of problems. As somebody wise once said “Who said entrepreneurship was easy?” - cant be more correct. Every day - I have so many things to worry about that I have stopped keeping the count. Is project A slipping behind the schedule, did we win the contract for project B, is the health of Product C good, did we send communication to all our clients we needed to, do I need to put in more money in the cost-center for the Product D and will it disturb the overall balance of the company finances - these are only a few things that are always in mind. Actually, let me add a few more significant ones to this list - is the project team well-staffed, do we need to add buffer to a particular team (and there are more than a few) followed by “Oh, I didn’t eat my breakfast again today. I will have to lie to Mom again when she calls”, “Man, I promised that I will call a friend who will only get more angry since I didn’t”, “I am dead today again - she will kill me saying I have no-time for her”.

So - what do you do? You know you cant solve all the problems in a day. You also know that your backlog will only increase with time and there isn’t a scope of reducing that over the weekend since you already assumed weekend to be a working day. So - you just prioritize - the long known wisdom that everybody knows and practices. The easiest and best way to come up with such a priority is to look for the long-term goal of the company. That brings me to the question that I raised in the title of this post:

What is really a company about?

Is it about the products that you have built over time? Is it about the clients that you have and are servicing? Is it about the goodwill of the company in the market that you cater to? Or is it about the infrastructure that you have accrued over months? My belief is that most companies are about neither of the above items - they are mostly about the people in the company and the culture that has been established. One could be focused on the products, clients, contacts - in the short-term but the one that is the most important is thinking about people. The short-term stuff is also very important at times but as long as one has the long-term goals in mind and is not compromised because of short-term stuff - the actions are justifiable.

So, yes, every company’s 1st priority has to be to think about “How to grow people?”, “How to improve their skills?”, “How to make sure that everybody in the company is bought into the vision of the company?”, “How to emphasize the importance of team-work?”, “How to make sure that the old ones pass the same values to the new ones?”, “How to make the company self-sustain itself even if the promoters are not in the company any more for some reasons?”. I truly believe that building a company is mostly about building the people - it’s not that much about building a technology or a product or anything else. Once you have the right set of people who are motivated, loyal, inspired, have the right self-belief and in you - you know that you are going to be a winner. You have the most flexibility to do anything that you want to. It gives you the abilty to quickly change the business plan if need be (something very common in today’s world), it lets you adapt to the changes quickly and utilize that to your advantage. And, above all, it gives you confidence that you are not alone in the journey - there are many others who share your vision and have the same zeal to do something, to change the world and that only makes the journey so much more interesting and eventful.

Let me pause a bit and talk about just the negative part of all this. So, what if you have spent all your time and energy in building the company? So, what if you truly think about everybody else in the company before you think about yourself? So, what if you think that this company is the best that anybody can get and is the best career option for everybody else too? Everybody else might not think so. It’s simple - just because you are passionate about something doesn’t mean that everybody else will be. People will leave you. Yes, the same people, who you thought belong to that ‘dream team’ that you are building. And, mind it, they might be totally justified. Everybody has their own way of thinking and have their own priorities - and everybody can make mistakes that they repent about later - including you. After all - not everybody who joined Microsoft, Yahoo, Sun or Google initially were in the company when these companies went public and made fortunes for those who remained there.

So, what do you do? You can either get upset about the fact or you can just let go those people and know that you don’t need everybody in the company who joined you initially. You just need a smaller group and those will, more than often, be the set of people who will create history with you - if you continue to be genuine and passionate about what you are doing.

Let me try to analyze a bit as to why does somebody join a startup and why do they leave? In my opinion, there are only 2 kind of people who join a startup and they are at 2 extremes:

• Very confident people: These are the people who are very confident about their skills and capabilities. They know that they can walk into any company they want to, if desired. So, their ‘risk-taking’ capability is higher. These are the kind of people who are very ambitious and are the ones who should belong to your ‘dream-team’. They have the fire in their belly which can create another Microsoft, Yahoo or Google. They are the ones who, more than often, will show enough enthusiasm to join “this company” and not joining a job. Treasure these people. If even a single one from this group leaves, there are chances that you are doing something wrong. Find that, and fix that.
• People who joined you because you were the first good option that came their way: Like it or not like it - a startup has to be ready to train people a little more than the bigger companies do. The bigger company has a lot more options while a startup has to identify the diamond in a coal-mine and polish them. Some of these diamonds are really Kohinoors, they just needed a better support and more confidence. But, at the same time, you have to realize that if you feel that they would have joined a big name had they gotten that offer at the time they joined you - they will eventually do so. They never joined you because they wanted to join you. They joined because you were the 1st good option that came their way. The day they can get into another organization, they will. And it’s okay too - everybody needs to think about what is good for them.

So, yeah, it hurts to see people leave but don’t be too upset - a lot of things are out of everybody’s control and it’s okay to leave those things to destiny. There are some who were never destined to walk with you till the destination but gave some company to you in the journey and then went their way. Instead of getting upset, you should feel happy for them. Happy because, in the process, you helped somebody get to their destination. Genuinely feel happy about them because the ones who have stayed are the one who matters and they are the ones who will be the world-beaters. And, then, a company’s aim is not only to make money but also to make sure that it benefits maximum people - in different ways. Try to do good for everybody - people who have left can also come back and hopefully they will bring back a lot more wisdom than what they had when they left - and you will have an option then. Remember - a token of appreciation from an ex-Employee goes a long way. I still think that Microsoft is one of the best big companies to work for.

6 of us from Tekriti went for the campus placements at MNNIT, Allahabad and IIIT, Allahabad over the last extended weekend. It was a tough, tiring and yet very exciting event for us. This was our first trip to any campus and so was special like many other first-things.

Both the institutes were good hosts even though their approach to placements was a bit different. MNNIT had around 700 students in the passing-out batch while IIIT only had 180 (including Bachelors and Masters programme). We got total 100 students (50 from each institute) to write our test which wasn’t bad given that we were a bit late in deciding on campus placements and many companies had come before us.

The highlight of the placement process was the fact that we got feedback from both the institutes that our pre-placement talk was the best so far. People liked the interview process also since it was very different but pre-placement talk got everybody discussing. After I got done with delivering the pre-placement talk at MNNIT, somebody complimented me saying that “This was the best pre-placement talk in the institute so far, even much better than Microsoft (Microsoft’s was best since then)“. Oh well, I will take that as a very genuine compliment

As a place, from what I was told (we didn’t get a chance to go to any places), Allahabad didn’t have anything to offer other than a view of these 2 engineering institutes.

Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT).

IIIT Allahabad

In general, the learning from first campus placements are:

• Schedule a trip to campus as early as possible - you want to be one of the first companies to go to the campus (this will also depend on an institute’s policy but contact them early)
• Have a nice presentation-deck and back it up with a good presentation: Encourage questions, make it humorous and cover things that makes more sense for people who have never worked before. I think our presentation conveyed that well through the photos that we had on the slides. Feel the passion you have for the company to the students while presenting - it is contagious.
• While interviewing, look for the attitude in people. Technically, there isn’t a big difference in people. There are categories - smart, average and others but sub-categorizing beyond that might not be the best idea amongst freshers. People learn a lot in their first job and there won’t be a big difference in the learnability of the sub-categories. But, ask yourself, is this person culturally fit for your company?
• Take all those selected out for sometime: People always like to be treated on their first job. A lot of us cannot afford to go to a restaurant that we always wanted to go while still in the college - treating people to such a place is always a noble gesture and something which is remembred and appreciated.

Even though I have been traveling for the last 2.5 months continuously, I haven’t gotten a chance to complain so far Thank you MNNIT and thank you IIIT and thank you all the future TeknoKrats - you made my trip worthwhile.

Another experience to treasure! And, I am sure, it was the same for Arun, Ashima, Gaurav, Manish and Rahul.

I have been continuously traveling for the last 6 weeks. 2 Chennai trips, 1 busy US trip, a much awaited trip home for 3.5 - 4 days (with stop-overs at Kolkata) and now Jaipur Trip - is the maximum I have done so far in such a short span of time. There was a time when I used to complain to my folks that I haven’t been to as many places as a lot of other people I know. It won’t be too much of an exaggeration if I now say just the opposite - but with the difference that most of the travel has been limited to business.

We had been planning to organize a major team event since the last couple of months but kept pushing it till the past weekend primarily because we wanted all of us to be present during that big event. The trip started at 6 AM on Saturday (July 22nd) when we all assembled in the office and boarded a bus booked for the trip by us. That was just the beginning of the fun.

The first 15-20 minutes was quiet with everybody settling in as the bus departed to Jaipur. My younger brother Amit was the only person on the trip who was not from Tekriti and I am glad that he agreed to go else I wouldn’t have been able to. Amit was visiting me for a few days after he wrote his 4th year end semester exams towards his MBBS course. I could feel the unrest in the bus immediately after that as I felt people wanted more activity than what was happening there.

We begun with organizing the usuals - Antakshari and Dumb Charades. I was organizing the events, something that I have always found myself doing in a group - and so was having the maximum fun. The noise level was very high and I had to literally shout at the top of my voice to make myself heard to everybody in the bus. I had a bit of sore-throat and was asked to speak less (by the doctors - my dad and, even, my brother) for the next few days but the temptation to see everybody on the trip having a real good time was so strong that I defied the orders and pleas.

Here is the journey in pictures:

Everybody got seated in the bus preparing for the journey.

Last minute negotiations with the bus-driver who had some confusions regarding the payment. We had to call the travel agent to get it sorted.

I don’t know what Kapil was thinking here. The bus was pretty good.

OK - people had to get up at around 5 in the morning but it was especially tough for Gurpreet since he was partying till late the previous night.

We broke for breakfast here on the Delhi-Jaipur highway - oh well, the restaurant was inside.

We started to play ‘Mafia and the villagers’ and few people who were not playing the game tried playing a spoil-sport by disclosing who the actual mafias were. This single incident evoked the maximum laughter from everybody and was the highlight of the onward journey. Check out Sunil and Kapil standing on their seat and trying to look at the cards of those playing.

Amer Fort!

On the way to ChowkhiDhani. We had pretty bus conductors

Come on - don’t bother the conductors because there isn’t a prettier bus conductor in the country.

ChowkhiDhani - the place rocked as it showcased the Rajasthani culture.

Waiting for food! It was difficult to say No to the guys serving the food. Very authentic food - little too much for everybody. They gave me a roasted papad even when I stood up and clicking snaps of others who were still eating.

All in all - Jaipur trip rocked. Apart from the sight-seeing, the entire team bonded well during the trip (or so, I like to believe). Keep up the great work TeknoKrats - we will have many more such trips.

Saad has an awesome collection of photos from the trip. Don’t miss clicking the link - he is one exceptional photographer.

This is a continuation of my previous post “Why is GoingOn special“. In this one, I am going to talk about why is PeopleAggregator special for us:

In the first look, you will notice a lot of similarities in the 2 systems: GoingOn (referred to as GO, subsequently) and PeopleAggregator (referred to as PA) - since these both are social networks and let you create social networks on the fly. But, as you look closely, you will notice that these differ a lot in their treatment of the concepts. I hope to provide an insight into the differentiation through this post.

• New platform to create social networks, built from scratch: Like GoingOn, PeopleAggregator also lets you create social networks on the fly but the programming model is very different in the 2 systems. While GoingOn is built on the top of Drupal, PeopleAggregator code architecture is object oriented built from scratch using PHP5. There are a set of programmers who prefers one approach from the other and this model will suit them more.
• Code will be available for download, for the basic use: Apart from being a hosted platform for people to create their social networks, PeopleAggregator code will also be available for download free for ‘basic’ use - shortly. There will be a licensing model for the other use. So, you can go to the site, and join or spawn off your networks. Alternatively, you can also download the code, set it up which can create a social network - which, in turn, can spawn off multiple social networks themselvs.
• Meta Network functionality and Structured Blogging Integration: The 2 systems (GO and PA) are very identical in their treatment of meta-network concept, with ability to create social networks on the fly and making them discoverable through a network directory. Apart from this - PeopleAggregator also utilizes StructuredBlogging as its default content publishing platform.
• Notion of Private and Public Pages: Haven’t you ever felt the need of having a separate version of your page when you look at it as compared to when others look at it? On a private page - the need is felt for a different layout, different controls, different color themes, etc. PeopleAggregator solves it by providing 2 different pages for a user to customize - your private page and your public page.
• Groups inside a Network: Not only can you create a network, you can also create groups inside a network to create a sub-community with similar interests. A group also has a group blog, a group media gallery.
• PeopleAggregator APIs to interact with the other systems: Open APIs is the way to go. PeopleAggregator exposes APIs to create a group, establish a relation with another member, post and retrieve blogs, add and send messages - and this list will only grow with time.
• Multiple ID login system: One of the most novel feature is to provide multiple ID login system. So, if you want to login to a PeopleAggregator system - you don’t have to be a registered member of the site. You can login using your Flickr account, for example, and the system will pull in your profile details in the system.
• Marc Canter: Oh, of course, how can anything about PeopleAggregator be complete without mentioning that it’s totally a brain-child of Marc Canter.

PeopleAggregator is under closed alpha now and will be opened to general public at the end of the next month. If you are interested more in this, you should keep an eye on Marc’s blog for the updates and announcements.

So - both the systems have their own place in the world and are excellent systems (Disclaimer: Both the products are built by my company and we are proud of both). They are just catering to a different audience.

Most of the projects that we do in Tekriti are special to me, as one of the selection criteria is their coolness and utility value. This criteria is one which is very important as it allows us to be very upbeat and excited about the stuff we do. But I will single out 2 projects currently for a special mention - GoingOn and PeopleAggregator. These are 2 products which are very special to my company. In this post, I am going to talk about GoingOn and the next post will be dedicated to PeopleAggregator - I will talk about the other projects with time and as we make further progress.

As the text on the site says: “GoingOn is a growing network of corporate, media, nonprofit, and individual brand networks that share on a common weblog publishing and community management platform”

Few of the points, in no particular order, which makes the system special are:

• First complete meta-network: GoingOn is the first system which lets you create social networks on the fly. You can choose the name of the network, specify a URL, upload the logo and banner images, specify the network categories and tags, choose the layout in terms of number of columns, choose the color themes, etc. It also maintains a network directory, which is used to discover more networks of a particular interest. We provide a single sign-on to all the networks, where ‘Joining a Network’ is pretty straight-forward.
• Hosted social network, with a subscription model for paid networks: The business model for the platform revolves around hosting the social network for you. So, whether it’s a basic (free) network or one of the paid networks, GoingOn hosts the network for you - so that you don’t have to worry about maintaining it. If it’s a paid network, you just have to pay a monthly fee which depends upon the type of network you are creating.
• Micro-content creation using Structured Blogging as the default publishing platform: The content publishing platform not only lets you create blogs but other micro-content like Reviews, Events, Audio, Video, People Showcase utilizing Structured Blogging - implicitly supporting the micro-formats. This will be the first social network again which uses Structured Blogging as the default publishing platform.
• Network Customization: Not only can you choose from various layouts and the color themes, you can also customize the homepage of your network by placing various modules / blocks in the left, right and center of the homepage. Apart from this, you can also dynamically customize a top-level tab of the network and put relevant content in it. So - a ecommerce site will want to put a ‘Products’ tab there but a Blog may have ‘About’ tab - it all depends upon the network administrator.
• Member Page Customization: As a user, you have an option to customize ‘your page’. You have a set of modules to choose from (and the list will only keep growing with time) like ‘My Tags’, ‘My Flickr’, ‘My Media Gallery’, ‘My Connections’, ‘My Networks’ which can be enabled / disabled and moved around on the page.
• People Subscription: The RSS feed for a person will not only have their blogs but will have their other micro-content and media gallery, essentially making it a compound feed.
• Access Control: All profile fields have access control - so you can make individual fields visible to everybody, by categories of connections (friends, online connection, lead,clients, family, etc.) , to only 1st degree friend, to only 2nd degree friends, etc.
• Web Services Integration: Apart from the commonly used web-services like Flickr, delicious in social networks, GoingOn provides you services provided by other Web 2.0 companies from within the system. So - if you can power feed management through Newsgator, you can also export your contacts to Salesforce and get the online reputation management done by Opinity. The list will only grow and I will provide my experiences with each as and when we do the integration.
• Advanced Editorial publishing system: The platform also gives a network administrator functionality to invite authors, editors who can create editorial posts. These posts appear separate from the Member Posts (Blogs, etc.) and gives the administrator appropriate permissions to place the 2 content appropriately on the homepage. It also gives network administrators advanced back-of-the-house tools for content and member management.
• Personal Blog and External Blogs: Every GoingOn member gets a GoingOn blog and flexibility to add multiple external blogs. The GoingOn system will not only display the posts from External blogs but also lets you route your posts from your GoingOn blog to your external blogs.

If you want to know more about the platform, take a tour here and then create an account yourself and play with the system.

Look forward to our Beta release next month - I will have a lot more to write when we make the announcement.

Disclaimer: All the features I have mentioned above are not still built in the system but we will keep adding them with time.

We observe 5 days a week work schedule at Tekriti but a lot of job interviews are scheduled on the Saturdays. So, even though it’s a holiday, I end up being at work every Saturday essentially making it 6 days at office in a week. Sunday is one day where I get to spend time at home - trying to arrange the clothes that were piled on the other bed over the week, do some cooking which is mostly limited to Top Ramen / Maggi and make phone calls to friends and relatives.

There have been many many Saturdays which were disappointing because we didn’t make any hire those days. In fact - after a while, I stopped getting disappointed too because I knew that the chances of somebody getting hired (even for those who made it to the interview round after the resume screening, phone screening and test clearance) was very low. And we just declined to compromise on the quality, knowing quite well that it might mean not being able to grow (in terms of human resources) as fast as we want to.

But - this Saturday was great! I can easily say that I got to interact with one of the smartest guys who came for an interview with Tekriti. There are days when I feel the need of lowering the standard of questions that I am asking the candidates, to enable them to answer something - even though the recommended decision of ‘No Hire’ has been made based on the response so far. But then there are days when, during the interview, you are forced to think - forced to think of raising the bar higher, forced to introduce more complexity in the questions and see how does the candidate respond to that. And then feel very happy and pleased when the candidate answers those questions - and it is quite rare if you come across multiple such candidates on a particular day. This Saturday was one such day - I just enjoyed talking to a few candidates.

With the risk of sounding arrogant - I feel that most of the Indian companies need to work on their hiring practices. I have seen and heard about the hiring process of a lot of Indian companies and can confidently say that we have one of the best hiring methodologies (which is inspired a lot from Microsoft) in the industry. So, if you are really looking for a career with Tekriti, you need to be extremely clear about certain things:

1. Be a problem solver: If you think that you know syntax of a particular language and are extremely conversant with the helper libraries - we appreciate that. But, if you can’t solve new problems, can’t suggest algorithms for new problems thrown at you - Tekriti is not the right place for you. We love language experts but we value problem solvers a lot more.
2. Appreciate technology: It’s good to know the stuff that you are currently doing. But we lay a lot of emphasis on your excitement about the other technology, competing or non-competing. So - if you like to follow the current technology trends, do a case study on its pros and cons, be pro-active to push a technology amongst your peers where you see potential or just get excited on seeing a good use of technology in any application - I can promise you a very good time at Tekriti.
3. Have high energy: Anybody working in a startup has to be full of energy. You need to constantly think about how you can make the place better. There are so many areas that you can work on and play a role in the company other than just your primary responsibilities. So, think about that and then own the implementation - you will have a great flexibility in implementing that. We all appreciate that and it’s part of the company culture.
4. Be ready to learn and grow fast: We are a growing company and a lot of stress is on having people who can keep up with the pace of the growth of the company. You need to constantly take more and more responsibilities so that the load is equally shared and we can assure you that the responsibilities will also be shared in the same proportion. So, if you think that you need a lot of time playing just 1 role without accepting more responsibility - we are not the right company for you. But if you love responsibilities - there isn’t a better place for you
5. Have a good attitude: We, as a company, are extremely sensitive about our company culture. We truly believe that all TeknoKrats are our greatest assets and any attempt to disrupt that culture is not appreciated. We are all a bunch of enthusiasts who love what we are doing, love working with each other, love helping each other and we want it to be that way. So, if you are interviewing with us, please leave your arrogance at home. However smart or talented you may be - we will not appreciate any attitude issues and arrogance and will not have any place for you. Be confident, be self-assured, be pleasant and be forth-coming but don’t cross the line. We want everybody in the company to enjoy their work and will not let anybody in who we think might cause any problem there.

Unless the other companies follow similar practices and stress more on the aptitude and problem solving skills rather than the details of a particular language, hiring will remain the biggest challenge for all of us - today and in future.

One of the things that was on the top of my priority list, the past few days, was planning the online network for the OnHollywood conference that Tony Perkins and AlwaysOn organizes. The conference started on May 2nd, 2006 and got over on May 4, 2006. The entire team worked hard for it and enjoyed the fact that the system was used by a lot of real people with the member count of the network as around 40,000 members (courtesy migrated members from AlwaysOn)

OnHollywood conference network was hosted as one of the network on the GoingOn system - a hosted network of networks. We disabled creation of network functionality during the conference so that we don’t change too many variables at a time and we wanted to see how does the system react during the actual use and not just simulated use.

The next step is planning for a public Beta where we will be enabling a lot of features which were disabled so far deliberately. So, if you haven’t checked out, check out the OnHollywood network - create an account for yourself or log-in and check the “My Member Page” customizaton. More customizations will be allowed to a network administrator - that will be visible once you create a network as we enable the functionality.

The video archives of the OnHollywood 2006 Panels is here, if you are interested.

We got special T-Shirts made for our 1 year completion in the office. Many thanks to Seema who got this done for us - even when the number of pieces required wasn’t too high. Everybody wore the same T-shirts to work on Friday and we had our photo shoot from our pro photographer TeknoKrat - Saad.

Saad says that the other photos didn’t come out well - I am disappointed to know that The photo says “…our first step to success” at the back and “Tekriti Software” at the front.

Update: Some more photos that I got from Saad.