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Today while generating leads Santosh came across one of the most shocking and ridiculous ways companies seem to be ‘trying’ to do business.

Verna Technologies – I thought a lot but I have no idea what these guys are trying to do. They have copied our site word by word, even the founders name Only thing that is different is their address.

I tried to call the number but it is switched off, tried to contact their domain registrar but they are not working on Saturday. Will evaluate on Monday after talking to them once whether this calls for a legal action or not.

Are they real? or are they really so creative that they can’t even write what they have to offer?
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Independence Day was just around the corner and we started planning for the special day!! Typical ideas like having ethnic day, giving away best dressed award, games, team lunch etc etc came up….I was discussing these ideas with Amit and a great idea of spending time with children in an Orphanage came up. The team was very supportive and contributed generously to organize the activities. The Company decided to contribute the same amount that was collected from the team . We identified a Ashram called Anatha Sishu Sevashram located in Wilson Garden and planned to make the visit on Friday (14.08.09) as the children would be engaged in school activities on the 15th ).

We organized for distributing snacks, gifts (thanks to Akshi,Arun and Santosh) and planned to conduct games for the children. Another objective of the visit was to identify long term needs of the children and the Ashram so that we could help them in their development and not just provide them with momentary happiness.

As some of the team members were caught up at work (we missed you all) only 10 of us visited the Ashram. We reached the Ashram late in the afternoon and were glad to see that the children were back from school. The Ashram is an old house which needs infrastructural development (like painting, lighting, modern amenities) and accommodates 60 kids at present . There is a play area , garden with fruit bearing trees, washing area for the children and a friendly Dog named Belli  (means silver in English). We met Parvathamma (blind lady) who runs the Ashram and spent time talking to kids about their School and how they spend time in the Ashram. We then distributed snacks, gifts and asked every child to write a wish list. The children were welcoming and disciplined. Majority of the children were able to understand English hence we  were able to communicate with little difficulty.

It felt nice to bring a smile on the face of the children. We plan to sponsor education, provide uniforms for the children in future (during June-July) and get involved in the development of the Ashram.

As the children had to do their home work we could not conduct games  but we did play in the swing, see-saw, slide!!!!

Yesterday while driving back home I saw Sapna, one of our PHP team members (almost running) to catch probably what was her last bus. I offered her a lift till her stop and then when I was coming back I thought I will write about ‘GEMS’ / ‘Pillars’ of TechJini. People who make TechJini what it is today, our ‘power performers’. Initially I thought we should have ‘performer of the month’ but then I realized I will end up writing about everyone anyways

Sapna was impressive right from the first question of her interview. We have very strict interview process and have history of upsetting recruitment companies (we keep on asking for candidates but no offers). There was not even a single question which I asked her and she had to think. She always had a way to solve the problem instantly, not always the best way but she always knew in which direction to go. Her interview went for 3 hours then I told Shyamal she is really good. He was pleasantly surprised as I have not said that often so he went to talk to her. He talked to her for another 2 hours. Thats a good sign when Shyamal doesn’t send someone back in first 15 minutes.

She is spontaneous – Always has a solution
She is VERY hard working – Travels daily for 2 hours (one way) in ‘local transport’ and usually one of the last ones to leave office. And yes mostly among early comers too.
Extremely dedicated – She is one of few persons I have never seen taking a break.
Desire to learn – Never settles with the solutions, she always wants to know why? how?
Dependable – If any work is assigned to her, you can be sure it will be done and she will not rest until its done.
Proactive and Responsible – Even when she was over loaded she volunteered to take up second project.
She is very emotional – She scared everyone on her first day when she started crying during our group lunch. She was missing her colleagues from old company.

We thought she was a very serious person until we went on our river trip. It was so difficult to get her out of the water Sapna is one of our ‘jinis’

This is how we at TechJini define good code
- Code that fulfills customer requirement. This is the most important of all, no matter how you have coded, what process you have followed if it doesn’t do what is expected of it, its useless. Ofcourse has to be bug free.
- Easily maintainable code. Do not write thinking that you are responsible only for version 1.0. Think ahead, code should be very easy to maintain. Easy maintenance include – easy for new team members to understand, easy to test, easy to change/add features, well documented etc
- Reusable. Code which can be transformed into components and reused.
- Thoroughly tested, test cases should have full (maximum possible) code coverage.
- Future and change ready.

There are several things we can do to ensure that we write ‘good code’, one of the way is to start with good design. Understanding and having ability to correctly utilize OOP concepts and design patterns. To ensure that everyone in our company is a master we have formed and started TechJini Design Patterms study group. We had our first class yesterday which covered introduction of OOP concept and healthy discussion covering real life examples trying to model real life problems. Its clear that everyone has good base and is an expert in analysing and applying OOP concepts, so we expect to have good discussions in future.

Next session is about Abstract Factory Pattern. Looking forward to it.