It was time for another team outing and this time we headed to Seagot Banasura Resort located in Wayanad district, Kerala. As it is 290 kms away from Bangalore we first planned to leave at 6.30 but Amit suggested we should leave by 6 and guess what happened the next morning….as everyone started gathering in front of the office around 6 on a Saturday morning, Amit and few others who were supposed to be picked up on the way by him came only at 7!!! Grr……By then the bus guy (who did not know the way to reach J.P. Nagar from Banashankari) also arrived along with 3-4  helpers and later we discovered that the driver and his ‘3′ helpers were not of any help as they did not know the way to reach Mysore Road and needed help to reach Mysore and all the way to Banasura. Thanks to his driving skills, we took 2.5 hours to reach Mandya where we stopped for breakfast. Once we stuffed ourselves with Idlis, Dosas and Vadas, we had gathered energy to make some noise in the bus. We first introduced the guests (which included family members and future family members ) and then played Dumb charades. We took the by pass as we reached Mysore thinking it would be shorter than going through the city but it turned out to be a longer route . Few of us dozed off while Santosh Prakash was trying to play Kannada, Hindi, Telgu songs and movies on the Tv. Finally he played the movie Golmaal and the audio quality was so bad that it just sounded like noise. We crossed Gundalpet and entered the narrow roads of Bandipur/Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary.

The weather seemed to have turned so cool and pleasant with trees on both sides of the road. All the sleepy eyes opened up and we shut off the Tv and opened the windows wide to enjoy the cool breeze and to try spotting animals. We saw plenty of monkeys and were able to spot a herd of young elephants which were grazing among the tall bushes just a little away form the road. We stopped for a good 5 minutes to capture the best shots on our cameras. We drove a few kms ahead to stop at the check post to pay the road tax as we entered the God’s own country – Kerala. We strolled on the road while munching on some tapioca chips and took few group snaps till the driver came back. The scenery from Gundalpet is lovely and once we enter Kerala it is spectacular. We passed through the never ending green fields and then through lovely mansions set amidst the pepper, tea, and cardamom plantations. Greenery and water was in abundance everywhere we looked. We had planned to lunch at the Greengates Hotel in Kalapetta around 1pm but our dear driver took us at 3 when the kitchen was closed   .We were supposed to meet our guide from the Seagot resort at the Greengates and then follow him to the resort…..he had not reached the hotel yet and so there we were walking up and down the road hungry and waiting. There was no food going to be served at the resort either as we had not informed them earlier Thanks to Sumanth (one of our guests who turned out to be the host ) for coming up with the idea of buying 20 packets of Maggie from Kalpetta town and planned to ask the resort guys to cook that for us. By the time we finished shopping for our solid and liquid items n the town the resort guide had arrived and we followed his car. We drove up and down the roads with beautiful view and stopped at the bottom of a hill on top of which was ‘Seagot Banasura Resort’.
The road is not motor-able and has twists and turns and ups and downs which our huge bus couldn’t climb.The resort guys had sent jeeps and cars to transfer us from the bottom of the hill to the resort but a bunch of us planned to walk up. The excitement had killed the hunger pangs and instead charged up some of us to walk up the hill all the way.
It was 5pm when we reached the resort. The view is splendid and a real treat to the eyes. One can see water on all four sides and small islands which are naturally formed. There are range of hills and mountains surrounding the resort and is beside Banasura Sagar- India’s largest & Asia’s second largest earth Dam. It was quiet and peaceful up there with only the sound of breeze buzzing around our ears.
We settled down to enjoy the view till the Maggie was cooked. Once we ate the hot maggie which tasted better than ever as we were hungry we went to check out our accommodation which were clean and spacious tents. We gathered together around 6.30pm to have tea, pakodas and decided to play games. We played The Cow and Tiger game in which everybody stands in a circle with 1/2 people who become the cow and stay within the circle and 2/3 people become the tiger who stand outside the circle. The tigers have to catch the cows by trying to break through the circle and the members forming the circle should try not letting the tigers in. It was loads of fun, noisy and also left some of us hurt . We thought of playing the next game which will involve less physical activity as we were little tired but we ended up playing a game suggested by Mayuko which involved a lot of moving and running. For this game Chairs have to be arranged in a circle and the no. of chairs should be one less in number than the no. of people. One person who is not seated would call out something that is common in all or few of the members (Ex:All those wearing red shirts) and all the members who have similarity to what was called out will have to swap chairs with each other. The person who is not seated finally will be the person who will call out the next commonality. This game was also a lot of fun and we played it till the campfire and dinner was ready. Finally, we had a decent meal and gathered around the campfire where dancing and consumption of liquids went on for a long time
We were able to identify some hidden dancing talents like Vidya and Neha. Special mention for the entertaining show put up by Mayuko,Ajay, Ranjeet and the best couple of the evening—Santosh J and his friend .Most of us hit the bed by 1am and few of us stayed up chatting.

We had decided to do an early morning trek.After seeing the beautiful sunrise we started the trek at 6.30am and went down to the river and walked on the wall of the island which was extremely slippery because of the loose wet mud and then we had to climb up which was the most difficult part because the soil was extremely slippery and bushes on both sides were not a good support to hold on to. It was great fun to do it together and everyone lent out a helping hand to each other. The waters were calm and so clean that it was reflecting the islands and hills around. We got our hands, legs and shoes completely dirty with mud by the time we reached up. We took a short break and decided to go down again to do bamboo rafting. This was very adventurous as we did not have life jackets, the waters were as deep as 100 feet and not all of us knew swimming . A rope was tied to a tree far by to help us row in that direction and while coming back we had to pull the rope and it would bring us back to the shore. It was getting hot by the day and many who were waiting for their turn to get on the raft jumped into the water to cool their system. (Sapna you missed it).We came back and had breakfast which consisted of bread, butter, jam, omelets, puttu and kadala curry,poori and saggu.
We had decided to gather at 11am to have some group building exercises. The first activity was The Cat and the Mouse in which everyone was divided into six teams. Few came up with names for their teams like HHM (Har har Mahadev) and Wild Hogs .

Two teams will start the game together with one team being the mouse and other the cat team. The Mouse team has to reach the mouse hole without getting caught by the cat team. The first two players in both the teams are blindfolded and the last player in each team has to provide only signals which will be passed through the team members to the first person which will direct him or her to move towards the cat team or the mouse hole in case of the mouse team. This was great trust building exercise and involved huge team effort. Some teams turned out to be aggressive which left a few more hurt . The next activity was Balloon Balancing Act. The same teams continued to play this activity as well. Even this game had two teams who started the race towards the finish line. They formed a straight line and had to balance a balloon between the each team member without the support of their hands and without dropping the balloon. It turned out that this game also left many hurt as each team wanted to reach the finish line before the other team. As we had enough of physical activity in two days we decided not to play anymore games and headed to finish our lunch. We received colorful certificates and gifts were given to the winning teams. All of us received smiley badges for participating and keeping up the good spirit. As we finished lunch we packed our bags and played carom while we were waiting for the jeeps to arrive to take us down to our bus. This time nobody was ready to walk down the hill . Just before leaving Seagot it started to rain and the weather transformed beautifully and as the wind blew heavily we could see small waves being formed in the river which was a splendid sight to watch. We hopped into the jeep carrying away all the memories and beautiful sights with us and headed back to Bengaluru. After an afternoon nap we stopped for tea at Gundalpet and by then the driver needed no help to get back home. We played Antakshari for almost 2 hours (thankfully we stopped at Maddur for dinner otherwise it would have continued till Blore ) and everybody except for Neha and Naushad ran out of songs. The aftereffect of this has left Akshi hunting for songs even to till today.

19th February 2010, our first Campus Talent Hunt at SJBIT, Bangalore. Thanks to SJBIT for organizing pool campus placement events as it saves lot of time and money for growing companies like ours.17 Engineering and Degree Colleges across Bangalore and Karnataka participated in this event. The HR Department at SJBIT was surprised by the response shown towards a company of our size. They had to stop the inflow of students into the campus.(this was also because we did not have a cut off percentage as we wanted to provide an opportunity to all).

It was a great experience and achievement for us to be competing with the big names in the Industry and we were one of the first companies to begin placements for the 2010 batch ( so we have taken the best talents with us  ). We had the opportunity to make our first Company presentation on Campus in front of 1000 and odd students (it was a combination of excitement and nervousness) . Our presentation lasted for 6minutes and then we had experience sharing followed by answering the queries of the students.

The Interview process was divided into 3 rounds. 1^st Round – Written Test, 2^nd Round – Technical and 3^rd being the HR round. We came up with a list of 45 shortlisted candidates by noon. It was with great joy we called out each name in the huge auditorium which was filled with anticipation and cheering of the people who got selected for the II Round. Since it was not possible to conduct 45 Interviews in the time left we scheduled for 13 interviews the same day and the rest were called to the office on weekends. We received good feedback about our presentation and interview process from the students. I would like to mention the names of our new family members in this blog – Bindushree , Neha Fathima, Savitha, Royce Pinto and Shravya. We are happy to have found the best among the 1000. I would want to thank SJBIT for the well organized event and for the hospitality shown.

We shall conduct Campus Talent Hunt every year to add more smarter and  crowd to the Team of TechJini!!

Last weekend we went to The Rappa -An Island Eco Resort located 210 kms away from Bangalore near Hassan. We left Bangalore on the 31^st of October at 7.15am, families were also invited. The bus took the NICE Road till Magadi and we stopped at Kunigal for Breakfast. We played Dumb Charades, Cards, Housie and Antakshari during the journey. We were only few kms away from Rappa when we had to stop our bus as the road ahead was blocked due to temple inauguration in the village. We were invited to join in the festivities as it would take 2 hours to clear the road ……so we decided to do the 30 minutes walk in the afternoon sun accompanied by the cool breeze from the river to reach Rappa. We were welcomed by 3 lovely dogs -Shunti(Pomeranian), Brownie(Golden Retriever) , Shadow(Basset Hound) and another surprise awaiting us was Jack, a mighty horse which was brought to Rappa a month ago. We were so excited to check out our accommodations which were Machans, Tree houses and Swiss Tents spread beside the river. After the walk, we had all worked out a good appetite and so we enjoyed the lunch.

Nobody wanted to rest so we started with the games. We had four teams for each game which were divided earlier and each team came up with team names like Jinis, Shakalaka boom boom , Rainbow, TechJini Warriors, Parasites and Halloween. Yes, Amal we haven’t sensored ‘Shakalaka boom boom’ from being mentioned in this blog

We started with Lagori which was good fun and The Rainbow team won the game….. of course there were lot of fights which added to the fun. It was not tiring enough for few so we decided to play Cricket followed by Foot ball. I guess too much work and no play gave everyone too much energy we didn’t even want to take the tea break. The Sun was setting by then and we were surrounded by good music, chill breeze and everybody settled down on the sand around the campfire under the dark sky, full moon and stars shining bright (which we hardly get to see here due to city light). After soaking into the lovely atmosphere everybody started dancing and singing along with the music. We had hot hot bajjis and chicken kebab served during the campfire. The dancing did not stop till the fire went off and we had dinner around 12. People at Rappa had planned a Night trek for us. We drove 20 kms from Rappa to reach the point where we had to begin the climb to the top of the hill. We started the climb accompanied by the Shunti, Shadow and Brown with the help of Moon Light. There is a temple on top which is opened once a week to worship God. The view from atop was spectacular (Should be clear and better in day light) . We could see other range of hills, forest and Tipu’s Fort below. It was quiet, dark and very cold on top. We sat there, enjoyed the view and listened to the stories of Tipu Sultan and his secret underground path told to us by our Trek Guide(Nagesh). And yes how can I forgot Rohit and Santosh have lost their 4 hours of memory due to too much mixing of water and juice

We came back to Rappa at 4am to catch up on some sleep and were up by 6.30 to do Kayaking. The river is wide and long as it is a place were two rivers meet and there is an island in the middle of the river. Most of us went rowing till the island and some went swimming in the deep waters.

We had a good breakfast of bread, jam, butter, omelet , poori, saagu, orange juice,tea and coffee. We went by the river side to play team building games to encourage bonding among each other. Each team had 6 members in this game and one person was blindfolded. The blindfolded person would lead the line and rest stand behind to pass on the instructions given from the last person. The twist in the game was that no member was allowed to speak. Instructions were to be passed on only through actions. There was a start line and finish line and on the way three objects were placed. The blindfolded person had to pick up these objects and then move ahead to the finish line. The Rainbow team won this game as well. The second game we played was ‘Brick Game’. There were 6 members in each team and were given 4 bricks. Three people had to step only on the bricks and three would move the bricks to make sure those on bricks are moving ahead towards the finish line without stepping on the ground.

We were physically getting tired and people started complaining about body pain so the next game we played was ‘Create an Ad’ where each team had to Create an Ad on the given product , name the product and enact. The products given were Baby Nappies, Glue, Designer Saree, Hair Growth Cream, Fat losing Belt, Detergent Powder and Mouth Freshener. This was real fun and told us a lot about people’s personal life like how is Akshi as a wife, Amit Singh as a husband and how was Rohit’s childhood

It was lunch time by then and we had to check- out after lunch so we packed our bags had lunch and left Rappa half hearted.

After interviewing several iPhone developers here in Bangalore, I am really frustrated. We already have a team of iPhone developers (who are the best) and now we are trying to add a couple more people to the team. But we have not been able to hire even 1 person after more than 40 interviews. And we have interviewed candidates from all types of companies, big (the top 10) and small.

Well, lets get this straight, you are NOT an iPhone developer if:

• you have no idea why you write “nonatomic” and “retain” in all properties. And you’ve never tried to find out.
• you cannot tell the difference between release and autorelease
• you hear the terms “main run loop” or “event loop” for the first time during the interview
• you think all classes are either views or controllers
• you have never written code for “applicationDidReceiveMemoryWarning” and “didReceiveMemoryWarning”
• you do not know if you should release objects you created by through “copy” or “mutableCopy”
• the terms build configurations and provisioning profiles do not ring a bell
• you have never even seen the iPhone HIG (Human Interface Guidelines) document
• you think both “viewDidLoad” and “loadView” are same methods
• you have never used breakpoints and the debugger
• you have never used the Instruments Application to monitor memory or network usage
• you do not know how to read crash logs or how to add symbols to crash logs
• even after programming for iPhone, you do not know about the Model-View-Controller pattern or the delegate pattern

And in case you are just starting off with iPhone programming, it would be wise to know the basics of both objective-C and the iPhone SDK. Don’t skip reading at least the following:

• iPhone 101
• Objective-C programming language guide
• iPhone Application Programming Guide
• View Controller Programming Guide for iPhone OS

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’

We have these open sessions regularly in our company where everyone talks about why they chose TechJini, what they like here, what should be changed, we share company’s vision, goals and make everyone understand how they are part of it.
Today’s session was to decide ‘appraisal policy’ i.e. on what criteria company should judge performance. Following are the inputs and will form the basis of our policy.

1. Initiative / pro-activeness – Do I wait for work to be assigned to me? Even after seeing/knowing about a bug do I wait for someone to raise it?
2. Following deadlines Following deadlines in itself is not a sign of ‘good performance’ that’s what we are ’supposed’ to do anyways but its considered as good performance if you are given something completely new and you ‘learn and deliver’ or you have a completely untrained team or in any other special scenario.
3. Commitment / ownership – Accepting the bottom line of any work you do. One of the examples given was if I go on a leave I will ensure that none of my project/customers/work is affected, I will do the needful (without someone telling me) to transfer knowledge and if some urgency happens I will be taking out time from my vacation to help the new/replacement team.
4. Doing more than what was assigned – Have I worked on projects/tasks which were not part of my regular work? Do I also participate in other activities which do not fall in my job description?
5. Customer Oriented – Do I always think of what is best for the customer? Do I keep in mind which feature, technology, code will help improve performance and will benefit customer in long run? Do I always point out issues before customer does? Do I get nervous and excited with the customer?
6. Domain Understanding – At the end of the project do I completely understand the domain?
7. Knowledge sharing – Am I contributing to company’s body of knowledge? Am I taking sessions or writing articles to share my learning? Am I being approached by team members to solve issues?
8. Acquiring knowledge – Am I learning only enough to finish the task or at the end of project I am capable of becoming a tech lead for similar technologies?
9. Homework / spoon-feeding – Am I always finishing my homework before asking for help? Do I ask questions the smart way? Do I need spoon-feeding?
10. Then there are other good to have skills like general behavior with others, influencing/persuading skills, communication

We also had very interesting discussion on what we think is ‘hard work’.

Right from the heart, this is what we ‘jinies’ (I just invented that term ) have to say about life at TechJini.
So here is what we like and what we would like to change:

1. Exposure – We get exposed to different kind of work, something we will get to do in 2 years in a big organization we get to do it in first few months only. – Nuwas
2. Good Learning – With so many new projects and all with different technology there are new challenges and lot to learn almost every day. – Akshi
3. More responsibility – Our work is not limited to what is assigned and just coding or testing or designing. We do almost everything and very early in our career. – Everyone
4. Different technologies – Exposure to different technologies and very easy to shift/learn. We get all the help but are also encouraged and showed how to do quick self learning. This acts as a big confidence boost. – Vipindas
5. Flexible timings – Flexible working hours in true sense. No enforcement of mandatory working hours, can work from home, if I work on holiday I am given a compensatory off or cash – Everyone
6. Friendly environment - Very very friendly environment, there are no bosses (absolutely no hierarchy), feels like a small family, even policies are made after open discussions – Everyone
7. Technical Challenges – We get to face more technical challenges which is making us better programmers. – Everyone
8. Neelima – Very friendly and helpful person, someone we will not have anywhere else – Sapna
9. No bureaucracy or politics – Cant be more democratic and fair then in TechJini – Everyone
10. Open to do whatever I want – I get enough opportunity, time and space to do whatever I want other than my regular work. I was able to finish a certification (which company is happy to pay for) and I can interact with everyone in the company – Arun
11. No bench – We have never seen anyone without work. There is absolutely no bench and so many product ideas to work on.
12. My product – Only place where I am encouraged and given full opportunity to work on my own idea and the best part is I don’t have to work alone, everyone in the company will work on my idea.
13. Formal corporate culture – Culture here is too relaxed, we are serious in what we do but we do not get to see a very formal corporate culture which also has lot to teach.
14. Brand Name – All the benefits of working for a big brand name.
15. Company conveyance – hmm….
16. 6 days a week – Sometimes it pinches that our friends are having fun but we work on Saturdays too. Even though we do not do regular work (extra learning or activities) but still.
17. Good Office building – We need to move to an attractive address soon, guys are finding it difficult to call prospective in-laws
18. Website – NEED to change website.

Update:
- Website changed

Update (3rd June 2011):
Saw this post after such a long time
- We changed to 5 days a week almost 1.5years back
- We also shifted to a good office. And will soon shift to another bigger office.

Few days ago I played an interesting quiz. You should try it when you have time. I enjoyed solving it. Once done, though I was feeling happy to have solved it, I was not satisfied. Why, because I was wondering as to who really solved it, me or the search engine?

In todays connected world that has so much information available on the internet, solving a quiz is no longer a feat. Instead of trying to ponder over adwork through the quiz questions, I was clicking happily on the results the search engine had spit out. And on the more difficult ones I was trying to analyze which search results are more relevant. So much for instant gratification. Had it been 6-8 years ago, it would have taken me a few hours to finish it, or maybe even more. But at the end of it, I would have felt satisfaction and real happiness. And in the process I would have probably remembered the answers to all questions for the rest of my life. But on the bright side, I am getting better at searching and finding relevant informaion faster on search engines