Completed 30 years yesterday and my company Web1 completed 7. Not bad I guess.

This one is going to be a real quick post as I am leaving for Matheran in next few minutes and just realized that I totally forgot to post about my birthday on the blog. Really bad of me, I have started giving high importance to Twitter these days.

Gifts? haha yeah, I love to collect gifts (who hates though).. got truck load of clothes from Sister and Wife. I gifted myself iPhone 4S. Wife gifted me (again) a bottle of really nice perfume, loved it. Sister in law gifted me a cool Swatch watch.

I wanted to gift myself a Apple’s 27″ Thunderbolt Display but the new ones have not arrived in India yet, so I kind of saved money there. But that’s fine. I am gonna buy it soon. Frankly speaking, I have zillions of things in mind, when it comes to spending money on myself but sadly, I don’t have zillions of rupees in my account. I wish I had though haha

So Web1′s birthday.. 7 years.. feels good.. again.. like always, bumpy ride but I am quite happy with it. I can never be satisfied though but happy for sure.

I guess, time to move now.. people waiting for me outside..

Cheers,
Deep

If you show your card with CEO to a corporate guy, he will end up laughing at you, coz he knows what it takes to becomes a CEO or any officer level guy. Calling yourself a CEO, President, Director for a sole proprietorship company is totally wrong. The best suitable title for a proprietor will be “Founder” or “Proprietor”.

I have been running a sole proprietorship company for the past 6 years, I call myself Founder, I am totally cool with that. I am partner in another company, I call myself as Partner for that company and I am Director of Technology in another company so I use that title, but I can’t just sit and make up funny titles myself.

It looks really funny when we use these cool terms without having any knowledge of it. Give yourself the right title and be proud of it, don’t try to copy others just to present yourself as “cool” and new age guy.

One last thing, I have seen many people using too many titles under their profile.. e.g. “Blogger, The Startup Guy, Evangelist, CEO” and what not.. all these guys, please understand, these funny combination of titles is a BIG NO in a practical world. But Yes, you can keep those if you love being in your own imaginary world. Generally we laugh whenever we see anyone with so many titles.

Select the correct appropriate title for yourself, don’t mix zillions of titles just because it sounds cool.

Just my 2 cents.

Image: Question Mark by Marco Bellucci

I call this system a “Point Based Reward System”. I have assigned points to various tasks and each employee should achieve certain level of point slab to get the rewards.

Here is the table with break up of the points:

Most of the points are self explanatory but I think some of the points might need some explanation.

Same Date Notice for Leave: For the pas few years, I have noticed that many employees take the day off without informing in advance, they just call up in the morning saying, “I am not keeping well” or any other reason. Now, this affects the scheduled tasks a lot. So I have assigned 10 points to it. For the first leave, 10 points are deducted and if it repeats again, additional 1 point will be deducted from the total earned points. Exactly same logic applies to 2nd point too.

If you notice, I have given very high number of points to tasks related to QA and Timelines. As in the end, quality is what matters to us. To track time lines and bugs, we are currently using ActiveCollab. It comes with a desktop timer application which helps to track the time of the user.

Now, this has some backdrop too. Some of the employees might feel restricted to the timelines and might give the highest importance to finishing the task on time rather than on the quality of the code. So to solve this issue, currently, I have not put any time based strict restrictions, I have asked the team leaders to maintain weekly milestones and make sure his / her team finishes the tasks in that period. No total number of fixed hours required.

For the Bugs, so far we have been using ActiveCollab but we have some in-house application planned for this but it’s going to take sometime for us to develop it. So you can either use ActiveCollab or applications like Trac or Mantis

We have also set certain procedures and standards for the code, so these standards must be followed. At this point, we are relying on the team leader’s feedback but it’s on you how you want to go ahead with this.

Another 2 important aspects are, Communication via emails and employees not spending more time on doing personal work.

In the past, I have come across so many instances where, either employee or me forget the important tasks or assign the task explaining few features mutually. Now, in this, there are very high chances that the employee might forget some of the points or he might do something the way you did not want. And this will end up raising questions like “You didn’t tell me about it” etc..

So to avoid this, I have added few points for communication via mails. Yes, it takes out some good amount of time to write the mails and all but it certainly helps to make your application better.

Another point I have mentioned is related to the personal work. Let’s face it, we all do personal work when we are at work. Be it phone calls, chat or surfing the sites. I don’t see anything wrong in that but in most of the cases, these kind of things affect the work and timelines. And if that happens, as a businessman, it’s surely going to pinch me hard. So that’s why the points come in for this.

I have also added 10 additional bonus points for the ideas. I am open to great ideas and suggestions always. This helps specially when you are developing your own application. So if anyone suggests the idea and if it’s been implemented, the 10 points goes to that employee.

So now what we have to do with these points? How does it work?

Well, We review these points at the end of every month and have made following slabs:

So, to get rewarded, you will need atleast 80 points in a month. More you work harder more you earn.

And in my opinion, it’s not at all difficult to achieve 90 points. You just have to be extra careful while doing your work. Specially when it comes to timelines and the bugs. You will have to start thinking logically rather than doing work like a machine.

In the current scenario, most of the employees work like a machine, they do not take care about the quality and bugs. Designer blames programmers and programmers blame designers for it. So this will help to squash all these issues. If the designer has given the HTML with no bugs then it has to work same way after programming too.

This was just a small example, there will be many other instances you will find that employees work like a machine.

NOW, there is 2nd part to it which I am not sure how many will follow.

On the basis of these points you can work out your annual or bi-annual appraisal structure too. I had planned it but I scrapped it after getting suggestions from the various employees. (Yes, we sit and discuss everything before making any new policies)

This is how the structure can be: (Following is for the period of 6 months)

I personally liked this structure for the appraisals but some of the employees felt this will end up reducing their freedom and ability to work in team. (As everyone will be working for themselves rather than working as a team)

So for now, in our company appraisals will be based on their overall points and the performance based on the feedback from the team members.

There are few more things which I am going to implement soon to make everyone’s life easier. I will share the same with everyone once we are ready.

I hope this helps and yes, do let me know your suggestions, would love to hear from everyone. Specially from the people currently working for any company.

Image Source: Show us your smile! by Ben Smith

So, what’s up Deep? Well, it’s surely a new theme. Got bored of the previous theme, bought this one, customized it a bit and we are online In 2009 I had got a new custom design done for the blog but due to my laziness, I ended up staring at those PSDs all the time and now when I look at it, I felt like, “hell with it”, I need something sober.. I think this one fairly does the job.

So apart from the theme, what else is going on? I am not sure if I have shared this with everyone here or not, we (me and 2 other friends) bought a hosting company called Expertrio a year back, setup few servers, managed to get everything in shape and things are going on very smoothly out there. Few years back, I had almost stopped Web1′s hosting services because I was not able to dedicate full time to it but now, since we are team of 3 and few staff members, the rail is very much back on the track without putting any load on me.

Apart from this, the most exciting thing happening around me is, BiteBank Websites – I am Technology Director there. It is basically as SaaS based CMS (targeted to Dentists in Canada and US for now) with very user friendly and advanced features. Yea, I am not good at boasting the stuff so I will stop there itself. But I am proud of what I have been doing for the past 1 year. We have started showing the app to various biggies and so far the response has been more than what we had expected. Just love it when your designed architecture is loved by people, it’s a different feeling.

So what about Web1? Well, Web1 is doing pretty good too, but have minimized taking projects, I just take selected projects these days. I do not want to be in a situation where I take more projects than and deliver the bad quality stuff, so the quality is on very high importance right now. Happy with the way it’s shaping up. Not too fast, not too slow. Steady and the good part is, I am getting time to explore some ideas of mine.

About the personal life, well, it’s going on pretty smoothly too, have started playing badminton on regular basis but for the past 15 days, I am trying to get back in shape. Managed to mess up my back while playing, now almost on the verge of recovering. And I think I should be able to get back in action in a week max.

I guess that’s about it, I should go to sleep now..

Later..

Image Source: High in the Clouds by aLiTaBlondeGoth

The time is flying by very very fast.. I remember, last year on my birthday, I had shown preview design of the new theme and mentioned about, getting the new theme up in couple of months but it’s been a year and I have never been able to get the theme up.. the HTML files are right there in my mailbox but again, no time to make WordPress theme.. but I am not complaining.. I am happy with the way things are shaping up..

So, what’s happening these days?

Well, many things.. I got new office.. so I can fit in everyone Now we are 8 and will be around 13 odd guys.. (Oh yea, I am looking for 3-4 PHP Programmers, so do let me know if you know any)

Currently, the renovation work is going on in the new office.. I was hoping that it will be done somewhere in this week but it’s taking forever.. so I have lost the hope of seeing it done in this month.. But I am pretty much excited to show the office to my family aka Web1 Team..

I just hope things go as planned..

On the work front, the work is going on pretty smoothly.. I finally on track of getting “organized”.. the process of getting organized makes few things go haywire in the start but things becomes stable eventually.. so, if you do not want to get in a messy situation, starting making a workflow process and get yourself organized before anything goes haywire..

On the personal front… well.. I have been planning for a holiday since long but I guess, it’s not going to come anytime soon.. for now, life is all about the work and work..

Oh yea, my wife Megha will be travelling to London anytime next week… so I am gonna miss her for quite sometime, as she is gonna stay there for 2 whole months.. and the worst part in this whole process is, her visa application is still not approved, we are waiting for her visa to arrive.. but again for some crazy unknown reasons it’s still under process…  So, fingers crossed and hoping for the best.. 

Oh I guess that’s it…. I don’t think anything else is left to say.. I just hope few things shape up as I have expected.. (generally they don’t haha)

Cheers,
Deep

• There was were bunch of kids trying to start a website which will allow the users to setup websites in just few clicks. The concept was pretty good but their idea was broken, they decided to implement something social, where as a user will make template and share it with other users, so everyone can use it. I am not sure how practical it will be as the business model. Apart from this, they were not even ready for the alpha stage and they were having demo at the demo pit. In short, they were not “ready” yet..  They did not have clear picture of what they are going to do in the future. (And if they had, they could not convey it to me…)
• There was another team with the idea of making something on the basis of Getsatisfaction.com, again, no clear business plan, the voting manipulation wasn’t taken care of. The making money part wasn’t so promising at all.
• Another one was based on GetAFreelancer.com, again no proper business plan. There were no answers when I asked, there are plenty of other biggies providing same kind of services, why would people come to your site? Frankly, speaking, this guy was pretty much new to this and needed some boost, I gave him few ideas and if he works on those ideas, the things should work out for him. 
• There were many others, from something like Google docs / MS live document sharing clone, to some educational portal with great idea in mind but no proper planning etc..

I am not going to list them one by one but if you notice, everyone had some kind of base idea ready, be it based on any international site or not, but none of them had proper process lined up. No business model. Infact many of these guys never thought of any business model. They were like, we will see when things work out..

From what I understand, their thinking might be like.. we will make a good product and sell it off to any company and earn some good bucks.. (Well, I might be wrong too) But I don’t think this is what business all about… You need absolutely planning and clear picture keeping the worst conditions in mind. You should have a backup plan ready.

And most importantly, the high focus should be on money, profit.. you are spending lot of time over the project.. and for what? Social service? Just to make your name? Don’t you want your daily bread and butter? Think about money.. make a proper business plan and then just into so called startup bandwagon. If you don’t have any plans ready, I don’t think you have any right to start any business..

I know I know.. there will be people with examples like Twitter, Facebook etc.. but they all have a proper business plan, it is just that it’s been kept under the wraps and they are waiting for the right time…

I think people should not simply get into the hype of “startup” and all.. they need to sit, get back to the basic and make a plan, think about the future and think about the worst conditions.

That’s it.

Oh Yea, I am not any so called “startup guru” or anything. I am just a businessman. I understand money, profits, loss along with the great ideas. That’s it. So these are the things which always run in my mind and thought of sharing with everyone, so atleast some of the guys planning to do something new can get tips from this topic.

I have been planning it for quite few times, even got the designs and integration done but was not satisfied with the design, so I kept on delaying it.. but finally today, I decided to launch it with a temporary theme.. (which is one of those paid themes)

The blog is mainly going to be company specific, my views on certain things like business, jobs, careers, programming, designing and lot more..

Apart from this blog, I am hoping to become bit more active on this personal blog too.. many things in the pipeline.. hoping for the best

Okay.. so I am gonna cut the crap and give you the URL.. http://blog.web1.in

So, visit it if you like to follow what’s happening with my company..

Cheers,
Deep

The days are passing by at the speed of the light.. memories of last year are still fresh and another one just popped up… feels good.. feels happy but to be frank, I am not so fresh and happy this time.. may be the slogging I did for past couple of months have taken toll on me.. or may be I am not happy with certain things..

But on the other hand.. I am really happy for my company, I am really loving the way it’s shaping up.. not growing at the rocket speed but on slow and steady pace it is getting ready to run on its own feet..

The company size has grown to 6 team members (4 last year).. the number is going to increase pretty rapidly from now on.. (already looking for 7th member).. Megha is going to join me full time in few days.. Getting good amount of work… improving on the quality day by day.. but still I am waiting for the day when we are 100% in terms of quality… really eagerly waiting for the day.. and I am pretty much sure that, I should be able to achieve that in coming couple of months..

In the past year.. there were few hiccups.. mostly from the employment side.. had good amount of rough days… (and still having) but hopefully things will be smooth within a week… and I will get rid of all these sleepless nights.. and will get my weekends back too…

But again.. I am not complaining.. it’s a whole package.. and we need to accept it with a smiling face.. if there are good times.. there will be bad times too.. there is no fun without the bad times..

Want to write more and more but I guess… I will end up making this a sad post rather than a happy happy post.. haha

So, let’s talk about good things… very good things.. haha the gifts…

Till now… got really cool gifts.. wife and sister gifted me.. a nice looking shirt.. a friend gifted me a nice shirt with some super yummy chocolates.. (and my fav. chocolate orange flavored Lindt)

AND… THERE IS A SUPER COOL AND EXCITING GIFT FROM ME TOO.. haha

I was going to give it myself today but due to work load.. I could not give it…

So what is it? haha

A super sexy blog design…

So how does it look? Well… will have to wait for few days.. but here is the sneak peak..

This one is just a rough header with watermark on the images and all.. the whole layout is currently being converted to CSS/xHTML.. there are really some cool things on the roadmap…

So, what do you think? How does it look?

I guess.. that’s it for now…

Ending it with a happy note… just need best wishes of everyone..

Thanks

I think I had discussed about this earlier too but the same topic comes in my mind always and my mind always wants to speak out about it all the time..  and I am sure it’s not just me.. many employers like me must be facing same issues..

These days I have been looking around for a senior level designer and PHP programmer. 

The earlier designer guy left the company due to some personal reason..  I do not have any issues if someone leaves the company, everyone wants to grow in some or other way and I totally respect that but I really hate when someone behaves unprofessionally. I get the notice from the guy.. 20 days’ grace period starts.. so obviously as an employer I will expect the person to finish all the pending work and come regularly so that we don’t miss out the things..

But that thing never happens.. the person comes at 11.30 – 12.00 in the morning.. leaves office at 7 in the evening.. spends more time in personal matters and my work remains the 2nd priority. The guy also manages to bunk couple of days..

I mean.. what the fuck is this? Is it professional enough to do like this? No but people still do..

Let’s leave that example apart.. now here is the better example…

You call up hundreds of people, out of that around 10% turn up for the interview and around 10% gets selected.. i.e. only handful of guys… so, we finalize on the one guy.. the guy feels insecure seeing around 5-6 people working in the office.. so we decide to sign a contract just for the sake of it.. Okay, we sign some funny contract.. the guy is supposed to join in next 20 days.. you call the guy somewhere on 15th day.. he never picks up…. you call up again.. he never picks up.. and you start following the same routine thinking positive.. but the guy never picks up.. so, you call him up from a different number.. someone picks up and tell you that he is sick so won’t be able to talk..

Okay, so you get some kind of smile on your face.. thinking, he is REALLY not keeping well…. you call him up after 2 day.. again.. no one picks up… you call from another new number.. the guy finally picks up and assures that he will call back in 5 minutes..

But those 5 minutes never end.. and still going on.. and one fine day.. you get SMS from the guy saying, he won’t be able to join my company coz he got job somewhere else..

Now this is what I call A FUCKED UP SITUATION..

We wait for the guy for almost a month, stop interviewing the new guys and this is what you get? This kind of unprofessionalism.

I have seen many guys joining the companies and then leaving the new company within 2-3 days.. why? coz they get a better offer..  Many guys start going for the interviews within 2-3 months after joining the new company.. again, the same reason..MONEY…

I don’t understand why these kind of guys don’t have any professionalism? They have blooded signed the contract, given a word to someone and then too they switch company…

Is money so important? Or we have lost our ethics?

I am not saying this just because I have faced this kind of issue..but this issue is a general issue, happening with everyone..

There is bloody NO unemployment.. there are enough employees but there are only handful of good ones..

There should be some kind of global black list to prevent this kind of things and maintain ethics and professionalism.

Was sitting with the accountant today.. was really happy to see around 50%+ growth in Web1 compared to last year..I am expecting this to reach atleast 75% this year.. hiring new guys.. now I have 6 people working with me.. and 8 including  Megha and me..

Just love it.. just love it.. thanks to all the clients, friends and family for standing by me. Specially few people including my wife Megha for giving me strength all the time..

Life is fun..enjoying every bit of it