If you are a fresher (just graduated) looking to begin your Software profession or if you are already working as a Software Professional, looking for a change. The top question on your mind might be:
What Company should I join? Which company will be good for my career? And what role should I pick from a long-term perspective?
I get quite a few of these requests from people looking for help to decide/pick a company. They believe, I can advice them on this hard problem. Let me tell you up-front, there is no ready-made solution. A lot depends on your background/context and your aspirations.
The company you pick plays an important role, but I think your attitude, your passion, your aspirations play a much bigger role.
For ex: If you come from a financially weak background, your family depends on your monthly income, you don’t really have the time to experiment or take chances and in the long-run you would be happy working at a good position in a large, stable company, then you have many options in India. You can pick any large product or service company and you would do just fine.
However, if you come from a financially strong background, your family is happy to give you some slack to figure out what you want to do, you are the person who has big aspirations, you might want to build your own product company (because most suck!) then working for a large product/service company will destroy your soul. Unfortunately, there are not many options for you in India. The options are growing, but its like finding needles in a haystack.
Here are few things you might want to keep in mind:
Does this company have a real vision. A vision worth fulfilling?
Will you be working closing with the founder/s of the company, who have this real vision that stikes a chord with you? (If you don’t get a high listening/thinking about the vision, find another company. Don’t waste your precious time. Life is too short for non-sense.)
What does the company value? And more importantly, do they walk-the-talk or is it just lip-service? And do these company values suit your personality? Is it aligned with your believes?
Is this is a small company of extremely talented (read as capable) & passionate people?
Does this company have the potential?
Is the company flexible and open? (I know some companies, who have their employee policies on their website.)
Do they care about their employees? Are they open to letting you try out different things before you’ve to decide which career path you want to choose for now?
Does the company have a very strict hiring process? Generally this ensures your co-workers will be at least as smart (if not more) than you. Ideally I like to be the worst band-member of the band. This way, I’m constantly challenged and I keep learning.
Will this company push you outside your comfort zone and let you grow?
What is the work-culture of the company? (You want a creative design-studio kind of an environment, not a factory setup.)
Will you be collaborating and interacting (read as learning) with different teams. You don’t want to be pigeon-hole into a spot (role) and restricted to that specific task.
Don’t shy away from slogging. (Of course you need to see if its worth slogging and its done for valid reasons.) I meet many people with 10 years of experience, but they have 1 year repeated 10 times. Don’t make that mistake.
Finally the litmus test is:
Does this company excite you enough, that you would be willing to work for free?
If this makes sense, then the next step is to find more information about the company so you can answer these questions. Read my next blog: How to Seek more information about a Company?
Everyday we hear horror stories about how the Indian Health Care industry is rotting. Silently behind these horror stories, there is a slow, but steady transformation/revolution taking place. People on the ground, with a real vision to change things are taking control. I’m really hoping tis growing social entrepreneurship takes over.
Let’s see why I sound so excited:
In the last 36 years, Arvind Eye Care has performed over 4 million eye surgeries in India. With their unique cross-subsidiary model, the poor in India are able to perform these operations and prevent their eye sight.
Recently I had the pleasure of meeting Myshkin Ingawale. Myshkin’s company Biosense Technologies has developed an affordable, portable, device to diagnose and monitor anemia non-invasively.
Agile Coach Camp is an Unconference for Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, Agile Trainers, Leaders, Change Agents and Mentors.
We are pleased to invite you
The art of coaching teams toward excellence and productivity is tricky business. We often don’t have direct control over groups but have responsibilities to motivate team members who don’t report to us. Too often, as coaches, we work in isolation from other expert coaches in the field. This is our opportunity to share stories and practices and to wrestle with the direction in which this discipline is going, or should go.
Growing a Community of Practice
Agile Coach Camp is about creating a network of practitioners who are striving to push the limits in guiding software development teams, while staying true to the values and principles at the core of the Agile movement. We’ve invited practitioners who, like you, are passionate about their work, active in the field and willing to share what they’ve learned. It’s a great chance to form relationships that can last a lifetime (and act as a lifeline).
Do you have a technique or practice worth sharing with your peers? Or an idea you’d like to test out with some leaders in the community? Are you facing challenges and want to get some perspective from other practitioners, or hear how they do things? If you feel you would benefit from connecting with 80-100 like-minded peers to talk, draw, argue and explore ideas, then this unconference is for you.
Also, we have two other upcoming conferences you might be interested in:
Agile Goa 2012
25th and 26th August 2012
Our 5th Agile Conference in Goa. The purpose of this conference is to address the growing interest in light-weight software development methods and to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state-of-the-art Agile and Lean Values, Principles and Practices. Its also a great platform for the industry to meet the academics.
Agile Coach Camp
Bengaluru 2012
Essence OVER Ceremony
Sep 14th and 15th 2012
Global unconference for Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, Agile Trainers, Leaders, Change Agents and Mentors. For the second time in India. Will be hosted at Ramada Hotel Bangalore.
Agile India 2013 Conference Details:
If you attended Agile India 2012 conference, let me tell you, Agile India 2013 will be at least 10x better. You can choose to attend the Management conference or Technical conference or both. During this refreshing yet intense conferences you can:
Meet experts like Craig Larman, Mary Poppendieck, Rebecca Parsons, David Hussman, Fred George, Jeff Patton, Jez Humble, Linda Rising, Neal Ford, Venkat Subramaniam and many other Agile Thought Leaders...
Network & share your experience with over 1400 international delegates from literally every software company practicing or exploring Agile & Lean.
Explore diverse and interesting solutions and contribute to the future of Agile software development.
Based on the participant’s feedback, we learned that 3-days was a bit too long for the participants. They found the conference scope to be very broad. So we’ve split the conference into 2 parts. First 2-days Management focused and the last 2-days is more of a technology/delivery focused conference. This would lead to a more focused audience and will appeal to a large group of diverse practitioners.
There is a demand for more focused hands-on workshops. So we’ll be hosting 4 paid hands-on workshops on each day, which is separate from the conference itself.
Each day we expect 650-700 participants. Plus another 100 participants will attend the paid workshops. So over the 4 days we should see 1500 unique participants. Which is more than twice compared to the 2012 conference.
Unlike last conference, this time the sponsor area is right in center of all the halls. Food would be served in the same place and an open space is planned in the same area. This will ensure a significantly higher footfall to the sponsor stalls.
Each part of the conference has a dinner reception allowing participants to have an extended conversation with other participants and speakers.
Last time the conference program was built 100% via open submission system. In spite of a meticulous open review system, quality of some of the sessions was poor. Also because of the open submission system, we were not able to attract many big names. This time, we’ve over 25 Agile/Lean luminaries from around the world; each presenting 2-3 of their greatest hits. The conference is paying and flying each of those speakers down. About 25% of the sessions will still be accepted via open submission system. This will ensure a very high quality program. We believe it would be far better than any other Agile conference world-wide.
Last time we had 7 parallel tracks distributed on different floors and the participants were lost. This time we’ve 4 parallel tracks and an open space. All rooms are on the same floor in a central area. The room sizes are much bigger compared to last conference, ensuring comfortable seating capacity.
Except the room layouts, most participants loved the conference venue las time. For 2013, we are hosting the conference in Hotel Sheraton, a brand new 5 Star Luxury hotel. A much better venue compared to the last one.
We’ve been working with our event management partner to figure out the conference layout for the Agile India 2013 Conference. As you might know, we are hosting the conference at Sheraton Hotel. Following is the layout we’ve come up with:
On an average, 350 new members are joining the group every week (a 7% growth.)
On an average, 13 discussions every week, but close to 300 comments each week is awesome. Shows that the group is very active. We also get a ton of promotions and jobs.
London, UK and San Francisco Bay Area seems to contributed highest number of members. Also pleasantly surprised to see Bangalore 5th on the list.
You can view all these detailed stats yourself at the group dashboard.
