R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah

Our team has alpha released the first project written using Play!/Java and MongoDB at Teach 'n Learn . Play! reduces the pain of working in Java.

roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes --  80–20 rule / Pareto principle One popular store (that is known for its less selling price, 6-storied air-conditioned showroom) is situated to close to our home. But, Heleena is allergic to it. Reason? Even though there are at least 50 sales people per floor, only 1 or 2 people will be working and responding to the customers' queries. In another shop, I even noticed that the owner was serving customer when many staffs were cleverly avoiding the show! I'm finding the same problem everywhere. Who're affected here? Obviously the people who're actually working--they will have to handle more work that the clever people have avoided. Two common gestures/characteristics I have noted in these clever people: 1. They'll pretend to be absolute ignorant (These people's agenda are merely to avoid works, but not to take credits.), 2. They'll create politics on anything (These people's agenda ar...

I'm so happy and proud of our team... especially after reading a technology critic of an experienced developer who used it for 5-years, through Hackers News. Like I mentioned earlier, we had to ditch a part of the stack from the new technology that our team was hacking. The surprising fact is that our team faced and identified half of the issues mentioned by the experienced developer within 7-days of learning, lurking and hacking.

Our team always used to hit the edge cases quickly... Some technologies might be there for years, but when we start hacking, we'll immediately come across a situation that might faced only by veterans. Our experience with Delphi (one of the coolest technologies), ASP.NET MVC , MonoRail/ASP.NET , iPhone/Android programming proved that. This time, with another new technology... fingers crossed...

Our team has developed GroupDeal, group buying software platform that powers many Groupon competitor sites. Being ours is the first and popular groupon clone in the market, our team introduced many new features. Like I already pointed out , we added self service merchant login in the first version itself and Groupon introduced the same feature--much later as Groupon 2.0. By August 2011, our team introduced another killer feature termed as "GroupDeal Live". It is more than Groupon's Groupon Now: It has street marketing ability. With it, merchants can create deals for the (sudden) crowd. By looking at merchant control panel, they can find the users around their shops and branches. The users are classified into Normal/Web Users and iPhone Users--and so, merchants can identify the new crowd. They can then create deals to attract the online crowd. The platform will be of huge help during any procession or sudden crowd in any branches. I hope, Groupon will adop...

Currently our team has 10 premium products in hand. Reportedly few clients are not happy with support process and so I had to look into it closely. It was a great surprise for me, our support team managed by Meganathan handles support tickets at ease, usually closing within 24 hours... remember that we have 10 premium products to support and reportedly we're giving free support for some long days after purchase. We have finally found that the problem is not with the process, but how some of us had communicated. Mere "fixed", "resolved" words weren't enough for some technical clients who want to know how we have resolved.

It is a big day for us. Though I keep saying that our  Burrow product is superior to AirBnB , finally AirBnB has listed most of Burrow features in their roadmap (Refer TechCrunch post  On Safety: A Word From Airbnb ). It was a great moment for us as we could claim the innovation card now--unlike we couldn't do it other day , make humble noises, all because we had documented it in our Labs site. The documentation effort was possible purely because of Abuthakir and Boopathi; these guys are leading other teams and not related to actual Burrow team of Sivachidambaram and Balaji; but still they helped us to get this glory. This is a great story on team effort. My heart goes back into the history and thank everyone--from Abuthakir, Manonmani,... our alumni,... and the great (current) team. Together we can make at least small/humble things.

For last couple of days, I have tried to get overall idea about appraisal system in other companies and materials about appraisals. While checking, I came across an interesting checklist and warning indicators : Your organization is more than likely in trouble if any of the following holds true: chronic industrial relations problems no means of resolving employee grievances increasing / erratic employee turnover increasing number of customer complaints no pride in the organization inter-group conflicts no career paths for ambitious talented employees dissatisfaction with pay and conditions unclear job roles no clear performance measures quality is unimportant bad product service / delivery records poor recruitment standards / practices no management development programs no induction training for new employees critical skill shortages inter-departmental conflict you do not know if any of the above are applicable you ignore any of the above

Steve Jobs , CEO of Apple Inc sometimes walk in barefoot in their comapus (I don't know, how I missed this earlier!). They're able to use/market it to differentiate themselves. Whenever some newcomer or new manager--influenced by British colonial rule, visits our team, they complain about barefoot and casual dressed hackers. For years, I have been defending that they're not intentional but they're geekish. Had I known this earlier, I would have compared Apple Inc culture with our team! Not to mention that our Online Marketing Manager (who's from London but working in Chennai) never wears suit or tie. He once told me that he wears suit only on Christmas dinner and for funeral.

Like I mentioned before , I often used to say that "trust is the binding force and hope is the driving force". The things that destroy the team I have noted are: Cabals They are always opinionated, push themselves, bypass their reporting people/hierarchy, look for other cabals to understand the "shortcuts", etc. I find these people are quite damaging, they can never trust their reporting people--even though the reporting person is quite rational. Cynic bossism These people will never trust their immediate subordinates. They'll constantly spy their subordinates as they're panic and will try to see if they have better subordinate below their immediate subordinates. By doing so, they always damage morale of their subordinates, their spirit for the team, etc. Often these people will have their enemy within their own / peer level than from sub-levels. Though many times I have noted that these people are quite damaging, till now, I have no experience in ...

It was a great moment for our team as it was planned more than 5-years ago; but last week we get the Labs launched.

I often used to tell that "trust" is the binding force of team. Now, I have added "hope" as survival of life/business/team.

I always stress the need for typing and technical skill for our team. But, I turned out to be less successful in motivating the team to improve those skills. Ohm Kumar, who lately took up the challenge of motivating the team, turned many teammates technically certified. I'm yet to learn such motivating skill from him:-(