The Webplant Pvt Ltd was a small service based company (small at that time in the year 2014) operating with a workforce of about 120 people in Hauz Khas area of South Delhi. The interview was pretty simple for web developer role. First part was a basic written test with some technical and some aptitude questions. Second part requires you to create a website template from a screenshot of the same given to you. Third was a face to face review of your template and then fourth was the salary discussion. Salary discussion is an important part of interview process where you are supposed to express your desire for a higher pay without offending the other negotiator. My mistake was that I accepted their first offer. I worked with two team leaders there, Dipu Pandey and Deepak Jha. Dipu Pandey was a very strict person with a bossy attitude. He expected that people worked until late 8 or 8:30 till the team had pulled off as much work as possible to meet his expectations. Dipu had been close to the senior management there (Deepti Mittal and Vikram Singh). He was third most senior team leader after Govind Jee and Rajesh Kumar. The best thing about him was that he was willing to teach if you are willing to learn. He had high expectations from people in terms the quality of work and also in terms of the time a person took to complete a task. A line he often used to say was: Boss is always right. I have to agree with him on this. The quality of your life depends a whole lot on who your boss is. After I expressed to him that I had to leave on time by 6:30 or 7, Deepti moved me to a different team lead by Deepak Jha. This was a complete new experience. This team was very boyish and fun. There was no girl in it. And my favourite person was Rohit Bhandari. Deepak Jha was friendly and boyish himself. He had been recently promoted to the post of team lead. While I was working here in Webplant, I showed people my Omicron online education project and asked if they would like to contribute and grow their skills. To this Deepak Jha would tell me that you can’t start a company inside a company. The idea you would get after talking to people in this company from that time in the past is that it is a company of wannabes. An HR who wants to be a better HR. A team leader who wants to be a better team leader. A developer who wants to be a better developer. Everyone had something bigger going in their heads and it was achievable with some effort. Even the Service Delivery Manager Deepti Mittal had that wannabe nature oozing from the way she spoke. Class, sophistication, sense, authority and meaning doesn’t come with just an accent. There was a hard working and smart person Rahul Kumar. He was with me in Dipu Pandey’s team and very soon he was promoted to the position of a team leader. Rahul had a very good sense of HTML, CSS and JavaScript and he could churn out templates faster than anyone in the team. Overall experience was that Webplant was a good place to learn and start your career. It was not that good as a company since the salaries were very low (the minimum wages set by the government for the unskilled labor) and multiple resignations were coming every week. If we were to map Dipu and Deepak on Merrill-Reid Styles, Dipu would be directive and analytical. While Deepak would be amiable and expressive. These styles are defined by two behavioral variables or dimensions: assertiveness and responsiveness. Assertiveness = the degree to which a person’s behaviors are seen by others as forceful or directive. The opposite of directive is amiable. Responsiveness = the degree to which a person’s behaviors are seen by others as emotionally controlled. More responsive people react noticeably to their own emotions or to the emotions of others. Less responsive people are more guarded in their emotional expression. While no one style works better than any other, flexibility has been shown to distinguish the successessful manager from the unsuccessful one. Flexibility = the ability to get along with people whose styles differ from one’s own. One thing about this company was that it was paying its last mile connectivity cab driver more than its developers and on par with the Team Leaders' salaries.
Monday, February 1, 2021
Journal (About The Webplant)
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