This re-arrangement aside, one of the biggest changes has been the way we write our job descriptions.  Our new job descriptions are a more accurate portrayal of what your average day/month might look at PG.  We have moved beyond the traditional listing of skills and key-words and have tried to portray a more vivid picture of the kind of work you will look to do at our workplace.

If you have any comments or thoughts or if you felt something was missing, give us a yell.

Some of the pages you may want to take a look at:

Join us,  how we hire, things we’ve done,  people @ pg

Click the Play button to listen to the song here.

Download the song for your iPod/computer/MP3 player (Right click and save as…).

Feel free to forward it, copy it as much as you want to whoever you please.

PS: The voice is that of Sarang Tatimatla (IIFT Delhi batch of 2009) and everything else has been played by Apurv Pandit. Recorded in Mumbai and Hyderabad over a period of two years!

As far as I have read and have seen through my experience, I have seen that there belongs a “majority” category that’d have to be pushed to learn things they wont under normal circumstances. Mostly that happened coz of the connection of learning to other things: Learning – knowledge – productivity – rewards (MONEY).

It is seldom that we find people in the lower hierarchy of the organizations who are self motivated to read, learn, and think of bigger things in life irrespective of what others may want or pay for this knowledge gathering expedition. In the Grand Indian organizational setups, people in supervisory roles come with a lot of baggage in terms of Ego, nepotism, subordinate-threat, etc.

To begin with these issues, one needs to see the way most of our children are brought up in different family values. Children are compared to each other and thats done in such a way, it drives them to believe that certain things (like power, knowledge, etc.) are things that only a lucky few have and therefore ‘you show it in your actions that you are better than others’. Which is terrible. Which is like spoiling that child’s future learning patterns and inter-personal relationships.

In most organizations across India, people are used to a learning curve which becomes active when the supervisor or the “management” asks them to learn something and then dangles the proverbiel carrot infront of them. People live their lives and replicate the same thing with their own juniors and the pattern continues. Any attempt to change is met with a resistance that cannot be expressed in words.

I have seen that in start-ups and in smaller set-ups wherein the constraints are so much that you are forced to think other than the ordinary ways, then people go to the drawing boards – the basics. Basics here relate to the innumerable number of research studies that one has to “read” or study to ensure that one is abreast with the latest trends and scientific data that will help to develop the next generation of products. The question here is – what happens when everyone goes into that cycle of jumping to “google” or search things the moment they come up with an idea. The problem of measurements and the data that is available through them, or even the theories of researches is that fundamentally it stops people to think from step 1 to step 2 without consulting any of the above.

The problem with many people today is that right after the objective, they seek the best practices to ensure that they follow the standards set by someone else. I feel it is something like wanting to get someones else’s girlfriend in the way that guy did it sometime back. I will not want that result. It is no harm to read what had happened, but only after I have made a skeleton of what can probably be my action plan (not following best practice blindly).

Learning, which is need based, is something that drives individuals, teams, and ultimately organizations to achieve the best results and sustain systems and winning processes for the next few generations. Why do I need to learn? Because I need to be aware of all possible competencies that are required in my line of work and related stuff. Because I know that end of the day, these basic knowledge factors will be something that will give me the strength and belief of ‘going at it’ all by myself when I have the task to design the next best practice.

Most people are so busy creating the next masterpiece, that they forget to master the “scales” first. Learning is something that can be the music everyone wants to play in their lives. There are many people who live and die without letting others hear that music they had inside themselves. The “music” can be anything – the best sales process, the design that created a furore, the best pitch of a product, the product that changed the course of history for a company, the platform that saw perceptions being changed, etc. But in all this, one has to always remember that we first look at the bigger picture of a jigsaw puzzle, and we begin by placing the smaller blocks in their places one by one.

Stephen Covey says that in most of our lives, we forget that our character and personality ethics are like Harvests. We sow the seeds and we are solely responsible of the quality of seeds that go in and the kind of manure, water, etc we put in for harvesting them. And as is true in real time, every harvest takes it own time. The more we put artificial stress on the land to reap is shorter harvests, more do we lose the fertility of the land in the long run. This has been one my life’s biggest lesson.

The complete story of the above and more PaGaLGuY HQ outtakes in the Scribd document below!

PaGaLGuY – A Wednesday

Earlier this week our office gizmo factor skyrocketed with Allwin bringing in…

1. A 32-inch LCD TV
2. An XBOX 360
… and hold your breath…
3. A Nintendo Wii !

Yes, we are probably one of the very few owners of a Wii in India. Take a two minute pause to feel extremely jealous.

The gadgets are bringing in major lifestyle changes within the office. Everyone is already at being a gizmo-guitar player with Guitar Hero III, not to mention the Grand Theft Auto and Fight Night and FIFA 07 Soccer face-offs.

On a serious note, each of these games are absolute User Interaction and Usability wonders. Until now, our design and tech guys had only read about the revolutionary changes that Wii had brought in. But now using the Wii everyday itself is a great source of insights into how small and simple ideas change the ease of operation of devices that otherwise could easily be made complex nightmares.

That’s Soumik on the right trying to jam to Cream’s ‘Sunshine of your Love’.

Which reminds me – not sure what we’re doing, or is it just plain coincidence: almost every second person to join PaGaLGuY is a sufficiently skilled guitar player. No, none of them have the long hair or are the rock star types. But in a very counterintuitive way, you give them the guitar and they can pull some serious string!

Naukri.com (Infoedge) CEO Sanjeev Bikhchandani at the PaGaLGuY HeadQuarters!

Now it’s not quite normal behavior for us to show up at office as early as 9 am, unless the reasons are as compelling as an opportunity to meet the man behind one of India’s biggest dotcom success stories – Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder and CEO of Naukri.com.

Staying not very far from PGHQ, Mr Bikhchandani dropped in at the PG insane workplace today morning and had a casual chat with the team on all things Internet and business. Some interesting excerpts from the conversation…

On the importance of listening to the client – “At Naukri, everyone including the CEO and CFO make sales calls. It might be an expensive call, but when you talk to the client, they give you insights. That feedback helps greatly in improving our products.”

On Sandeep’s question about site usability and design – “We realised the value of UI (User interfaces) only two years back and since then we’ve recruited an independent UI team with a well-experienced Head. It’s important to have such a team with a Head who gives firm push-back on right and wrong usability.”

On opportunity prospecting – “We always like to follow the money while building businesses. We prefer businesses where the source of revenue is other businesses, like in the case of Naukri, 99acres and Shiksha. Getting individuals to pay is very tough.”

“Google AdSense revenue is like low-hanging fruits from a tree and one should try to catch it by improving focused search, location and time based advertising.”

It was great listening to snippets of the success story that is Naukri.com straight from the horse’s mouth! Above all, it was an honor having Mr Bikhchandani visit PGHQ.

The Taj, Apollo Bunder, Mumbai

It has been more than 6 months since i came to Mumbai for the first time, without knowing anyone except 1 or 2 friends who themselves came to the city few months back. So i am penning down my tryst with Mumbai after coming to the city without any idea of how to survive at a place touted to be one of the toughest places to live. Before leaving to the city i was told the usual horrendous things people associate with Mumbai. “It is ridiculously expensive” , “the city is full of violence” , “the infrastructure there is crumbling” , “the city is full of people who make a living by cheating others”. While few are true to an extent a couple of problems are exaggerated out of proportion.

The first thing that anyone looks for is a place to live. Before coming here i didn’t make any arrangements. I don’t think it is even possible to arrange for a place to live before coming here unless you are planning to stay with your relatives. Just plan to stay with any of your friends or would be colleagues for couple of weeks. Having been through the hassle of finding a house, almost anyone in Mumbai(for example would be colleagues who you are not friends with yet) will let you stay in their house till you find one for your self. I lived with a good friend of mine for almost a month before i found a flat for myself. Else one more way is to find a PG. They usually doesn’t cost more than 5k a month and don’t ask sky-high deposits. My colleague Ganga who joined us 2 months back took this route and right now we both are flat-mates.    So once you come here let everyone of your colleagues and flat-mates and friends know that you looking for a flat. Usually the demand is very high and before long you will be one of the 3-4 guys who are looking to rent a new flat. Don’t even think about renting a whole flat for yourself unless you are born with a silver spoon. A very important decision to make is where to live with mumbai having a lot of suburbs well connected to each other by the local trains(more on these later). Your choice of a suburb also determines your cost of living and how much you need to travel to work. I lived in Colaba (very expensive locality) for few months and later moved on to Andheri(also expensive but less so when compared to Colaba) when i realized i cannot afford the luxury of living in Colaba for long. But now i travel about 40 mins to my work while in Colaba i was just 5 minutes away from office. so make your trade-offs before deciding on where to find a flat. And that’s it really. After that you will call a bunch of real-estate brokers in that area, they will show you the houses, all your would-be flat mates zero-in on one house and before long you will have finally settled down in mumbai . A couple of caveats though. Housing in Mumbai is ridiculously expensive when compared to other places. we currently pay around 25k per month for a fully furnished 2BHK which amounts to 5k per person. My parents live in a similar size flat in Hyderabad and pay 7k per month. Also be ready to pay hefty deposit to the tune of at least 5 times your monthly rent.  Again there are quiet a few places where rents are much much cheaper. For example in Navi Mumbai you can get a 2BHk for around 10k but then had i been there my travel to office would have been much longer. Ok now it seems like you got a decent overview of how to find a place to live in mumbai. You see it is not as fearful as people outside mumbai fear it is.

Once you have settled down the next important thing is travel. Mumbai traffic is same as, if not worse than, Bangalore traffic. Normally one won’t prefer road travel unless it is within the same suburb. Else people use the local trains which is very inexpensive and has very good connectivity between most of the suburbs. For example Andheri to CST is a 40 minute ride in the local train(around 1.5hrs on road) and a monthly ticket for unlimited travel between the stations cost just 125 bucks. However a lot of people use the local trains and more often than not you won’t get a seat. In my case for the first few days i found the travel very exciting. Then for the next few weeks i found it really hard to travel every day standing and putting up with so much rush at peak time. With the help of my colleagues i got to know about a small book which gives all the details of which train starts from which station and when. Now i catch the 9.45 daily train from Andheri to CST. Since it starts from Andheri i always manage to get a seat. See ? Once you get used to it in the first few weeks traveling in mumbai is quick and inexpensive.

With flat and travel taken care of, the next comes the most exciting aspect of living in Mumbai. Coming to food first Mumbai is know for its restaurants. Be it South-Indian, Gujarati, Kashmiri , be it Italian, French, Iranian, Israeli, from the ubiquitous vada-pav to some very special dishes like berry pulav you will find all sorts of restaurants in Mumbai. I may be a bit biased as i really love having variety of food but it is sheer thrill to be able to taste a different variety of food every week-end and it is a luxury only very few cities like Mumbai can provide. Next, places to hang out. Mumbai being a port city has numerous beaches which turn out to be favorite hang out places. My favorite one is marine drive which is just 10 min drive from the office. So apart from restaurants, beaches and movies the best hang out places are undoubtedly the pubs which are the lifeline of night-life. Experiencing the night-life in pubs is something which i cannot put in words. One has to experience it oneself. Mumbai is not short of artists either. whatever form of art you appreciate painting, music, theater whatever there are numerous plays, art galleries, live music shows happening at several places in the city mostly on weekends. At weekends if you want to go out of city you have so many beaches and places to trek around Mumbai. A lot of people go out every weekend.

As i gave you an account of what i discovered in my few months in Mumbai, you must have realized all the warnings i was given before coming here were about surviving in Mumbai. None told me actually about living in Mumbai. Surviving in mumbai is easy. There are standard procedures which you need to follow as i told in the first 2 paragraphs. My estimate is one can easily sustain here with 15k per month. But then what many people outside Mumbai don’t know about is that mumbai is full of life more so than any city i know of in india. I wrote about few of them in the above para. I know of many people who don’t earn more than 25k per month but still manage to wallow in the liveliness of Mumbai. of course whatever costs i have quoted here is from my brief experience and i am neither married nor do have a girl friend.

But before that, the Chief Pagal, The Boss returned from Wharton for his first year break to spend four months at office. Our new Geekosaurus Rex Rajat (the other phoren-returned) celebrated his first salary by gulping down a Royal Stag deviously passed off to him as a Jack Daniel. “Nothing beats a Jack Daniel!” Yeah right!

Partying is not all we did, though. We launched the PaGaLGuY MBA SMS Alerts, wherein sms-ing START MBA to 09845398453 forever rids you of the headache suffered in keeping a tab on B-school form notifications, application deadlines, results and newsbreaks. All this comes right to your SMS Inbox!

The Pune PaGaLGuY Meet on May 13 was attended by over 35 people including IIM Ahmedabad, Calcutta and Kozhikode admits of this year. Mocha restaurants seem to be turning into regular PG Meet hangouts, thanks to the Hookah lobby within PaGaLGuY (principally grondmaster and profootball25). See pictures of the meet to know what is being talked about here.

Signing off with a BIG CONGRATULATIONS to our Chief Pagal Allwin for being one of the only four at Wharton to get the Ford Fellowship for studying emerging technologies.

Thanks to a career event by Sydenham College, the PaGaLGuY.com ‘mg’ logo is on a BEST bus!

Finally, if you really want your employees to be passionate about the company, take lessons from UI and Usability: let people do what they want and need to do, and get the hell out of their way. Unfortunately, too many of our employers are like really bad software–frustrating us at every turn, behaving inconsistently, not giving us a way to learn new things and develop new, cool capabilities, etc.

Remember, when I say I have a passion for a particular piece of software, it’s not really the software I’m passionate about. It’s always about my passion for what the software lets me DO. Companies should work the same way. By acting like a good UI and letting employees express the passion they have for their work, you’ll end up with employees who’d never consider going elsewhere.