beyond "Just another start-up”
10th Aug-2015 my first day at Vamaship office as 2nd official employee of Vamaship. I still remember the day when we started. Allwyn the lead programmer of Vamaship was the first person to greet me at the office and Rohit the CTO of Vamaship was the second person, I met at the office. We all were very excited because that was the beginning of Vamaship. We felt like artists given the freedom to create a masterpiece - and that is how Vamaship was started.
I have seen Vamaship grow from a small 5 member team to a 40 member company. It feels wonderful to work with great people. People who are passionate, who care about you, people who appreciate your efforts, people who are there to support you in any possible means, people who care about my personal growth as a Programmer and as a Person. There are very few companies that focus on providing resources for "Personal Growth" of their employees and I am proud of being an integral part of such a wonderful team.
Here are some cultural gems of Vamaship:
#1 The 30 Minutes Session:
We conduct an optional session every week (or whenever most of the people are free), we call it 30 Minutes Session (although most of the time we extend the session for more than an hour or so), where we just talk. We talk about what we are reading currently, any new habit that we have implemented in our schedule, Any Blog / YouTube Channel or anything that one would want to talk about. We have been conducting these sessions for almost more than 2 years and now these sessions have been a great source of learning for everyone from the Team.
#2 No-cabin Policy:
Most of the companies have this policy (they call it "Open Door Policy") where the founders or even the managers sit with the employees instead of being in their Lavish cabins. Everyone in the team believes that everyone is responsible for the success of the company's growth, there have been times when even the higher-level employees have attended customer support request calls or even replied on Live-chat requests from the Website.
#3 Team Therapy:
Every team goes through ups and downs which might introduce some negativity within the team about other team members or even about the management team. We see such events as "RoadBlocks" for the growth of the team. To avoid such roadblocks we conduct a special session (once a quarter) called "The couples Therapy" session where every team member is allowed to talk anything that comes to their mind about anyone from the team rule is: You are supposed to tell 3 Negative points and 2 Positive points about the person, No explanations given, no questions asked. We believe that most of the time problems do not exist but problems appear to exist due to miscommunication or lack of communication. These "Couples Therapy" sessions take care of that "Lack of communication" and restart the internal connections from a new angle.
#4 The GM:
Vamaship started on 27th Oct 2015 so on the 27th of every month we have a General Meeting where every individual has to present their contribution and learnings directly to the CEO in front of the entire company. This is a huge confidence booster to the employees as it gives them a platform to voice any concern that they have to the CEO himself and also removes their fear of public speaking.
#5 The Quarterly Outings:
Our founders believe that if the underlying relationship among colleagues isn’t very strong, it is almost impossible to have meaningful dialogues on ideas and hold peers accountable. Every quarter, the entire company goes on an overnight stay at an offsite location to foster connections with colleagues which makes it easier to like them and the more we like the people we work with, the easier it is to collaborate and share perspectives.
#6 The Open Forum:
Our leadership team, on a regular basis, share news or medium articles or advances in technology on an open slack channel which help in us being up to date with the latest around us. The leadership team prides in letting others around them also to learn and grow and not being those corporate employees who believe in hoarding information for their own good.
#7 The Monthly Reviews:
The head of the department does a one-to-one with every member of their department where we discuss the direction of the company and the contributions required from each of us to achieve the goals set up for the company. If there is any shortfall with a member, their improvement plan is outlined in this meeting itself. Isn’t this better than having to wait for a whole year to discuss the performance during your appraisal!!
It's been more than 4 years, I have been working with Vamaship. 4 Years of Wonderful workplace relationships, 4 Years of Personal Growth, 4 Years of Infinite Learnings, 4 Years of Magical experiences and many many more to come.
At Vamaship, we care about people, we are failing, learning, falling and getting up with more enthusiasm. This is us, we are Vamaship!!!