What is Monday Munch?

Maintaining a culture in an organization is a tough challenge especially because the bases of a culture always need to be strong and core. Secondly, a business hub like Surat where Textile and Diamond Industries are dominating all other industries it’s a challenge for an IT company to make its place in the city. Avinashi’s strength lies in the following 5 pillars through which we develop and maintain our culture i.e. Quality, Innovation, Knowledge, Leadership and Teamwork. We believe in nurturing of our team members so that they feel proud working at Avinashi.

Aligning personal goals with organizational goals in return will help us to make a better team. In order to maintain the strength of the pillars and such core values we need continuous and regular efforts that need to take place daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly. A weekly system works best for us as each and every individual can monitor and align their personal growth.

The first step towards such a process which we have inculcated in Avinashi is Monday Munch Programme. Monday Munch, as its name suggests is conducted every Monday where Avinashi with its entire team gets together and discusses about the Product(s)/Project(s) Details. Also leaders briefs everyone about their previous week’s updates, their learnings and also their goals

This refreshing and recharging event is conducted for almost 2-3 hours and we always try and gain 100% attendance and for those who have missed to attend Monday Munch can refer the recording of this event later for their reference

Why Monday Munch?

“Sharing is joy” and that is what we believe in too. During Monday Munch, we give an opportunity to each and every team member to come forth and share their weekly tasks and update the other team mates about their work. They share their learning’s which can be technical, behavioral or any other topics which they felt as their learning’s and can help others in their career or life.

As everytime we give chance to different team members to come and share their topics this technique has inspired all other team member which has created a good competitive environment at Avinashi. We hope that this continuous effort will help everybody in their professional as well as personal life. Apart from these regular discussions of tasks and plans, we also discuss some motivational videos, stories etc which we think would help Avinashi and its team towards managing themselves better.

Regardless of our busy schedule and tight project deadlines, we have never missed to conduct Monday Munch as it helps knit togetherness and team spirit. We strongly believe that Avinashi & Monday Munch should go hand in hand and hence we hope and will try our best for a lifetime existence of Monday Munch.

This is era of entrepreneurship and business. Its increased specifically since last few years. Everyone around us wants to start their own business. And every businessman are always crying for good people to work for them. When I was kid, there was some food supply chain was coming in Science subject, Which was defining hierarchy from bottom to top or say top to bottom. And we were taught that if any link disturbs from this cycle, it creates problem and nature or in other words God is manging this cycle carefully.

Previously (Generation X or Y – In simple words when my parents were doing work) they were looking for good firm to work with. Having good boss and good people around was kind of luck. There was no specific job description or detailed specification was there. Do whatever your boss or manager says or they will get you out of job. So all control were in hands of management. Bosses were also taking good care of right people and keep them regardless of their skills as far as they trust on them.

Now, its completely different. There are few people who actually want to do the job. Most of freshers come out of colleges and build expectations to work with Google and other big brands. Of course everyone should have King size dreams in life to go ahead but yes, one need such efforts to support his/her dream. I saw people in my 12 years of professional life, who have almost zero knowledge in programming and they demands luxury treatment! And believe or not, they are awarded that too by some companies. Well, that may be due to talent shortage or to complete projects or just to bill human hours to clients. I don’t know how they were able to achieve take out from team member or might be just keeping them on bench and bill the client.

Before actually they code anything (which generates any revenue), they jumps to another company with of course good hike. This created a hype in salaries like anything. I saw many people who are getting salaries for which, they are not worth of. I also saw people who are getting less salaries just because they are not aware of market trends and kind of Good people. And most of every entrepreneurs or recruitment people are crying with this. So I was thinking of why this is happening and what is the reason? Here is picture I realize (my personal opinion):

• There are companies in US, who are in crunch and they want to get things done in cheaper manner.
• They post projects on various freelancing sites to get best cost-effective solution or in other words offshore partners.
• Now these offshore partners (like us) are either very good at sales or offering too cheap prices. Even sometimes freshers (students who just came out) wants to try their hands in freelancing and ready to work for $2 or $5 an hour. And make the market very dirty.
• So there is good amount of competition to get the work.
• Once you get the project, now you will see that you have enough resources or not. (One person came to me after winning bid of good amount from local Limited company contract of 2 years of development and he just had 2 resources who are just 5% programmers)
• So now they try to search in market. (Well, some HR people calls this as head hunting)
• As they’ve got project and they need to complete it on time – They can easily offer 20 to 50% hike to programmers to quit existing company.
• Of course its very hard to resist offer! People jumps.
• And that’s how salary levels became insane (compare to actual deliverables).
• Well, it makes the competition even tough.

There may be some exceptions but this is what I am seeing for last 5 years at least. And specially in small towns (like Surat) where there is lack of good talents and good talents are ambitious (of course) towards metros like Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune to achieve personal goals. And this also resists in creating technical community kind of environment where people can find trends and can update themselves.

So, What’s the solution? Well, nothing for now. Each entrepreneur need to find out their own ways to fight with this problem. And this is not true just for IT businesses but also for non-IT businesses like car workshops for example. Finding good resources is too tough. There are plenty of labor laws (created at least 50 years ago) but there are no laws to support businesses. Sometimes its look like running business is kind of crime you are doing and you need to answer everyone around you – Government, Tax bodies, Labor organizations and countless others. And for small companies, its big hurdle as once you become big, money can solve your half problems.

But small companies have their own advantages too and now many small companies started shining already. With just team of few people they are making enough money to outshine big brands with big teams. So the key is – find the core strength you’ve got. Get the best people on board, keep them focused and repeat this until you get success! Yeah, thats the business and if that was easy enough, everyone would love to be a businessman and boss!

Welcome to Avinashi blog. A place where Avinashi team will share their thoughts on technologies we do work on, business, team and other various topics. Keep visiting this blog for good reading!