We’re still looking for a Team Leader / PHP Tech Architect / PHP Project leader role, with about 2-4 years experience. We must have interviewed atleast 25-30 odd people from small to large sized ocmpanies over the last 2 months, and not selected even one, so far.
We’ve rejected people with over 3 – 4 years experience, as their basics have not been clear, and yet they claim to (and truly are) building big live projects. I have no clue how these companies maintain quality, or deliver projects that perform well.
There seems to to be very little desire in people to excel these days. It is so difficult to find good people, with good PHP skill, and with a lot of enthusiasm to learn, and sometimes put learning over money. There are some good people, I must say in organisations similar to Srijan (or sometime larger) but they are not looking for a switch. 
There is a job post we made on Monster India : http://jobs.monsterindia.com/details/6134286.html?sig=js-1-d8e2a0f1c7a23626210cc6677936c9f2-1. Hope this helps.
Enough ranting for today…
12 Comments
Rithish, September 19, 2008:
The good ones are always hard to get, ‘cos organizations won’t be ready to leave them.
)
The idea then, I believe, is to mentor and grow leaders within. Nothing is better than a home-grown leader. He will command respect from his peers & juniors, and faith from his superiors.
Dhanyawaad / Regards,
Rithish.
http://www.rithish.in
Rahul Dewan, September 19, 2008:
Dear Rithish,
You are so right about internal trainings and leadership. We probably are among the few small (less than 30 people) companies which are spending heavily on external and internal trainings.
We worked out a mentoring relationship with Jacob Singh – one of the most prolific contributors to Drupal globally – an American living in New Delhi – and thanks to his association we’ve done a great job on the http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in (search for Jacob Singh on our blog; you’ll see some interesting posts).
I and a colleague of mine (senior leadership) are getting weekly coaching sessions from a Life and Business Coach in the USA.
Apart from this we have a host of other internal trainings on best practices, documentation, Drupal themes, CSS (accessibility and cross-browser compliance), TYPO3 (development and templating), and Ruby on Rails.
Our problem currently is that we do not have enough people, and really we need some senior people immediately. Ofcourse, meanwhile we’re grooming others.
Great advise anyway. Appreciate it. BTW, you seem like a really smart person.
Anita CM, September 21, 2008:
Hi Rahul,
Problem in India is majority of so called programmers/coders are in to programming just to GET/BAG a job while those who truly enjoy programming are far and few in between and constitute a minority. Notwithstanding that just don’t lower your standards and am sure you will net the fish you are looking for sooner or later.
Other than usual job websites some other avenues which you can give a try to lay your hands on capable programmers are:
1. Search amongst Blogs for Indian Programmers Blogs(Google Blog Search and Technorati). One more good link you can try is http://www.labnol.org/india-blogs/indian-bloggers.html (Geeks, Programmers)
2. Search/Post in Forums(Sitepoint etc)
3. Post some kind of contest in various PHP programming forums. You will have lots of talented people responding. You can also try something similar by annoucing some kind of programming contest on your blog and website. That will again attract talent.
5. Use Twitter Search. (www.search.twitter.com) . It’s a highly underrated search tool. I have had lots of success finding new business using it.
6. You can search into threads posted in recently concluded Google summer of code contest in case you are looking for rookies. I personally have come in contact with quite a few talented rookie Indian programmers with lots of potential through this route.
Hope this helps. Incase you need any other help let me know would gladly oblige.
Best,
Anita CM
PS: Came across somewhere that you are planning to open a branch in Hyderabad. Great news! Would walk in for a interview once iam back in Hyderabad in Mar 2010! Hope a vacancy exists then:-)
Anita CM, September 21, 2008:
Forgot to add you can also search in various networking sites like:
Facebook
Biznik
MySpace
Ning
Rithish, September 22, 2008:
Hello Rahul.
Thanks for the compliments, though I don’t entirely believe I deserve it. But I’ll take anything that comes my way.
Great to know that you are investing heavily into training & mentoring. It will surely reap fruits in the future.
Although I don’t have any good pointers as Anita, all I can do is wish that you get your developer sooner or later.
I’ve bookmarked your blog. Will keep coming back if I’ve anything worthy of commenting.
Dhanywaad / Regards,
Rithish.
http://www.rithish.in
Abhinav Sahai, October 21, 2008:
Rahul sir,
very true. money has become a primary condition and especially with these big companies paying lucrative salaries without even testing the knowledge, this trend will keep on growing. Not everyone can be like those working at Srijan (or similar companies). By the way you know how much knowledge I have in the fields you people work on still I was offered more than 2.5 times of what I am getting here that too just yesterday. To your and everyone’s surprise, I rejected an offer only because of my desire to learn. I told a friend about it and he called me a “fool”, so I decided to keep my mouth shut but this post of yours couldn’t stop me. Hope you find the GOOD GUYS.
Rahul Dewan, October 21, 2008:
Dear Abhinav,
Thanks for your post, and I feel you took the right decision for your career by staying along at Srijan and not choosing the easy path.
Let me share something with you. Sunita Narain, at CSE a couple of months back shared with us that William Bissell, the MD of FabIndia (now a multi-hundred crore enterprise) was an intern with them at CSE many years back. During his internship at CSE, he had very carefully, manually, and with a lot of effort created an address filing mechanism (there were no computers then, and everything was done on paper) across thousands of contact addresses at CSE.
Sunita mentioned that she had seen many interns come and go, and she still remembered the intensity of William’s work as an intern at CSE (do note that William was a rich dad’s son!), and all the people in the room agreed that no wonder he is the promoter of a multi-hundred crore enterprise now.
William took the hard way, and learnt dilligently, whatever task he was given. Today he is looked upon as an inspiring business leader.
I must also add that FabIndia has recently started an initiative where they are opening companies in each state in India, and 49% of the equity is held by the weavers in these companies.
So even though he is big, he lives quite simply (and lightly), and does ensure that he shares his wealth.
Most of your friends who called you a “fool” will never know such heights of success, passion, love and fulfillment.
I hope and pray that you do. Even better I hope that “together” we “all” see such success, wealth and self-expression of our highest calling.
BTW, you’re a GOOD GUY, and that’s why we got you on board at Srijan.
Abhinav Sahai, October 22, 2008:
All i can say is :
AMEN
Gaurav Mishra, October 22, 2008:
Some insights of mine which i think might be helpful…
@Abhinav and other interns
Taking tough career decisions in early stage of career is no doubt very stressful. Here are some tips that may prove helpful in earlier days of career.
1. Always make sure that you don`t get stressed up seeing the chaos created in your social and personal life due to a strict regime of proffesional life , All things will fell on place with time.
2. Your target should be to take every task with utmost responsibility and finish it on time. (Even if it`s writing a mail), These are basic personal management techniques that will provide helpful in longer term
3. If you are stuck , Look around for help immediately, If you don`t get answer soon, Keep looking for help online or with your seniors. And make sure you look towards the right direction w/o wasting any time.
4. Be as simple and simplistic in your code early days , Think more of logic apart from tools. If on PHP, Stop even looking at php4. Don`t think outside php5 objects.
@Rahul
Getting good guys and retaining them is very tough. WE all are very much familiar with that part. may be you can look out more on getting a good attitude and logical guy over looking at technical abilities of a php developer.
The reason i am saying this , Is that most of the php development companies in India are really not taking PHP seriously thus the developers lack that competitive edge which the overseas counterparts are having.
In the end…. Let me share you a tagline that`s with me now for almost 5 years.
“When i can run , i will run , When i can walk , i will walk, When i can
crawl , i will crawl. But i will not stop moving forward”
Abhinav Sahai, October 25, 2008:
@Gaurav Mishra
yes that decision was really a tough one, but best part is that i DONT regret saying no
all advices taken, though with the kind of environment present at srijan, i guess me or no one ever gets stressed with work! thanks to rd for that environment and also as far as asking for help is concerned, people here are next to my seat even before i raise my hand, really great people. All in all its McDonalds (I m loving it !)
Raj, August 3, 2009:
Normally I should be interested in the post.. but now am not interested in Fulltime.. I am gona try Freelance.. Tired being a Fulltime PL..
Kunal Kerkar, November 18, 2009:
Hello,
I’m in my 3rd year of Computer Science Engineering at Manipal Institute of Technology. I’m interested in interning with Srijan. I have used PHP for quite a while now. I have coded 2 of the most popular sites of my college.
magmit.com
techtatva.in
I have mostly done the backend work. I would love to learn more about large scale PHP development and scaling, and im up for it. Kindly could you tell me how to go about it?
Thank you
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