Why Sahaj is not a place for everyone !
From the inception of Chennai office I have been part of Sahaj and it has been close to 3 years now. I have been knowing the founders even before I joined Sahaj and it was purely based on the trust I got while I was working with them earlier . ‘You are joining a startup but you are in safe hands’ said someone from my previous orgnaisation when I told him that I am joining Sahaj.
It has been a rollercoaster journey for me from the time I became a Sahajeevi with too much excitement, unexpected turns and the pace in which everything unfolded. This includes the Chennai Floods and Vardha too !
During my first two months there was no office in Chennai. I was working from home through these 2 months and would step out for meetings or hunting for office space with one of the directors. My parents were a bit worried and thought whether i have a job in the first place 🙂
Coming from a pure operations background with passion towards Design Thinking, I asked Bala what my role and title would be at Sahaj His answers were:
Title – What does a title have to do . We call ourselves as Solution Consultants. You can have one as you like and keep changing when ever required 🙂
Role – “Well that’s clear . Pretty much everything” !!! .
We began our Chennai operations in a home and slowly we built a team. I mean a TEAM with the real spirit – a well bonded team, more like a family. None of us wanted to move out of the home to an office space, but we had to since we ran out of space and other statutory requirements.
Now that we have moved to a proper office space with 15+ folks and we are still in the lookout for awesome people out there who can be part of this beautiful story that we are writing together.
I think there are few things to be cautious about or to be aware of what Sahaj can offer apart from the best place to be
You can’t just be as you were:
MultiTasking1
Coming from a certain background – area of work- doesn’t guarantee that you will be working only on that again here. If you are not a person who is ready to explore new arena, Sahaj might not be the right place for you.
A ‘Java expert‘ will have to work on a Ruby project and few months down the line his next one could be in Golang.
A coder will be on the financial discussions and demand calls which will be a entirely new experience.
Similarly a finance person will be assisting in Org(anisation) Building – we don’t call it recruitment.
As a core operations guy myself I have been part of client projects, demand generation, org building and many more activities. So be prepared !!
This is something similar to calling a programmer a polyglot and a full stack developer.
We are polyglots 🙂
You Fall ! You Learn :
Cricket-Batsman-Striking-a-ball
We don’t believe in classroom training. What does it have to offer other than dumping an individual mind with what a company already believes that these are the values and the best practices to be followed? The schooling system has done this a lot and we don’t want to continue that. But learning & sharing happen and we firmly believe that is is very important.
We don’t have a systematic induction process. When people join, they get their laptops, meet people and sign a few forms.
Basically you got to pad-up and play. Just think about a debutant facing Dale Steyn when he is just steaming up. But we have got Dhonis and Sachins. You can reach out to them anytime for guidance and that’s how you learn.
We don’t bother with titles:
If you are very keen on the tags “Senior consultant” “Super Senior Consultant” “Superior Consultant” I’m sorry to say we don’t have any of these tags.
We are just human beings and solution consultants. We work together to get our customers’ problem solved in a simpler way. The user isn’t bothered about your tags..
Moreover we are not just headcounts or resources. We are the CEO’s here. We are problem solvers. We think differently and we approach problems in an unconventional way. We only say what we can do, if not we don’t say anything.
Many companies practices the art of roles and titles and as a goal the Individual strives hard to get those titles and then what? I am not saying that they are doing wrong practices , but we are trying to be practical. The tags may sound very exciting but it constrains a person not to think or view beyond their perception or the box they are put into. To an outer world, the fancy tags may sound WOW, but we look at it as unnecessary baggage.
Be ready for debates :
Argument
We are niche and thats how we want to be. We have never thought of growing big (in number of people) and its not in our plans to do so. We know the problems can arise from that. Since we are small and more like a family we have open discussions, debates and disagreements for anything that comes up company wide. There is no logic and that’s how it is !
With freedom comes responsibility :
‘I have the feeling we are being micromanaged…’
There is no freedom given here because one cannot give freedom to someone else., You are born with it. So with the freedom to work and express oneself comes the additional task of responsibility. There is no one to micromanage here (or) sit on your head and see continuously how you are performing. Just to mention, we don’t track leaves here. We believe in people and we know they are responsible.
Over all, our open salary system, no policies, profit sharing and other unconventional ways of working are all byproducts and outcomes of what we believe and how we work and why we even exist .
We believe in our people and we want to reduce the exploitation to the maximum, be it to the fellow sitting next to you or to clients that we provide service or even to vendors who provide us services.
Simply put, we are building an eco system where like minded souls get-together and share harmony in a workplace.
I could write more but the essence can be known only when you experience it. Talk to a sahajeevi to know more about Sahaj and if you are still excited, we welcome you to be part of the story that we are writing.
Keeping in mind that we are not the usual fellas out there !!
