Loading ...This is a wonderful time to be starting up. You will come across very few people who will give comparisons to all the benefits they get working for big corporates. Its one such time. Hiring will be slightly easier, and retaining them will be even more easier.
Even in the midst of all that, it does seem that a lot of the Startup Companies are hardpressed for resources here in India. Here’s a solution.
A few of us have been talking about putting together a centre that trains people (as blank slated as freshers) on the common technologies that people use while building Web related products - the usual PHP, Python, AJAX, MySQL, etc etc and getting them upto speed on mashups, APIs, documentation, and moving forward. That is the level of skill that most of the startup community folks are looking for it seems. Or am I wrong here?
If I am right, then there is a simple way around it. Every chapter of OCC in the country is doing quite well. I heard from Santhosh that Pune is a 300 people group now (though I do suspect that the turn out ratio would be still less), but who knew Pune had 300 people who would be open to being part of a community right? And the same case has gone on with Bangalore, Kolkatta, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi, and even now and then with Mumbai.
Here’s the thought. What if in one of the OCCs a dozen of the startup companies, especially the folks who can code and code really well, commit that they will run a two month training program for people in these languages? It is going to take a bit of time and commitment, but there are a lot of resources already on the web, and with a couple of screencasts, and proper documentation, you could essentially also use it as training material for the next batch of people that you hire in your company later on.
What I am proposing is that a batch of technology entrepreneurs, each taking a week to cover different aspects of the course, could put their hands together to collaboratively solve an issue which is haunting a great many of them.
So if you could fix one of the startups offices as the centre for this activity, Put up a wiki where people can sign up for this course, and these 12 startup entrepreneurs/programmers get a chance to do a round of questioning and if they think that the candidate would be able to perform with some guidance, then the community as a whole comes together to train these few candidates and at the end of it, can assimilate them into the company.
There are a couple of reasons why I think this can be made to work:
1. Most freshers are scared of working for startups. The first question I face all the time is “Will they train us?”
2. People who do undergo any sort of training, usually go for some MS Certification and those courses are expensive. Its not like you can afford to get the developmental licenses anyways, and since they have themselves invested in getting trained, the salary expectations are going to be higher from you.
3. At the moment there are very few people who can talk about these technologies for the mass community to learn from. Perhaps contributing to the general knowledge of the masses to improve their skill level, if reached critical mass, will start churning on its own.
4. More people trained on OpenSource Technologies (that’s really what enables Startups), might also slightly increase the chances of people contributing back to Opensource. *fingers crossed*
5. I also think that most startup founders struggle to explain what they have in their head to others. And teaching concepts to others gets you to that level where tomorrow when you need to grow a community around your product, you can converse in a manner that the people can comprehend.
And of course, none of this has to be done for free. I’d strongly suggest that the teams charge the candidate 3000 - 4000Rs a month for this. That is also additional revenue, so its not technically charity either.
So, there is only one question that lingers. Worth giving it a try? What do you think?
Join the conversation at The Startup Guy, to pitch your thoughts on the matter.
Now that you’ve got active (like politicians on election eve)with all those empathetic startup talk, shall we call it the promo for Proto next edition… hi…hi…
Oh, there are such theories as well, is it?
Nah mate, dont have the luxuries of such a life..
Some of our own companies in the incubation centre are struggling with the same issue. So wondering what we can do…this seemed like one option out. What do you think?
Vijay,
Though its a noble thought, a startup entrepenuer sparing some time every day for 2 months..is very difficult. For 1 hr teaching you need atleast 4 hrs of preparation.
Rgds
Vyaas
Vyaas,
Right now on an average a startup entrepreneur is spending months training a fresher in his office (I sit everyday in the same room as two startups so I can tell you firsthand). Compared to that, a few hours is a blessing. Ask around, you’ll know what I am talking about.
And if you have to “prepare” to do a session. God save you. Get your basics right before starting a “technology” company.
And Nope, this has nothing to do with noble thought and all. We need people and someone has gotta to do it, or we struggle forever. Quite selfish actually, but also mutually beneficial.
A thought: If, in this recession, there will be more experienced people looking for jobs, then why bother with freshers? In my first co, we found that hiring people with experience was very very very easy in 2001-02, to the point where we didn’t need to even interview freshers. (Consequently I got a couple people telling us they would pay for our training for six months, after which we could choose to hire. I had a moral objection to that, so we didn’t do it) If you’re looking for people to hit the ground running, who won’t cost that much, very soon you’re not going to have to look.
I don’t think you should be saying “if you have to prepare for a session, god save you”. I’ve trained before, and in areas which I have had more than reasonable knowledge, but when you go into a class, you always prepare. Any unstructured class gives almost no advantage and tends to take a lot of time. (it’s little wonder the startups you notice are taking months to train people, it’s probably because they have no structure - and bringing structure takes preparation time)
Training is a great business. I suggest that instead of doing this as something for the community, just do it as a business. At 4k a month, with two-three batches of 25 each (two or three days a week) - the money is good. Plus, you can then do corp sessions - typical rates range from 5K to 25K a day (and for this you can use the same structure as you did for freshers).
Main issues are things like space, software costs and the like. I once (2003) had a business plan to set up a training infrastructure place and get paid trainers to teach, charging about 30% of billings to infra and marketing costs. The idea was to have it as a partnership model; so similar to how lawyers work - trainers get a chunk of their own billings and a part of net profits of the total profits. I didn’t go ahead primarily because I had other interesting plans. I still like the - because it allows one freedom to do consulting work too, that it is free training (teachers learn a lot, nearly as much as the students, in the process) and that the model helps build individual personalities (rather than a company name).
people with experience can build themselves an income of a couple lakhs a month this way. Don’t know if there’s widespread interest, but if there is, I’m happy to chip in, will write a separate post on it…
Deepak.
Agree with you, that it does require some structuring. Atleast for rhe sake that the team coming together should know which part they are going to be responsible for. So if you are going to be training on LAMP, its nice to know that I am responsible for specific sections and concepts to be taught.
I however will say that there are plenty of open material out there from the web school, and ebooks such as “Dive into python” that you can glance at it and know what all you HAVE to cover.
Can there be a business made out of this, possibly yes. But in the intentions of lowering the cost of hiring, it might be cheaper and economical for the startups themselves to do this.
As for the economic situation, I dont think India is going to get hit by much. And even when hit, most of your senior level programmers wont come for cheap. Inflation has done a great deal of damage since the 00s as to what is the basic pay we need to live comfortably. If you ask me, addressing the untapped market will not only solve your problem economically, but also build loyalty such that a great team is built. Double bottom line?
Vijay,
A friend of mine in Hyderabad has started a training center (he calls it a Finishing School) recently.His focus is to train programmers on Java/J2EE/Hibernate etc. for product companies.He is not charging much from the students, because he expects to make money by offering trained programmers who can hit the ground running, to needy startups and even IT service providers.
If any one is interested, in collaborating with him, please write to me and I will connect you with him.
cheers,
Kumar
Vijay: I’m not sure I agree with the no-economic-situation-hit; in fact I strongly disagree
What I’m saying is we will be in very bad shape next year, and probably for two more years after that. The US is probably in worse doo-doo. Yet, I don’t want to “call” the market, and I hope you’re right for my own sake because this will impact my life too.
Also, senior programmers were cheap in the 2002-03 time frame - purely because there wasn’t much to go around then. I don’t know if “senior” = people with a lot of experience or “senior = a person who is essentially a fresher, but has been trained on certain technologies (1-2 year experience types). I was talking about the latter - not heavily experienced folks, though some of them will also be easier to find. If the latter, then I think you’ll get a lot of them in the market, and they have a lot of enthu, and ability. For them, the cost of living is not dramatically high - not as high as it is for married or older folks at least. So if there are more such people around, why would you want to train freshers?
Unless there’s a business model there - then it makes sense.
I think personally that an initiative drive out of profit has a greater impact and sustainability than one that is primarily altruistic. Meaning, no gain, no pain.
@Kumar: Sounds interesting
@Deepak: I dont think this IS altruistic. I am saying train, and hire the best for yourself. Whats altruistic about that? Its all about fulfilling one’s needs. You might have a point about the low cost labor, but that might or might not happen, and for all our sakes I hope we dont get hit too hard.
@Vijay: Hire the best for yourself = what everyone will want? Therefore no point doing it together because we will compete for the best resources anyway? I mean why would I train for small money if I can’t be sure to land the best set of people that I train? (a week’s work may come to 25K even if someone got the full money for a 25 batch, 4 k a month type)
If the deal is to hire the best, it can’t be done by group training. At least I don’t think so, for lack of incentives eventually - unless the incentive is altruistic. IMHO, It’s better to do it as a profitable initiative otherwise it’s likely to fizzle out.
Deepak,
Coming to training I have 2 friends who are in training business….Thought you may like the stats….
Friend 1:
20 +years in services (like TCS, WIPRO,Tech Mahindra etc)
Started training in web and erp. Got some consultancy assignments.
Has very good contacts.
Result: Not yet successful. Contemplating going back to work
Friend 2:
10 years experience in Product company.
Started training in Storage (does not know much about other technologies). Has some innovative ideas like training on Weekend and holidays, trains thru the net for US customers.
NO Contacts
Result: Seems to be growing. (Took me for dinner:-)
imho, bad idea.
startups are constrained severely for resources to do what they are supposed to do. it would be very hard to now contributing to a training initiative.
another way to look at it - whats the market failure one is trying to address here? is the training business not lucrative enough? is it an attempt to fix the quality of trainers (by making people who didnt want to be trainers in the first place, go out and train because they are in a startup?) otherwise, there should be an independent entrepreneurial opportunity around setting up training workshops - a la STG.
Alok, Just as Deepak pointed out, I would absolutely agree with you that there is a business opportunity here. And there are folks trying to tap into that opportunity and scale up.
We have two choices. 1) Wait for them to grow to a point where they can train all the manpower that startups need. or 2) Atleast take up something that will meet halfway with that initiative so that eventually that will take over (anything with financial motive obviously has better longevity).
But we need to start somewhere. There are close to a thousand startups coming up everywhere and I dont see the ready-made manpower being large enough to sufficiently cater to all the need that is arising.
if you do an average breakup that 1% of people who graduate are uber smart and will hit the ground running, a 19 - 25 % will be freshers who are smart enough to learn and another 80% (half of whom are probably not employable), the trick is to turn that 19%+ into useful resources than fighting over that 1% — ofcourse all the percentage breakups are rough, but I does correlate to the manpower situation out there.
We need to do something, and this is something to do in the meantime, which will lead to something else.
And I would never use trainers to train a crucial resource for a startup - a startup being the core team that is in the beginning and crucial stages of formation. If i am going to take in a fresher, I’d rather train him/her so that I know how to relate to him, and know his strength and weaknesses. All of that matters at some point.
The pain point across the entrepreneurial niche (the segment is huge to consider it a business opportunity)-
lack of technical knowledge.
I also have experienced it .And to solve it too ,i have been calling on and off my batchmates and friends in TCS,IBM etc to know whether using Ajax would be costly and what efforts are required.And they dont care for my innocent questions.
Solution:IIM’s campus (A,B,C,L,K,G) can be used to impart training to entrepreneurs or employees.Model could be that a company (or two) can be formed as finishing school whose initial business would come from these entrereneurs and later on for scaling this finishing school can cast its net wide.
Entrepreneurs also should be aware that they are forming sites like www.rent4sure.com, www.easy2let.com www.andheriplusl.com to pit against the property portals .Cant the individuals unite to fight the might of makaan ,99acres and so on.
This is so because that dot com business is easiest to do and even if we take so much time to build this ,we will perish with time.
I know a few startups that have already tried this and failed. To narrate what they faced –
Startups have heterogeneous manpower needs as they belong to different genre. Why should a founder of a telecom revenue assurance solutions enterprise train a Java coder with telecom domain skills who could as well move over to - say, embedded systems design firm? It happened to one of my clients.
One sure way to deal with startup staffing issues is to go for skilled candidates that are rusting away in large enterprises, with mortgages already paid off and feeling bored because of lack of challenge. That way startups get a EME bundle - of Enthusiasm, Maturity and Experience
Krish,
You are back to square one, where we do nothing.
And I dont know the background image that one has talking about a startup. I am talking about a team (and we are very specific of web companies here - atleast to make things easier to start with) which rolls up its sleeves and is building that product to test it out in the open. Not the team with 10 years of domain experience to even manage to attract “experienced” “rusting away” folks.
Secondly, since we’ve squared in on the domain and even the technologies, the issue you spoke about, on training for one and being employed in another wont come in.
I see a nice trend where everyone from the startups side is saying they need to try this out, and everyone else saying it wont work. Interesting
Maybe its an experiment one’s oughta just try.
And let me clarify this. I am not talking about startups becoming trainers (as Alok was pointing out). I am just saying, if you are going to train anyways, why not do it in a communal way.
@Vijay,
As an entrepreneur I learned that, when four knowledgeable people say it’s a bad idea you do not keep on being defensive about it. Revise the idea, address the concerns and pitch it again. You do not have to give up the idea but surely refine it.
I also feel that this particular approach is way too much taxing on entrepreneurs time with rewards being marginal.I would rather hire four freshers myself knowing that they have an attitude to work in a startup, make a structural training internally and train them in my campus. The 80% you mentioned are not all the same as everyone likes to think. The huge gaps they have in terms of attitude and learning capabilities may be the most relevant thing for a start-up.
Here is another thought. How about asking a few start-ups around for small innovation projects within their organizations which they won’t mind getting implemented outside(every start-up I have done or known has many plans it has no time or energy or money for).
Get those projects implemented by freshers in a training institute under guidance of hired expert trainers.
The teams working on the project will be in touch with the start-up regularly for information and stats update with no other downside for the start-up.
A bootstrapping entrepreneur may even join as a trainer.
It will give entrepreneurs motivation to be involved(their project getting executed) + They will get to know freshers better, their capabilities, learning skills and attitude towards work. It will give freshers invaluable experience in getting hands on training on the worlds cutting edge technologies on R&D projects. Will sensitize them towards need of communication + tools usage aspect of the work.
The training institute will charge a fee for a fresher to join, and a fee to start-up if start-up decides to hire a fresher from it’s institute.(I admit the business model not well thought through..:-()
It can become your own incubation center for freshers and backward integration to existing incubation centers.
We have a special training focussed towards hiring by Startups at Geekeerie.
Our first batch of Ruby on Rails developers ready for the Indian startup market is going to be available for hire soon.
Send us an email if you or startups you know are interested.
@Vijay,
Thanks for your reply to my comment.
The point I make is that Tech evangelism of the kind you suggest (”community training”) is feasible when you are spared of enterprise pressures. A startup team that runs on low gas, minimum staff and with the onus of having to hit milestone(s) (either founder-set or investor mandated) will find it hard to boil the ocean and still stay focused on getting past the gate. It should rather start with boiling its own bucket of water.
Neither web domain nor the technologies you mentioned (PHP, Python, Ajax, My SQL) are of narrow niche. They are capable of being ported anywhere. I wonder how you hope to tether the people you trained!
Getting experienced people is neither a stigma nor does it deprive the startup of any sheen attached to youthfulness of its team - so long as productivity is the goal
All that it needs is browsing around in the offline enterprise world, sincere outreach and a commitment to the singular objective - of monetization. Would you still differ 
@ Krish: Nothing beats Monetary benefits, I’ll give you that anyday
Anyways, thanks for your thoughts mate. Its been long since we caught up. We should touch base soon.
@Gaurav: As an entrepreneur one is also told to ignore naysayers
But I get your point. Thanks for taking the time to express your thoughts.
>> As an entrepreneur one is also told to ignore naysayers
But I get your point. Thanks for taking the time to express your thoughts.
I still rate myself on the entrepreneur “side”, despite being 75% of the way through my MBA. I just want to point out that perseverance is a good attribute, but it is *currently* heavily overrated.
In the “current wisdom”, you will see the same cycles that you see in the economy… Till the 90s, we (the Indian middle class) were all conservative people who wanted government jobs and could not tolerate any form of risk (entrepreneurship, debt etc.). Then post-2006 (probably after some Indian startups got very good public valuations?), we embraced entrepreneurship with a vengeance. Perseverance is hot these days… By December, if the credit crisis lasts, you will find the overcompensation, only in the other direction - everyone will be scrambling for safe jobs.
My note to self: Make sure I stay conscious of these cycles when I get back in the battle. Perseverance is great, but cheap experimentation with fast-failure is 20 times better.
@Himanshu, you made a gem of a point with this “Perseverance is great, but cheap experimentation with fast-failure is 20 times better.”
I guess the rule with innovation is that one must also be prepared to fail, if we are to try new things. And the second rule that comes close to that is to fail fast, and keep moving.
Sometimes, we dont try at all fearing failure.. now, thats a bit of a problem
Good luck with your dreams mate. But dont get tied down with the economic cycles, they come and go.. entrepreneurs, especially startup entrepreneurs dont get affected by it all that much - like gravity on ants, I suppose
>> My note to self: Make sure I stay conscious of these cycles when I get back in the battle.
> But dont get tied down with the economic cycles, they come and go.. entrepreneurs, especially startup entrepreneurs dont get affected by it all that much
Just to clarify, I meant cycles in the “current wisdom”. The economic cycles are easy to stay conscious of. They may not affect your thinking, but they do affect your investors, your customers and your suppliers, so it is a good idea to be aware. An ant cannot die of falling, but it often dies of something ELSE’s foot falling on it
@Himanshu: “An ant cannot die of falling, but it often dies of something ELSE’s foot falling on it :-)” Hehe. Thats a good one
and yep, true. When the elephants do dance, the ants die. And when they stumble, they might too. I guess only the paranoid survive.
Seems like this thread has been started in so many places across the web, everyone discussing about the same thing. Here’s me hoping that something comes out of it.
Thanks everyone for all your thoughts. Though it might have seemed like I was being defensive or dismissive, the truth is more like wanting to probe into the main intentions of those change and feedbacks. Its good to know the intentions, as a project is being refined.
The most common criticism to this has been, “without financial motive, this initiative would fizzle out”. Well, I dont know about that. I look at the Open Source Community, and even much closer, the Barcamp Community here, right here in India and cant believe that thats a fact. Cant also help wonder that if we had come up with a concept like barcamp (people come together to share and learn), would it be a community initiative or would we be trying to do a “business model” around it too!
Perhaps thats the biggest difference between the west and the east. Unless we contribute back, in some way, atleast with some efforts, we cant expect much for the total gain of the community. Its almost the theme line for going green, but that also goes for sustainability.
It would be great if one of the OCCs take this up and see if they can try. The one in Chennai seems gung-ho with people writing to say that they want to try this out. Perhaps before this year is out, we’ll know how that goes.
Thanks again guys!
Just thought that I should leave a quick update here as well on our independent initiative on this front. We are doing a couple of courses out of our Hyderabad facility. The courses are practical in nature and are meant to groom professional designers and developers.
More details about the courses on my blog at http://www.zoyidian.com/introducing-zoyid-web-training/ and also at our company site http://www.zoyidtech.com. There is a separate Training section there.