A Good Beginning

My first day at Cordys was very motivating and inspiring as I got an opportunity to see and listen to Mr.Baan's speech. He was in Hyderabad that day and was addressing the employees. I was surprised to see his energy level and how he interacted with all the engineers gathered there.  One of the motivating line from his speech I remember still is "Every cloud has a silver lining.” 

The culture in the company was friendly, one can reach anyone irrespective of which level they are and share ideas or problems one has. Ideas and thoughts were considered and given respect irrespective of the experience one has. I worked in the Cordys Process Factory team. I enjoyed the way we used have the discussions/brainstorming sessions on ideas/problems/requirements, which used to pump up the energy, motivation and provide a context for me. The sense of ownership on a component or product given to me always made me think, this is my product and my company. There was a positive environment (no politics, helping and encouraging each other) which was always supporting and motivating me at all the times. The most valued and practiced principles were: 

1. Sense of  ownership given to the employees

2. Freedom to share and discuss ideas/thoughts

3. Freedom to experiment ideas or concepts without fear of failure 

I got the opportunity to contribute and learn the entire product lifecycle for Cordys Process Factory from the early stage of development to early adopters, and then seeing real good customer in production like Valeo. And personally I could play various roles from individual contributor to leading a team and managing project and product release.  This exposure is now really helping me in my current role as Product Manager to take any decision or making right things in right way.

Mr.Baan always treated employees as family members or key stakeholders of the company.  Cordys respected the Indian culture, celebration of festivals or distribution of gifts & goodies on festive occasions. His personal touch like spending time with employee team meetings in watching demos and sharing his feedback and ideas around the demo, regular visits & sharing his vision, casual talks during dinner times with employees created a bond with company and made us think like it is our company not like we are working for salary. We always treated his success as our success and wished/hoped always that company should succeed.  These attributes are above all technical/statistical calculations (hikes and promotion  ...) which influenced the retention of employee. We often talk about this with friends and colleagues.

We really took the product as our own and gave our best to that and saw our growth also in the product (dreaming it will be a big success). Whenever we see Cordys Process Factory, feel happy and proud , every piece of functionality in the product makes me remember the way we discussed, debated and built, especially on UX part as we built it with so much care.

The most important thing that I learnt was to give importance to User Experience and to be practical at all times and think different. I chose Cordys from the four offers that I had in hand, as a fresher and now I feel proud and confident that I made the right decision to choose Cordys as my first company.