It All Started from Here...

Baan Company is where a world class, enterprise grade software was built. What could be a better place to start one's career than here? I was fortunate enough to be one. Having graduated with Electrical & Electronics specialization I didn't learn Software engineering as part of my academics. I learnt it in practice at Baan, building many releases of ERP products. Whatever I'm today is attributable to my first employer - Baan Info systems.

Talent acquisition & skills development were the foundation stones on which the company was built. High quality trainings with focus on organizational/individual development was one of the key practices here. I was trained on Software Engineering practices by SEI of Carnegie Mellon University. Had a face to face interaction with the Quality Guru Mr.Watts Humphrey himself. I attended many such short term trainings in our Company HQ in the Netherlands. Such an investment & exposure I could get here, early in my career. One can't deny the importance of it. Ever.

I was from the first batch of employees when Baan started the Hyderabad operations. I've seen the growth of these early adopters such as myself all along and also the colleagues who joined subsequently. The way the company was built itself was quite different. More than 90% of the hires were fresh from universities. The work environment was so vibrant and happening that even during weekends we used to hang around in office. People reluctantly leave on saturday night as Sundays were a strict no-no to work or business travel. The office would be locked down - literally.

This group grew to be leaders in various domains, architects, technical experts, functional experts etc., contributing in their own ways to the organization and themselves. I had my fair share being part of ground up development of "Service & Maintenance" package initially and moved on as one of the initial members of the Centre of Excellence. Had the opportunity to work with marquee customers such as KPN Telecom, Boeing, Snapon tools, and RollsRoyce - to name a few.

I experienced the best work culture while working for Baan (and later on at Cordys). A flat hierarchy with access to the top business leaders within the organization. Strong software engineering foundation & process was balanced well with innovation. Colleagues were considered as extended family members. Policies were employee friendly. 

Mr. Jan Baan is a dynamite with youngsters. He connects instantly with youngster through his sheer energy, enthusiasm and presentation. I've known him for a little over 20 years now and I've not seen him change even a little bit. I've read somewhere that "the greatest calling of leadership is to unleash the potential of others". Mr Baan has many such living examples. Many organizations are run by leaders today with his leadership style as undercurrent. He and his management team provided such a solid ground for career & individual growth. If he gets a nickel for every successful person (directly or indirectly because of him), he will be a million dollar richer :-). There are many org heads, entrepreneurs, free-lance consultants, CTOs and non-profit orgs that have leadership styles echoed from his personality.

Though I share my experience here, I'm confident that I voice out for many. Concepts that we built were just taken for granted (like multi-company, OS/DB independence, shell abstraction, character based debugger, VRC concept etc.) were path breaking which I realized much later. The space that was provided for freedom, down to earth attitude of the local & HQ management were all new which again could be compared only later when I moved to other organizations. Small yet strong, no boundaries yet disciplined, ascii based yet forward thinking - these were some of the incomprehensible combinations that proved to be a great learning ground for me. “Believe in your people and their free will can do a lot more than one can imagine” – I learnt this in my first company and it is worth following.  Anytime. Anywhere.