Before the famous were famous—Oprah, Steven Spielberg, Bill Gates, and many others—they were interns. Everyone has to start somewhere, so why not begin your career where you are welcomed with open arms?
We have a small number of interns working at FirstRain right now and it’s interesting to look at not only the direct benefits for FirstRain, but also the indirect ones. Internships are powerful both for us (the company and the intern); it’s a great alignment of mutual interest.
The benefits to the intern are obvious. Experience drinking from the fire hose, training and rapid learning, the fun of working in a small dynamic company and, because it is small, the opportunity to work on a wide variety of different projects.
We benefit in some obvious ways – first and foremost that we get to interview someone on the job. Since the intern does not have job experience it’s hard to interview them on prior work experience (!) but by bringing them in and having them work on clear objectives we can review their performance and so make a more informed hiring decision.
But the non-obvious benefits are almost more interesting. Our new college graduates are fresh. They have new perspectives and challenge our assumptions – and the assumptions of how a job “should” be done. They are eager to learn and as all teachers know, teaching something causes you to think hard about what matters and really understand what you are teaching. There is also a fun energy you get into an organization when you have a group of professionals, often with 10-20 years of experience, mixed in with new graduates.
While Silicon Valley is coming back for people with experience, it’s still a hard place to find a job if you don’t have experience and this creates a Catch-22 for the intern. As one of our interns told me:
“For many of us recent college grads we have little or no real-world experience. This experimental period not only helps me decide what I would like to pursue in my career, but it also helps me because being able to reference an internship on a resume can make all the difference in a future employers decision. They can see if I have a strong work ethic, if I was smart on the job, and help me bridge from college to my new career. And I can check you out and network with your employees!”
So who knows whether I have a future Oprah or Bill Gates in my organization. But I do know that the added productivity, the energy and the opportunity to help the next generation of graduating students is a win-win for FirstRain – and it’s fun.
We started our new fiscal year on Tuesday of this week – our year runs Feb 1 through Jan 31 – and I brought the sales team in from the field for training and forecasting. Q4 of 2010 was very good for us and so we had a little fun alongside of the serious business of training and preparing for the next year.
After a long day in the conference room in our San Mateo office the whole team – R&D, sales et al went bowling together. Some ringers (Reiko that’s you…), some pretty weak bowlers (our resident Frenchman…) all mixed up together and having fun.
One of the teams
As is typical at this type of affair we bought pitchers of beer and pizza for sustenance in the intense competitive environment. And for the few of us who really don’t like beer we went to the bowling alley bar to buy a bottle of wine. Ha! This is how they sell wine – little airline bottles – and when I asked why the bar tender told me – this is a BOWLING ALLEY lady!
Guest author: Pratyush Nath – a software engineer in our Gurgaon office
FirstRain India celebrated the Annual Company Event on the 8th of January 2011 to culminate the a series of events we have held over the past six months.
It all started with dividing the India rainmakers into six teams bringing together folks from diverse functions. It has been a great run with the teams demonstrating competitive spirit as well as sportsman spirit all through the diverse events like dance, debate, table tennis, face painting competition etc. The final event was the offsite cricket match on 8th at Surjivan Resorts. It was refreshing to see people come out in large numbers on a Saturday, braving the chill to support their team and of course FirstRain.
Kicking off the event
The cricket match was followed by some great stand up acts as people enjoyed their drinks and snacks in an atmosphere of camaraderie, taking digs at each other and engaging in casual banter.
The winning team
A stand-up comedy act
Overall it was a fun event and a firm step forward towards the punch line we adopted since the build up to this event: ‘It is an exciting time to be a part of FirstRain’.
The FirstRain Gurgaon team
We have a fun tradition each year around the Holidays – a white elephant gift exchange and a pot luck lunch. This year we twisted it up a bit. Not only did we do the usual fun of each person opening a gift or choosing to steal another, but this time we had plenty of stealing until the iterations finally stopped and then the Surprise.
First, we voted on the worst gift – and gave out some fun FirstRain clothing as a consolation gift to Cory who had ended up with the Snuggie. Then we voted on the best gift – which was a new Apple TV – and gave Dave (who had ended up with the Apple TV) the choice of keeping that or opening a mystery gift. When he chose to keep the Apple TV the mystery gift went to the holder of the second worst gift.
Which would you have chosen? (see below for what Dave missed).
Nick modeling the “worst” gift – the camouflage Snuggie
Jordy doing the Vanna White for the laptop desk.
Nima (not single for much longer…) picking a guy gift – binoculars.
The team chilling after eating too much great food and chatting with our sales offices on Skype.
When Prashant opened the mystery gift – it was an iPad – and Dave was kicking himself!
The other kicker to the pot luck – we probably all gained 5 lbs not only from the bundt cake, dripping ginger cake, thai shrimp, ribs…etc… we also sampled David’s homemade wine and Nick’s homemade beer. Yum.
Our team is working hard at Dreamforce this week – if you are there and have not visited us yet stop by! Not only can we share the benefits of the new version of FirstRain with you, we are also giving away a tiny radio for your listening pleasure
As you can see here – the FirstRain team is having fun, collecting leads, talking to prospects and sharing their excitement about our new version which is, after all, simply the easiest, most efficient way to monitor the changes that impact markets and companies! A must for every marketing and strategic sales professional.
We are holding our mid year sales meeting this week and I have brought our sales team in together for training and territory planning. And since it’s beautiful weather, and it’s summer, we went as a company to AT&T Park to watch the Giants play the Cincinnati Reds.
The team all really enjoyed the game – especially since our home team crushed the opposition! And because we had purchased a block of tickets our name was listed on the big board.
We have a history of taking on whacky athletic challenges at FirstRain – both to get and stay fit and also to play together as a team.
Yesterday was no exception, although we were a small team this time. Three of us competed in the Splash and Dash in the Stevens Creek Reservoir in Cupertino CA. It was supposed to be a 1.2 mile swim and 3 mile run.
Well, it turned out a little different than we had expected. First off the water was really cold – which meant we were gasping for the first leg as we got accustomed to the temperature. And then the swim was not 1.2 miles – it was closer to 1.6-1.7 miles. We only knew this because it took me so much longer than last time I did it and so we asked around some of the more experienced competitors who estimated the distance for us based on their swim times.
It’s no wonder that at the end we didn’t run. We’d had enough. But we enjoyed it, we didn’t come last, and we are signed up for two more races this year!
Here we are before the race (we didn’t look as good afterwards!)
Eugene, me and David
Diversity is a strength – especially in management teams – but it can also lead to tension, misunderstandings and all the challenges that can appear when two people are very different and don’t “get” each other.
Years ago it was popular to hire expensive consultants – often called coaches – to work with executive teams and help them form tight bonds and appreciate one another but having been put through that type of coaching several times in my career at different companies I am now a great believer in the home grown use of personality based team building to develop an appreciation of the differences.
The method I advocate is going through Myers-Briggs Type testing as a team and sharing and talking about the results.
First step is everyone takes the test – online and together in a room – you can take the test here.
Next I explain (in lay terms) what the Myers-Briggs Type Indicators are – what they mean and what they indicate about each personality and how it influences and decision making. I’ll walk through the 4 dimensions and I use simple anecdotes to explain the differences – as I show here. (Each is a scale where you get a percentage along the scale to one end or the other as a measure of your personality type along that dimension.)
Note a healthy dose of humor and self depreciation at this stage breaks the ice and gets the team to relax.
E————-x————I
Extroverted vs. Introverted: what energizes you – being with people or being alone? To make a decision do you go and talk to other people or go for a walk? Are parties exciting or a bit of a chore?
S————-x————N
Sensing vs. Intuiting: Do you gather data and then make a decision – or do you intuitively make a decision and then use data to validate or invalidate your decision?
T————-x————F
Thinking vs. Feeling: Do you decide with your head or with your heart? Where are you in your body as you work through tough decisions.
J————-x————P
Judging vs Perceiving: This is a desire for structure – do you make lists, organize into spreadsheets, like operational process or do you prefer being open ended? Do you take a list to the grocery store or buy as the mood takes you? Do you plan your vacation down to the hour, or get in the car and just drive?
This is a layman’s view – Wikipedia has a much better description here.
And then – it’s time to share. I look for the extroverts in the team to start to talk – to share their type and talk about what it means and how it affects them in the team.
At this point I am at the white board and draw the chart (below) – and start putting names into the boxes so everyone can see where they fit – and how they are like, or unlike other people in the team. It’s really important at this point to make sure everyone understands there is no right or wrong, no one type is any better than any other – and that the strength lies in diversity. It’s much better in a team to have some P some J, some E some I , some N and some S. If you can leverage each other you can quite simply make better decisions because you can cover each others blind spots and biases.
I ran this process with our whole US team a month ago – and then our India management team last week. It was great fun both times. Lots of laughter (led by the Es) and some very insightful discussions about where the tension comes from. For example – a strong J can really annoy a strong P. J’s often state opinion as fact – they are putting structure on the opinion and testing the idea – but for a P this can seem arrogant and over constraining.
So how did my team come out? As you can see from this diagram we have a strong collection of leaders in the ENJ – they are extroverted, very intuitive and operational. Surprisingly this is not at all representative of the population at large. 63% of FR management are NJ, and yet only 7.8% of the population are NJ. So we have a very unusual concentration – and I think this is characteristic of the type of people who enjoy high growth, hurly burly opportunities where they can make decisions fast, based on intuition, and operationalize the execution.
If you are my competitor and you are reading this you may be able to figure out our inherent blind spot… except that I am not an NJ. My personality type is ESFJ. Very strong E (I like people a lot) and am a slight S, but I will challenge intuition by talking with customers and prospects. Knowing I am an ESFJ you can probably understand why I like to talk to customers every single day. That’s both where my energy comes from, and how I gather the input to steer the ship.
The end result of this exercise was very positive, especially within the executive team. We talked through some of the times when we don’t work as well together, and what triggers it – and it is personality related. Just reflecting together and reviewing tough conversations has now been very powerful to defuse the tension the next time it happened. I have the M-B chart on the wall in the office with everyone’s name on it and any of us can refer to it an any time to help understand a team mate – and the only rule is that we all have to remember to use it with a smile – it is just pop psychology after all.
We’ve made a terrific change this year to our vacation policy – which is basically not to have one. As of January 1 our employees can take as much vacation as they need provided they are getting their work done. The idea of doing this for all employees was pioneered by Netflix and we’ve decided to follow their excellent lead for our US team.
This change is one more thing we’re doing to build a great culture. We have a very intense culture today. People work hard, they work long hours inside and outside “normal business hours”, from home, from airplanes, and we don’t clock or watch the hours they work. So if we don’t clock the hours they are here, why should we clock the hours they are not? Why should we be tracking paperwork and forms when an employee takes the day off but we don’t do the same for when they work over a weekend.
It is much more trusting and respectful to simply say:
Work the hours you need to to get the job done,
Take the time off you need to take care of yourself and your family and
Talk to your manager about the time you need and how to fit it in with your work.
After all – if we entrust an employee with critical algorithm design, or with talking to customers – why wouldn’t we trust them to manage their own time? And one of our five values is “Take ownership for the company’s success” so people managing their own time is really consistent with that – I trust them to do what’s right.
This is a very popular move as you can imagine and one I am really pleased to be able to do. I asked Ana to give me a Letterman list – the Top Ten reasons this is a great move for our team – here is her list:
1. Each employee gets to make their own decision about when it makes sense to take time off
2. Each employee gets to decide how much time off they need
3. It rewards folks for working smarter, not longer
4. It places trust in our employees – trust gains trust back
5. It differentiates us from our competition – especially when hiring
6. Vacation is good for physical and mental health – so this supports good health
7. It reduces administrative paperwork – always a good thing!
8. It’s one less policy we have to document and explain
9. No more accrued vacation liability on our balance sheet
10. It’s just very cool to say, “at FirstRain we take as much time as we need, as long as your work is done”
p.s. This last Christmas we shut down between Christmas and New Year to encourage people to take vacation and take a break. It was so popular – both restorative and productive – we’re doing it again at the end of 2010 even within this new policy to encourage the break.
p.p.s. The basic idea of not clocking vacation has been around for “executives” for years but for financial reasons – if you store up vacation then the company has to accrue the financial obligation of paying for that vacation on the balance sheet and so, since executives typically cost more, companies often did not accrue or track vacation for VPs and above so they could reduce the accrued liability.
Ringing in the New Year I decided to send an email out to all my employees – the Rainmakers – to recognize the tremendous progress that we made in 2009, but also to get us all looking forward.
2009 was a hard year for almost every company – especially the first half – but 2010 is starting out with a bang. Some orders came in today (our fiscal year end is January 31 so the sales team is supremely focused), the stock market is up, pundits continue to forecast a recovery, especially in tech (although there are still some respectable analysts on the negative side…) and our customers are giving us good feedback on their use of the research engine.
So my objective is both to acknowledge last year, honor the hard work we did, and then put it behind us so we focus on today and tomorrow, not yesterday. And more importantly to thank everyone.
Here is the email I sent out (with just a few edits to remove unannounced customer wins):
Dear Rainmakers
As we enter 2010 I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for your hard work and the tremendous progress we made in 2009.
When I wrote to you at the end of last fiscal year I reflected that “2008 was all about our algorithms, automation and the quality of our datasets…” and that “2009 is going to be [about] self-service”.
As I reflect on 2009 it is exciting to see that we have more than exceeded the goals we set out a year ago:
- We made our product significantly more powerful when the research engine interface came up in beta in June and went into production in September. It is the first of its kind for business search, it reveals the depth of business structure, topics and content that we have spent the last 4 years developing and it expands the available market we can sell to by appealing to a broad, general business market.
- Although we have been selling to marketing teams all along we were able to start selling aggressively to sales and marketing teams across all types of business-to-business companies. The early positive feedback from sales customers is very encouraging and in 2010 we’ll continue to invest in the workflow for sales teams. Our first Dreamforce show and the demonstration of how we integrate with salesforce.com CRM was an important milestone for us in this market.
- We introduced several very powerful innovations which make our product valuable to our customers – like signals, the company brief, the faceted search engine and the workflow to use the search engine to develop personal email and RSS feeds – and while we will always want to make the research engine easier, we did make significant progress so that now customers can be independent – they can start by themselves and make their own changes. This is a huge step forward from where we were a year ago.
- The recession was very difficult for almost every company and it is to the credit of every one of you, and our sales and support teams, that we came through it stronger than before. We made some difficult staffing decisions during the recession and our finance and HR team worked hard both in the US and in India to bring our costs down and make sure we ran as lean a company as we could.
- We developed and grew our traditional customers like Axxx, Gxxx and Bxxx; we developed important new relationships at Mxxx and Dun and Bradstreet. Our corporate customers continued to use our product, Dxxx substantially grew their use of our reports and the new work with Fidelity.com pushed us to make our event detection truly exiting.
As we enter the New Year I believe we are building momentum both in our product and in our channels. In 2010 we will use the investment and innovation of the last few years to continue to grow our bookings and revenue. Our goal is $xxxx and it is going to take hard work, creativity and team work to achieve the goal – and we can and will do it!
I hope you have all had some time with your families and friends over the New Year and are recharged for the exciting opportunity we have in front of us.
Thank you again – it is my privilege to work with you all.
Penny
