The Secret Ingredient For Work Productivity — Culture! [Crowdfire behind the scenes]

When I first visited the Crowdfire (formerly JustUnfollow) HQ on 13th of August, 2014 for a face-to-face interview, I was completely bowled over by the whole office environment. Gladly, I happen to work there now and love every minute of it. It’s my first job and most of my friends say that I “just got lucky.”

To quote Sneha: Alone, I’m a spark but together, we are fire, Crowdfire!

There are a lot of cool hacks that set Crowdfire’s culture apart from that of most (Indian) startups, and probably, make it one of the 80+ Indian startups to work for in 2015. There are some really quirky things that I love about my workplace — my home away from home.

The welcome ceremony:

How you induct your newest member to the team says a lot about you and your workplace culture. At Crowdfire, everyone assembles in the cafeteria to welcome the newest member who pops a champagne bottle. This is followed by an introduction and a dance performance by the team (including the founder and co-founders). Speaking from experience: It’s an excellent icebreaker and makes the new member feel at home.

No cabins:
An open office is gives a positive feel to the employees and fosters a healthy work environment. Moreover, ours is a visually transparent office — anyone can see the end of the office from where they sit.

No bosses:
I love the fact that we have no people manager — you have the ownership of whatever you are working on. This hack encourages individuals to be responsible, proactive and innovative.

Food together:
Needless to say, it fosters unity.

Work environment:
While getting the office interiors done, Nischal (the CEO) and the others made sure to focus more on coolness than luxury. We have pods, mezzanine floor, bar setting, sleeping bags, bean bags, gym balls — we can work wherever and however we want. The fridge that is always stacked with food is an added bonus.

Nicknames:
Almost all of us are called by anything but our original names. We refer to each other by -

• Their CounterStrike player names
• Their Twitter handles
• Distorted name pronunciation just because auto-correct said so!

This way, we have Tartan, KidSid, Blank, Boxodi, Headshot, Silencer Only, Neo etc at Crowdfire. I am known as Pinka.

Transparency:
Everyone in the team knows about what the others are doing. We also have monthly standups where every team talks about their accomplishments and goals. The tech team knows about the upcoming marketing campaign, and the marketing team knows about the new features to be deployed.

During one of our standups! Actually after the standup as everyone seems to be posing here.

Birthday celebration:
Most of us at Crowdfire are from outside Mumbai and hence, stay away from our families. It’s fantastic if the team gathers to celebrate a person’s birthday — their special day. The celebration takes few minutes but the memories and happiness (as a result) last way longer!

Game nights:
We like to call it ‘Jung ki raat’ (the war night) when we play CounterStrike and there are box cricket nights — the fights these games have caused, my god! But thankfully, all gets well after the match. We also encourage the new members to join. But people are never truly a part of Crowdfire until they are given a skateboarding lesson from one of our pro’s and/or fall at least once.

We are still learning and trying our best to make this place cooler. Workplace is where we spend a huge amount of our time, and a great culture makes life hell lot easier.

After all, Monday’s do not really suck if you like your job.