Work hard. Play hard. Make history.

This was the email signature of the recruiter who brought me to Microsoft. These words have stuck with me ever since and we use them often to describe our philosophy as a company. Last to last Friday was a good example of the "play hard" part. We had a great party in office. Manish (who btw is finally blogging again!) has a great writeup on it. It was one of those days when everybody was in their elements. Everybody had something funny to say, everybody had a witty retort ready and everybody was ready to laugh at the silliest jokes. Truly memorable and fun!

I have been told a few times that as a company, we have a little too much fun. That might be true. In the last month or so, we made a trip to Jaipur, and had two big birthday bashes. Besides that, on days when a lot of us are working late, we often end up ordering food from outside and end up having a small impromptu after-hours party.

So yes, maybe we are partying too much. But its not a bad thing. Because for all the fun and frolic that you might find on our flickr feed, what doesn't show up is the hard work that happens rest of the time. As a team, we always take our deadlines very seriously. In fact the last party was postponed by a week because a couple of us had to meet some client deadlines. We have ended up working all nights on our birthdays. We have spent many a Sundays cranking out software. We have woken up early and stayed up late to take client calls. If we are partying hard, its because we are also working hard!

I think this is the best part of being in a startup with a young team. There is so much passion and energy all around. Besides this kind of fun and masti is a privilege of a small team. When you grow big, events take longer to organize, require budget approvals, prior planning is needed and you don't really know half the people in the party. Friday's party took just  a day's worth of planning. We ordered food and drinks and we were ready to rock-n-roll! It was one cozy group eating, drinking and making merry.

I am sure one day when (God willing!) we are big and famous and stuff, we will look back at these times and miss them. TeknoKrats - these are the "good old days" which you are going to talk about tomorrow! So until tomorrow comes, lets work hard, play hard and make history! The joy is in the journey!