Get More Hands on Your Keyboard

Talks

Manik Juneja

#software-development

#community-building

Get More Hands on Your Keyboard

by Manik Juneja

In this presentation titled "Get More Hands on Your Keyboard", Manik Juneja, the founder of VinSol, discusses the evolution of his company and its contributions to the Ruby on Rails community. VinSol, established in 2000, has grown from a small operation with just two developers into a firm boasting over 60 developers and a wide array of successful projects.

Key Points:

- Background and Company History:

- Juneja, an electrical engineer, began his career in a large outsourcing firm and transitioned through various roles, ultimately leading him to form VinSol. His experience highlighted the inefficiencies of large teams, prompting his focus on effective development practices.

- The company started with Java and PHP before discovering Ruby on Rails, which greatly enhanced their productivity.

Open Source Contributions:
- Early involvement with open-source projects led to their successful integration into the Ruby on Rails community. VinSol developed their own Ruby gem and encouraged team members to contribute to Rails core, significantly enhancing their reputation in the developer community.
Growth and Recognition:
- The firm has achieved recognition in the Ruby on Rails landscape without relying on traditional marketing, with growth stemming mainly from community participation and open-source contributions.
- Partnerships with other agencies in the tech community have played a critical role in securing prominent projects for big clients like Disney and Groupon.
Key Projects and Client Work:
- Notable projects include e-commerce sites such as konga.com and the property management system for WeWork, showcasing VinSol's ability to deliver in niche markets effectively.
- Their success with startups highlights their capacity for rapid development and support, adapting to specific client needs.
Partnership Program:
- Juneja outlines the Partnership Program designed to assist developers and smaller agencies in scaling their operations through staff augmentation and collaborative development.
- The program offers flexibility for agencies to tap into VinSol’s resources, making it beneficial for both parties.

In conclusion, Juneja emphasizes the importance of building a purposeful company culture focused on quality code and developer happiness. VinSol’s journey illustrates how meaningful contributions to the community, strong partnerships, and effective practices can lead to significant business success in the tech industry.

00:00:15.930 So let's get started. Hi, my name is Manik Juneja, and I'm the founder of VinSol, a Rails development firm based out of Delhi, India. We also provide iOS and Android consultancy. It's a 13-year-old firm, and we have over 60 developers now. I was initially going to ask a few questions to set the context for this talk, but since I already know most of you, I’ll skip those slides. I want to know if there are any solopreneurs or freelance programmers here, or if you belong to companies with around 25 developers. Are there product people present? This would help me adjust the direction of my talk accordingly.

00:01:02.079 My talk is divided into three parts. In the first part, I'll introduce myself and provide a brief overview of my background. Then, I'll discuss VinSol, its history, the philosophy behind its founding, the growth path we've taken, and why it exists. These two topics will set the stage for the third part, where I'll explain why all this matters to you and what value we can provide to you.

00:01:36.250 I am an electrical engineer by training. I learned basic Pascal and C in school but never realized I would go on to pursue programming professionally. I did enjoy working with those languages and appreciated the instant gratification they provided—seeing something I typed, even something as simple as 'print a + b', appear on the screen is intellectually satisfying. After my electrical engineering degree, I got placed through campus recruitment, a term we use in India for college placements. I was selected by a large Indian outsourcing firm with around 15,000 developers. I was assigned to work on a Y2K project, which involved digging into millions of lines of COBOL code to find where years were represented in a two-digit format and updating them to four digits. It was a challenging yet intellectually stimulating experience.

00:02:28.900 After that role, I switched to learning Java. James Gosling had just released Java about six months before I started working with it. I then changed jobs and joined another large Indian outsourcing firm, where I landed a position in Tokyo working for an internet startup in the e-commerce space. While there, I met a senior Japanese developer who mentored me significantly. The two of us worked well together, and we realized that our productivity and the quality of our output greatly surpassed that of our offshore development team back in India.

00:03:05.020 This disparity set me thinking. I vividly remember one incident when we received our first code drop from the Indian team. I was working on my machine, and my guru, the senior developer, called me over to look at some code. He was visibly frustrated and said, 'Manik, just look at this code.' When I looked, I found it difficult to understand where it started, what method was being called, or even how it was structured. It was a perfect example of spaghetti code. In that moment, I felt a sense of humiliation, as these were people from my own country, many years my senior. This experience planted a seed in me to change the way things were done.To further expand my knowledge, during my time in Japan, I had my first experience with Ruby. Although our primary work involved Java, CORBA, and Oracle, we started using Ruby on the side for creating utility scripts.

00:04:50.190 In 2000, while preparing for my marriage, I discussed with my fiancée whether we wanted to live in Tokyo or Delhi, and we chose Delhi. Upon returning, I founded VinSol in September 2000 with two developers—one of my colleagues, and one of my college mates. We started the company with an existing Japanese client, which made the process easier. At that time, we were still focused on Java, CORBA, and Oracle, but due to financial considerations, we switched from Oracle to Postgres. I was amazed to discover that Postgres could perform nearly as well, if not better, than Oracle while being entirely open source. It was a significant moment for me, marking my first major interaction with open-source software.

00:05:28.600 For the next couple of years, we continued working out of the basement of my house, focusing primarily on the Japanese client project. However, as we started to get more time, we decided to hire more people. We had hoped to secure more Java projects but soon found that Java projects require a significant team size to be meaningful, typically at least 10 to 30 people. This realization led us down a path toward PHP, especially as Facebook was gaining traction, built on PHP. During this period, we also explored open source further, specifically with Drupal and WordPress, where we built custom modules and extensions.

00:07:02.810 In 2005, I stumbled upon an article on Ruby on Rails in an online magazine that blew me away. I realized I could accomplish so much more in Rails in just a couple of hours than I could in PHP or Java. This discovery truly hooked me on Rails. The tipping point came in 2006 when barcamps were popular. I co-organized one in Delhi and gave a presentation on Ruby on Rails. At that time, most of the audience hadn’t even heard of Ruby on Rails, which was advantageous for me as it allowed me to introduce it effectively. I demonstrated building a blog in this presentation. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and the presentation went viral, leading to much more work for my team than we could handle.

00:09:40.290 Our success led us to RailsConf in Europe in 2006, where I met influential figures in the Rails community such as DHH and Marcel Molina Jr. The experience was life-changing. Being surrounded by such brilliant minds was inspiring, and it motivated me to think about how I could bring that knowledge back to India and foster a community there. Shortly after, we launched our first Ruby gem, VPayPal, which served as a wrapper around PayPal's API.

00:11:04.400 We actively encouraged our developers to contribute to open-source projects, and our contributions began to gain recognition. One of our developers became a core contributor to Rails, submitting over 2,162 patches in a month, averaging about 70 patches per day. Our efforts were further acknowledged when a presentation at Ruby Fringe 2008 by Obispo Fernández highlighted the competitive landscape, naming VinSol among prominent Rails development firms.

00:15:33.240 Despite not spending any money on marketing, our reputation grew largely due to blogging, open-source contributions, and regular attendance at RailsConf. This grassroots approach helped transform us from a small basement operation into a competitive player in the Ruby on Rails services sector.

00:16:30.730 As of today, we have grown to over 60 people across three offices in Delhi. We're continually working to build and sustain a culture that differentiates us from larger firms where employees may feel like mere code monkeys. We've developed our own training tool called VT App, which ensures that all new recruits go through a six-month paid training program before they can start working on client projects.

00:17:40.779 This structure is designed not only to train them but also to instill a sense of ownership and community. All new developers are encouraged to contribute back to the Rails community, continuing the cycle of mentorship and innovation that I experienced in my early career.

00:18:45.055 Let me take a moment to share some of our recent e-commerce projects. We recently worked with Idly, a flash sale site headquartered in New York that was acquired by Groupon. This project came about through a connection I made at RailsConf, demonstrating how valuable networking can be.

00:19:29.660 Another project I am proud of is Konga.com, an e-commerce platform built for Nigeria. The project had a remarkable turnaround; we launched it in just two months using Spree, an open-source Ruby on Rails e-commerce platform. We incorporated unique features needed for the Nigerian market, such as a digital wallet. I’m proud to say we not only completed the project on time but also extracted the features to share with the broader community, making them available as extensions for Spree.

00:21:30.500 A significant milestone for our company was becoming the second firm to be named a Spree Commerce Premium Partner after RailsDog, helping us further establish our credibility in the industry. Additionally, we created the entire property management system for WeWork, a co-working space expanding into multiple cities. Each of these projects has contributed to our reputation and growth in the Ruby on Rails ecosystem.

00:23:10.918 Now, I want to discuss the VinSol Partnership Program, which is designed for Rails developers who have more work than time, and for smaller consulting shops looking to scale. We offer staff augmentation and a technology partnership model to agencies needing assistance with tech. This collaborative approach puts us in a position to work with several reputable clients.

00:24:30.000 By building productive partnerships, we’ve been able to work with many clients without having a marketing office in the U.S. These relationships allow us to scale effectively while still focusing on what we love—coding. As we proceed, we're Open to equity deals with product owners who need a capable tech team but lack the necessary capital, allowing us to grow together. Thank you for your attention.