2020 gave a roller-coaster ride to the whole world. With months-long lockdowns and compulsive work from home, we had our fair share of ups and downs too. But difficulties cannot stop the Automatad team from having fun, and 2020 was no exception. Here’s how we cruised through this stormy year.
The Out of Office Fun
We believe that happiness and productivity has a direct correlation. We ensure that the team remains cheerful all the time so that work never feels like a burden. But how do we do that? Excursions!
Going out of the office to chill together is a common occurrence in our company. It happens almost every one or two months. We started 2020 with some bowling, VR games, laser-tag, and a great dinner accompanied by a lot of booze!
Celebrations in the Office
Come to our office on a Friday, and you might find us binging on pizzas with beer bottles on our sides. That’s because we do it almost every alternate weekend. We don’t count such weekends as celebrations but as small treats.
At Automatad, celebrations are big. On special occasions, we celebrate by decorating our office together, playing games and music. We celebrate with dance, delicious food, and of course, alcohol!
This year we celebrated International Women’s day. The boys in our team worked together to shoot a video introducing all the girls in the house. We featured the video on all our social media channels as a token of respect to the girl-power. We ended the day with our stomachs full of Panipuris and drinks. That’s the only celebration that the pandemic allowed us to have in our office.
The Cool Kid Place
As we work happily, growth comes naturally. This year we added many new faces to our family. We needed more space, so we created The Cool Kid Place. It is the place where the marketing team works.
The whole Automatad family helped the Marketing team to decorate the Cool Kid Place with plants, flowers, and wall paintings (including a baby Yoda pic :P)
After a few days, the pandemic spread a wave of frenzy in our office.
Work From Home
Remote working was new to us, but we are never afraid of challenges. Our growth continued, quarterly figures kept increasing and so did the number of people in the team. We added 12 new members to our 27 members team this year.
And the fun continued…
Welcoming New Members
Even working hundreds of kilometers away from each other couldn’t stop us from giving a warm welcome to our new joiners. We held a company-wide meeting for introductions. But as always, these weren’t regular meetings.
We decided to pull the WFH ghost prank to shock the new members. The shock and confusion on the new joiners’ faces were fun to watch when a lot of ghosts appeared on the screen.
This was followed by some fun games, singing, and showing whatever talent people had. All the new joiners were gifted with Amazon vouchers and we had three such townhall meetings this year.
Joining Experience
We asked our new family members about their onboarding process. Let’s hear some of the responses:
The onboarding process was a smooth one, even with the current pandemic, spent week and two in understanding AdTech, with help of Mohan, Vamsi, and within a week i was set and already working on the core features of one of our products, and a week later, I was already coordinating and completing task with my team. So far so good.
– Ruthvik V
I joined Automatad on 16th March , 2020 , a few days before the lockdown started . On the day of my joining I met a few people as everyone was working from home. The onboarding process was quite smooth . I had a li’ll tour of our office with the HR . Kiran and Vamsi explained and helped me set up my laptop and all the other things which were required to get started with work.
– Mansi
Meet the New Kids
R&R
It’s been a long and tough year for all of us. At Automatad, we wanted to acknowledge the work and ensure that the teams have the time — to relax, reflect, and recharge themselves for the next year.
So, in our year-end virtual townhall, we awarded the top members of the teams with special titles and cash prizes.
And, the holiday announcement (that’s 10 days!).
So, is Automatad a fun company? Hell ya! Come join us and see it yourself!
Happy New Year!
