Accion Labs Employee Churn, Their Hiring Process & Corporate Culture. My Professional Experience with Accion Labs.

I worked in AccionLabs for a year. I worked on a single long project for my whole tenure.

At that time, they used to have offices in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru. And they were supposed to open an office in Pune when I left the company.

I joined AccionLabs as a Senior User Experience Designer. When I started interacting with my senior staff, who were UX Architects or Project Managers, all were over-stuffed with projects out of their capacity. I was working in the Mumbai office, so I don’t know about office culture in other offices. There was a sense of uneasiness everywhere. Employees were allowed to play cricket outside during office hours. One employee never showed up to work but received a salary for the last four months. My project manager and CTO were rude in every meeting. They will discuss some random employees’ performance and why they should warn them to install PIP (Performance Improvement Program) or why they should have been fired. They were a few billable employees who sat ideal doing nothing.

It was such a situation that three or four employees resigned and left the company every two or three days. The company ask them to resign but hosts a send-off party somehow out of no shame. Even two colleagues told in the send-off party’s last speech that they had no work since joining or for the previous four months, and the company asked them to resign, so they did. The churn rate was high.

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My experience in converting my paid educational apps to a subscription business revenue model.

After experimenting with various apps, I ventured into an educational language-earning app in 2013/14. I developed three apps Mudrakshar for tracing Alphabets, Swarakshar for Pronouncing Alphabets and Chitrakshar for Alphabet Charts with Illustrations and audio pronunciation. All three apps were dedicated to Devanagari Script—mainly Marathi, Sanskrit and Hindi Language. For Chitrakshar, I added the English Language with Latin script.

I am developing my apps for Apple iOS, iPadOS and macOS platforms. Here is my Apple Developer Profile if you want to check it out.

I think the In-App purchase / StoreKit framework was not introduced back then. That’s what I remember. So I used paid app business model to support my app development and time invested.

Maybe because I started sailing my apps with an upfront paid pricing model, I was forcing my users to purchase them without allowing them to try them before they bought. As a result, I had significantly fewer downloads or sales. But over the years, I sold almost 1,000 units of apps or more. I also utilised App Store Connects’s App Bundles feature at that time. App Bundles undoubtedly helped me to sell more apps with discounts.

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With the release of macOS Big Sur & macOS Monterey, the user cannot format External Hard Disk to ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)’ format as there is no option to do the same.

With the release of the macOS Big Sur Mac Operating System, Apple has removed the option under Disk Utility to allow users to format External Hard Drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) format.

There is only one option for Mac OS Extended (Journaled) but no choice with encryption. It only allows users to format Hard Disk with Apple File System APFS without encryption, with encryption & with case sensitivity.

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In-depth Review of Matrimony Website by Anuroop Wiwaha (anuroopwiwaha.com)

I have used the Anuroop Wiwaha Matrimony Website for the last four to five years. In addition, I have extensively used their mobile Apple iPhone app and website for my bride search. As a result, I discovered a few points that Anuroop Wiwaha Portal / Company improved upon to help the community get the right matrimony match for their search.

Observations:

Few Points that they can improve on.

Mobile App & Website Portal:

  1. At every event, they talk about having 20,000 Profiles / Accounts of the bride and groom registered on their portal. An average Anuroop Wiwaha account cost is INR 5,000/-.
  2. The user (Bride or Groom) can’t register with a free account as they don’t support free accounts. The user must pay an account fee upfront before registering to the portal. So it gives assurance that the user is at least serious about their search, and even the user has to submit identity proof within seven days of registration. So in a way, it eliminates the possibility of fake accounts or fraud.
  3. Even with this money of 20,000 Accounts * 5,000 Fee, the Bride or Groom Search is cumbersome and hectic. The mobile app is not full fledge as compared to a web portal. They use non-native software technologies for the Apple iPhone app, which takes minutes or sometimes fails to load content and data.
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Here is how to locate downloaded Audio/Video Podcast app files on macOS. So that you can export or copy it to the new location on Macintosh HD.

You may have been listing to or watching a great podcast on Mac’s Podcast app, and you may want to export it and store it elsewhere on your Macintosh HD for safekeeping.

It seems Apple has disabled the functionality of dragging Podcast items to the desktop to store or export them elsewhere.

So here is how to do it in an alternative way.

Step 01: Click on Finder

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What is a suitable tool for UI/UX Work: Adobe Photoshop / XD / Sketch / Figma

As far as I can remember, I have used Photoshop from version two. So I have used Photoshop for almost twenty years, less or more.

I have been using the Sketch app for four years. And just now, because of team recommendations, I have to switch to Figma.

The most problematic point about Photoshop or XD is Adobe’s pricing model. Adobe forces you to buy all Creative Cloud apps whether you choose them or not. In India, Adobe CC costs INR 45,000/- plus taxes.

The best thing about the Sketch app is its pricing model, i.e. Annual Subscription, which costs you INR 7,500/- for a year, and after it ends, you use the same app as long as you want without buying another subscription. So yes, you will not get updates, but you have an app to work with.

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Uber Cabs Invoice Outstanding Payment Alert, A Technical Glitch or Accounting Error

I just travelled from Mumbai to Thane using Uber cabs. They rounded my bill before tax by 46 Paise. My trip was a cash trip.

My final cost of the trip after taxes applied was 160.05 INR.

But when I completed my trip I got notification from the Uber app that I have not paid 5 paise out of 160.05 INR using cash.

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The First iMac that I bought from Unicorn Infosolutions Pvt Ltd and my experience with the second-hand product that was given to me

It was the year 2007, A year that I got a job as a Graphic Designer in a good company.

In my previous graduation year, I completed my Final Year Project on Apple Inc.

So I was way more familiar with Apple Computers than I require. So with a new stream of money, I started receiving because of the job I decided to buy my dream computer and that was 24 inch iMac.

Someone from my company told me about Apple Premium Reseller called Unicorn Infosolutions Pvt Ltd which was located at Andheri west near Fun Republic Mall.

The year that I bought iMac was March 2008. I visited their store near Fun Republic Mall. The physical RAM that was coming with iMac was 2GB at that time they told me you have to buy more RAM if you want 4GB RAM. So I said I will opt for 4GB RAM. They told me they can provide me pirated apps preinstalled and Pro Apple Apps like Final Cut Pro, Logic Studio and Adobe Creative Suite. I said I am not interested. But this was the moment I sensed something wrong going on with the purchasing process.

Unicorn person told me they will not deliver Apple iMac to the home I have to carry to my home which was 20 kilometres away. I said no problem I will carry it myself.

I think after using that iMac I started experiencing issues and I started feeling I was cheated by Apple Premium Reseller while I purchased supposed to be a new iMac from them.

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Here is a solution if TP-Link Router is not loading some particular websites

If you are having a problem loading or browsing a particular/specific website, then you can follow the steps below to resolve that problem.

Step 01: Navigate to your TP-Link router’s web interface. i.e. Normally http://192.168.0.1/

Step 02: Log in to your TP-Link router’s Administration Web Page

Step 03: Go to > Advance > Network > Internet > Click on Advanced Settings

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