Andela

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The Pros and Cons of Hiring a Distributed Workforce When Talent Is Scarce

It wasn’t long ago that labor came in two varieties: in-house or outsourced. Today, however, workforces are increasingly distributed: employees work in a range of locations from the office, to home, to off-site locations, while some juggle multiple locations in the same week.

The ability to work with anyone with an Internet connection has upped the intensity of the race for talent. The competition is hardly fiercer than in the search for software developers. In fact, employment of software developers is projected to grow 22 percent from 2012 to 2022, much faster than the average for all occupations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Some companies, like WordPress parent Automattic, employ an entirely distributed workforce to meet their hiring needs.

Every innovation, however, elicits some form of push back. Many technology companies are beginning to insist that their developers remain “co-located” in the same space, arguing for the irreplaceable merits of “face-time.”

Distributed development is not right in all circumstances. Here are some criteria to help determine what is right for the business.

When distributed development won’t work.

Short turnarounds. If tasks require hourly or daily turnarounds, geographically disparate teams may pose a challenge.

Poor collaborative infrastructure. Certain organizational processes, tools, and structures need to be in place for distributed development to work well. The success of a distributed workplace is largely dependent on the use of management tools, clear processes, and integration between team members, a 2009 case study of software developers at Microsoft showed.

Lack of time to vet developers. Let’s face it, the quality of remote workers is uneven. All of us, including me, have had bad experiences hiring a developer remotely for a lower price only to find that the cost of labor and time spent in training, managing and making course corrections exceeded the money saved.

When distributed development is a smart option.

Access to top talent. While it is true that the quality of many offshore developers is often uneven, it is also true that brilliance is evenly distributed, and extraordinarily talented individuals can be found anywhere. Savvy entrepreneurs will look for the best talent wherever they are, not simply the best talent that happens to live 10 feet from them.

Talent is scarce. When I was at 2U, an educational technology company that partners with universities to deliver online degree programs, we struggled to find entry-level Salesforce developers for closer to six figures than most would believe. The need for developers is exploding, and there aren’t nearly enough developers to meet the demand. Companies can either wait for trends to reverse, or they can get started immediately by exploring every possible avenue to find the talent they need.

Growing a global talent pipeline. Companies large and small need to think strategically about where they want to source and develop their talent pipelines in the coming years. “Where will the workers of tomorrow come from?” is a question being asked in boardrooms across the globe. There is an opportunity to invest in training workers in some of the world’s youngest, fastest-growing countries, which is what Andela, the company I lead, is doing.

Value. As quality tech talent becomes harder and harder to find, salaries for U.S.-based developers are rising. Hiring remotely can yield comparably skilled developers at lower costs.

Social impact and diversity. The positive social outcomes achieved through “impact sourcing” are undeniable. Impact sourcing provides sustainable sources of income for many disadvantaged populations. Companies benefit from a global workforce, as well. A survey of 1,800 professionals conducted by the Center for Talent Innovation in December 2012 found that diverse companies were more innovative.

The decision to dive into distributed development requires serious and thoughtful assessment, but hopefully, the criteria above provide a good starting point.

By Jeremy Johnson as published in Entrepreneur

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5 Top Mistakes Hiring Managers Make When Recruiting Software Developers

The tech world prides itself on its ability to push boundaries and question long-held assumptions, but it is all too easy for hiring managers to get trapped in traditional hiring mindsets, especially when they recruit software developers.

Here are the top five mistakes they tend to make:

1. Overvaluing experience.

It is risky to bet too heavily on the particular languages and technologies a candidate already knows. Programming languages evolve quickly and the developer will need to invest time in learning new techniques and technologies.

Languages are tweaked and improved all the time; Facebook developed Hack to improve PHP; Google created Dart as an upgraded form of Javascript; and the C programming language has continuously spawned new incarnations every few years. Just look at the success of Go.

2. Mistaking credentials for aptitude.

Credentials from educational institutions, riddled with problems of unequal access, are poor proxies for intelligence. There is little reason to rely on them when there exists an abundance of tools and tests that accurately gauge cognitive abilities.

Given that developers will need to continually adapt and upgrade their skills, it is more important to know if they have the drive and mental horsepower to improve, rather than a handful of credentials they accumulated before joining the team.

Google, for instance, has moved away from a reliance on GPA and brand-name schools that it says can condition for “one type of thinking.” Instead, the search company prefers to hire candidates with the ability to learn, process on the fly and integrate disparate pieces of information.

3. Assuming future developers will (literally) look like current developers.

Currently, only 20 percent of software developers are women (in contrast to 36 percent of physicians and surgeons), and only 10 percent are black or Hispanic. Studies have documented the benefits of diversity in avoiding groupthink and making better decisions -- and tech companies are finally catching on. “If we [recruit women], there’s no question we’ll more than double the rate of technology output in the world,” Larry Page, chief executive of Google, told the New York Times.

Now, here's a surprise: Hiring managers could learn a few lessons from the history of orchestras. In the 1970s, the top symphony orchestras were less than than 5 percent female, but today, partly as a result of blind auditions (where musicians perform behind a screen), some of them have over 30 percent female musicians. What might an equivalent “blind audition” for developers look like?

4. Not accounting for team dynamics.

When looking for a developer, you should aim not to hire an individual but rather an additional member of the team. It is important to look beyond, “Does he or she know Java?” and determine if the new developer’s personality complements other team members’ and fits in with the company’s culture.

5. Limiting the search within geographical boundaries.

Talent is abundant. Smart hiring managers will look for the most talented candidates wherever they are, not simply the best talent that happens to live 10 blocks away.

Worried about relocation expenses? Consider hiring a distributed team spread over different time zones.

More than 81 percent of software developers already interact with colleagues from different sites, and many companies, like Wordpress, consist of a completely distributed workforce.

As futurist James Ware, executive director of the Future of Work research and advisory firm, recently wrote, "There are two things we know without question about the future of work. It will require significantly more collaboration, and it will be dramatically more distributed.”

By Jeremy Johnson as published in Entrepreneur

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The 5 Non-Technical Skills Any Great Developer Needs in Order to Advance

With less than 1 percent unemployment in many technical fields and a skills gap that’s widening, finding a job as a software developer may not seem like the most challenging professional hurdle. But it’s also true that it still takes more than just technical skills to advance through the ranks and earn the right to lead teams, projects, and, ultimately, companies.

Unfortunately, just as there is a gap in our educational system fueling the extreme shortage of technical talent, there is also a gap in the tech world when it comes to learning the soft skills that translate into not just a “good job,” but a great career in technology.

Here are five non-technical skills that employers use to differentiate good developers from great ones.

1. Intellectual curiosity

To move up the ranks, developers need to start asking questions and attack problems from new angles. Moving along with the daily grind is not enough.

Those who get ahead look at nagging problems and elegant solutions and ask themselves questions like “why does this happen?” or “why does this work?” They look at issues from multiple perspectives to find new solutions.

Intellectual curiosity drives projects and companies forward, and catapults careers. To stimulate that curiosity, read up on topics of interest. Look at the latest research. Ask questions.

2. Openness to new experiences

Developers who say “yes” to new things stay relevant and engaged and avoid falling into a workplace rut.

Willingness to take risks, try out new techniques, and experiment with new methods can lead to improvements and innovations. The tech industry moves fast, and those who are willing to push boundaries and jump on board with new processes and systems will be the most successful.

Taking on new roles and responsibilities can also help propel a developer’s career forward.

3. Empathy for one’s future self

Part of being a disciplined software developer involves being kind to other members of the team and one’s future self by generating high-quality work.

Despite pressure from managers, successful developers take the time to create high-quality work. They understand that they, or someone else, will need to clean up their mess if they do a poor job. Spending extra time to complete projects right will save time and frustration in the long-run by avoiding unnecessary mistakes and corrections.

Producing consistent, quality work not only saves the developer from unwanted headaches down the road, but also establishes their reputation as attentive, thorough, and precise.

4. Disciplined habit-building

Coding is a lot like sports. Building muscle memory is essential to operate at maximum efficiency. Developers build mental-muscle memory just like athletes -- through disciplined practice.

Start building muscle memory by setting aside 20 minutes each day to code. After a month of consistent practice, coding should become easier and faster and practicing will seem less like a chore.

Over time, gradually increase the time spent in practice. Building coding habits will boost muscle memory and increase productivity.

5. Efficiency

Developers shouldn’t be couch potatoes, but they do need a healthy aversion to repetitive work that can be automated.

As Larry Wall, creator of Perl programming language, writes in Programming Perl, efficiency -- or what he calls “laziness” -- is the quality that “makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it.”

Refusing to do repetitive work will foster constant motivation to look for new ways to automate, optimize, and improve processes. Developers who focus on ways to save time and money will move to the next level.

By Jeremy Johnson as published in Entrepreneur

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5 Ways to Find and Hire Top Technical Talent

The race to hire top IT talent hit a new level last year, and it’s about to get even more competitive. CareerBuilder’s 2015 job forecast found that 54 percent of employers surveyed plan to hire full-time permanent IT employees, up from 29 percent in 2014.

Although the competition for top talent may lead recruiters to snatch up the first interested programmer with vaguely relevant experience, finding the right candidate for the position is more important than ever.

Here are five unwritten rules for finding and retaining great programming talent:

1. Assess aptitude.

With the traditional resume and interview recruiting process, getting a clear indication of a candidate’s abilities can be challenging. Resumes can be misleading and bias can corrupt subjective analysis. In fact, the 2014 HireRight Employment Screening Benchmark Report of more than 3,000 talent management and security professionals revealed 88 percent of respondents who reported screening uncovered the person in question lied on their resume.

When recruiters do eventually hire a candidate after searching through hundreds of resumes, they sometimes find the employee isn’t a good fit for the position or the company culture. To find the best programming talent, incorporate objective assessment criteria into the recruitment process. At Andela, we work with Plum, a firm that moves beyond the resume to assess attitude and aptitude. Plum analyzes the top skills needed for an open position and then evaluates candidates for those qualities. The service assesses skills like communication, work ethic and problem solving to determine the candidates who best fit the job.

2. Establish a culture that embraces remote hiring.

Recruiting is no longer limited by location. Smartphones, tablets, and endless apps allow remote workers to connect and work with teams any time, any place. In their book Remote, 37Signals founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson explain that limiting hiring to one geographic region means recruiters are missing out on the best talent. They argue that employees and employers can successfully work together from any location.

Don’t limit the search for quality candidates to the local talent pool—the right programmer for the job may not live nearby. Use job-listing services like We Work Remotely to reach a larger hiring pool.

3. Look for talent in areas with a large amount of people but few opportunities.

Up and coming IT markets may be the best places to look for great programming talent. For example, we source much of our talent from the most populous countries in Africa. The growing IT industry combined with the vast population in these countries allows us to be selective with our aptitude and attitude criteria scores and still have many candidates to choose from. Look to fill positions in areas where the talent pool is large and hungry for new opportunities.

4. Don’t underestimate the value of junior hires.

Hiring IT positions is competitive, and finding experienced candidates with the right skills is challenging. So, look for aptitude and potential, not just experience. Programmers can often learn the specific skills needed for a position, complete on-the-job training and absorb lessons from peers and mentors. On the other hand, skills like leadership, teamwork and problem-solving are hard to teach, so keep an eye out for individuals who possess them. They are likely to grow into valuable team members, no matter how much experience they have.

5. Be mission-driven.

In the competitive market for IT talent, candidates have their pick of firms and positions. With similar salary and benefits offers, corporate cultures and missions are often bigger factors in a person’s job decision. To stand out from competitors jockeying for the same talent, highlight the company's mission and how the candidate will help contribute to it.

Hiring top technical talent will never be easy, but these rules will make it easier.

By Jeremy Johnson as published in Entrepreneur

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Case Study: Knotwork Scales Team with Andela

Knotwork, a social networking startup, came to Andela with a common problem -- they needed to attract top talent, but was limited on the time and resources to do this. 

Download this case study to learn how Andela helped Knotwork solve their tech hiring challenges and launch to market.

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Is Africa Hiding the Next Mark Zuckerberg? The Future of Tech Talent

By JEREMY JOHNSON and IYINOLUWA ABOYEJI as published in The Wall Street Journal

ON MAY 14TH, 1984, MARK ZUCKERBERG was born in Westchester County, N.Y., to a dentist and a psychiatrist. Twenty years later, he launched the initial version of “Thefacebook” out of his Harvard dorm room. In August, a decade after opening to its first members, Facebook had one billion users in a single day. Zuckerberg is undoubtedly brilliant. But what if he had been born into a working-class family in Nigeria or Kenya? Would Facebook exist? Would the social-media revolution have unfolded in the same way? It’s impossible to know. But for too long, much of the world’s talent has been shut out of the global economy. In the future, raw ability will be more important than the circumstances of one’s birth, reinforcing this fundamental truth: Brilliance and talent are evenly distributed, opportunity is not.

The starkest example of the disconnect between innate ability and opportunity can be found in Africa. With more than one billion people, approximately 60% of them under age 25, and more than 25% of young people out of work in many places, Africa is home to the world’s largest pool of untapped brainpower and talent. In the past, there was no scalable, cost-effective way to leverage and empower this human capital. But technology is quickly upending this paradigm, especially when it comes to identifying technical and quantitative aptitude.

We founded Andela to find and train the top 1% of tech talent across the continent. After six months in our software-development program, young men and women work remotely for Fortune 500 companies and startups around the world while receiving continuing training and support. Clients such as Microsoft are leveraging us to tap into Africa’s talent, integrating the continent’s best and brightest into their workforces in new ways.

‘If the digital revolution began in dorm rooms and Silicon Valley, its future will be written in Lagos, Nairobi and Johannesburg.’

As other companies adopt similar approaches, this new, meritocratic model of workforce development will expand across the world, accelerated by massive demographic shifts already under way. Indeed, while the populations of rich countries shrink and age, Africa’s overall population is expected to double by 2050. Nigeria is projected to have more than 750 million people by 2100. It’s time to stop viewing this as simply a youth bulge—it is a talent bulge. If the digital revolution began in dorm rooms and Silicon Valley, its future will be written in Lagos, Nairobi and Johannesburg. And when the next Mark Zuckerberg is born in Africa, he (or she) will have far greater access to the opportunities that enabled Mark to reach a billion people in a single day.

The Wall Street Journal

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4 Reasons Africa is the Rising Star of the Tech World

By Jeremy Johnson, CEO & Co-Founder of Andela

With the world’s youngest, fastest-growing population, Africa is also the world’s largest source of untapped talent. But that talent pool is starting to be tapped as tech employers, large and small, turn their attention to the continent’s potential.

There are many economic, cultural, political and technological differences across Africa, but the continent is home to one of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies and holds extraordinary promise as an incubator of the next generation of tech talent.

Move over, Eastern Europe and India. Here are four reasons why hiring managers should look to Africa as a source for top tech talent:

1. "Demography is destiny."

As the French philosopher and sociologist Auguste Comte once said, "demography is destiny." Today, Africa has the youngest population in the world, a trend that’s expected to become even more pronounced over the coming decades. By 2040, half of the world’s young people will live in Africa. Simply put, anyone looking to find the next generation of the digital workforce should start focusing on Africa.

2. "The lions are going digital."

Technology use is expected to increase rapidly across the continent in the coming years, concludes a 2013 report from McKinsey & Company. In 2013, 67 million people in Africa used smartphones and 16 percent of the population was online. By 2025, the report projected, Internet penetration will reach 50 percent. That’s 600 million Internet users using 360 million smartphones. As the continent comes online, employers can increasingly access workers wherever there is an Internet connection.

3. The rise of "Savannah Valley."

As Africa goes digital, we are witnessing the emergence of entrepreneurial hubs across the continent. Tech hubs such as Co-Creation Hub in Lagos, Nigeria, and iHub in Nairobi, Kenya, are springing up to foster budding tech communities.

The emergence of these tech hubs also reflects increasing interest from the venture community. In the fourth quarter of 2014, African startups raised an unprecedented $200 million in venture money, data fromCrunchBase showed, with South Africa leading the way, followed by Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt. These hubs are fueling the rise of digitally-savvy young people who are every bit as talented and hungry as workers anyplace else.

Related: The 'White African' and Nairobi's Tech Hub

4. An easier way to do business overseas.

When employers look for workers overseas, there are often two barriers that stand in the way. The first is language. But while it is often difficult to find tech workers fluent in English in Eastern Europe, India or China, English is widely spoken across Africa.

The second barrier is business hours. Unlike India, however, cities in West Africa, like London, are on GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), which makes collaboration with U.S. and European teams much easier.

Together, the four reasons above point the way to a simple fact: the tech revolution may have started in Palo Alto, but its future will be written in Lagos, Nairobi and the capitals of Africa.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/241224

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Event Review: Talking Talent with Stack Overflow & The Muse

Last week, in honor of the two Andela developers in town from Lagos, Nigeria, we hosted an event at Fueled with Jon Chan, head developer evangelist from Stack Overflow, and Yusuf Simonson, CTO of The Muse. The evening offered us and others in the ecosystem a chance to peer into the minds of two super smart folks who think deeply about how to find great people and, just as importantly, ensure that those people have a great experience on your team.

While the topics ranged broadly, three key themes emerged:

The Importance of Continuous Learning

Why Mentorship Matters

Expanding Your Own Borders

The Importance of Continuous Learning

Stack Overflow was founded in part because of the importance of continuous learning to engineers, so it’s no surprise that the company takes integrating this core principle into their dev teams seriously. As a way to increase engagement while also improving productivity, Stack Overflow hosts training sessions, internal mini-conferences, and brown-bag lunches (sometimes even with Joel), as professional development options for employees. In addition, team members are encouraged to experiment, try new languages, and work on passion projects. Given the mission of the company - to support the learning of the world’s developers - I’m sure you’re not surprised by this focus on learning internally.  

Not everyone can work at Stack Overflow, though. Chan suggested that early stage companies provide employees unique opportunities. Being an early engineer allows the opportunity to provide expertise and guidance that may be overlooked otherwise. In addition, great engineers have an innate desire to solve tough problems. Working in an earlier stage company often creates room for that level of risk taking in a way that can get tougher as companies scale.

At The Muse, engineers are encouraged not just to constantly improve their technical skills, but also to take the chance to engage with people in other departments and better understand their goals. To facilitate this, the engineering team built a Slack bot that randomly assigns a coffee meeting between two people on the team, regardless of their department, once a week. And while this has been hugely popular to help maintain company culture as the company has grown from under 25 to over 60 employees during 2015, it can also cause challenges - like the time when it paired the CEO with a team member from Boston. Don’t worry though - they still made it work.  

Why Mentorship Matters

For Stack Overflow, mentorship isn’t just an important part of their culture - it’s a central tenet of the product itself. Because of this focus on learning and teaching, Jon has spearheaded a mentorship program that’s seen Stack Overflow developers working with both graduates of the Flatiron School as well as Andela Fellows.

These mentorship sprints typically last for 3 months and involve weekly in-person or video meetings between the mentor and mentee. While the process frequently involves a technical discussion and helping the mentee chart their progress, it’s not uncommon to spend the time discussion career development and how to continue growing as a leader.

There a reason this approach has worked so well: 88% of millennials report a preference for a collaborative work environment over a competitive one. And to add accountability to the mix, Stack Overflow’s annual review criteria includes an evaluation of an employee's public engagement and outreach, including their involvement with the mentorship program. As a result, the program has not only improved interactions within the company, but also the lives of their employees through an enhanced understanding of their own impact on the software development ecosystem.

Expanding Your Borders

Both Chan and Simonson echoed another common theme: to attract and retain top talent in the coming years, companies should look beyond a 20 mile radius of their office and focus on finding the most talented person - period. In addition, diversity in all forms, and the diverse life experiences that come with it, are increasingly viewed as an advantage for teams.  

For Stack Overflow, nearly half of the engineering team operates remotely, and Jon just arrived back in NYC after 4 months of travelling - all while working full time.

For The Muse, securing two developers from Andela represented their first foray into distributed teams. According to Simonson, the push to scale talent makes a distributed team an asset -- if you are able to use it effectively. In addition, he spoke of his recent trip to Nigeria to see Andela’s campus and how much his team had enjoyed getting to know Chibuzor and Gbolahan, their two newest members. Through fast paced daily standups, the perpetual connectivity of Slack, and spontaneous Google Hangouts, two developers from Lagos, Nigeria were already starting to blend into the frenetic flow of one of NYC’s fastest growing startups.

What would you have asked Stack Overflow and The Muse about their engineering teams? As you scale, what are the challenges you’re seeing and what tips would you offer to those going through it themselves? Let us know in the comments below!

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Why Udacity Chose Andela to Accelerate their Tech Team

“With Andela...We actually took a project that took 90 days and did it in 45.”

Meet Udacity - creators of the “Nanodegree,” builders of an online university and one of Andela’s latest partner success stories. Udacity needed to quickly scale their tech team to build platforms that supported email marketing and connected graduates with potential employers. See why they chose Andela developers to get the job done.

Greg Brauner, Director of Growth Marketing says, “When it takes us 9 months to hire a developer, and if you guys can do it in 3 days, let’s do it.”

Learn More About Andela.

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Tech Talent Born in Africa Will Play a Transformational Role in IT

By Gary Beach as published in CIO Journal of The Wall Street Journal

By 2025 I guarantee every chief information officer reading this column will employ staff in Africa in some capacity.

My unorthodox prediction is based on data culled from “The Skills Gap Almanac,” a project I manage on Twitter at #skillsgapalmanac. Content for the almanac is extracted each day from returns I have set to 55 Google alerts about the skills gap in IT jobs.

When I started the project eight months ago, I included a “Skills Gap Africa” alert, but with little hope the returns would yield insight. In all my previous years spent viewing vendor presentations, often the only time Africa appeared at all was as the continental appendage to the “EMEA” region – Europe, Middle East, Africa.

But returns today from the “Skills Gap Africa” alert are among the most frequent and meaningful ones I receive each morning. There are stories about how companies like SAP SE SAP.XE +0.80% are sponsoring Africa Code Week. Other stories describe how startups, like New York-based startup Andela Inc., are in the region offering software development training and sourcing work to Fortune 500 firms. After reading this kind of material daily, I have grown into a big believer in the current, and future, potential of millions of young Africans to contribute to the global tech community.

Here’s a brief refresher on Africa’s tech talent potential.  Over one billion people live on the continent. It is also the world’s “youngest” continent with more 16 to 24 year olds than anywhere else on earth. By 2035, Africa’s projected workforce growth of 910 million 16 to 64-year-olds will be more than that of China, India, Europe and the United States combined!

“The large increase in population is good news for Africa,” claims Jill Huntley, managing director for Global Corporate Citizenship at Accenture ACN -3.24% plc, a firm whose “Skills To Succeed” initiative nurtures tech talent in Tanzania, Zambia and Rwanda and partners with groups like The Rockefeller Foundation’s “Digital Jobs Africa” initiative. “But the glass is half-full” given the unpredictability of “the nature and future of work, the pace of change and infrastructure challenges” in the future.

To fill that glass, network infrastructure and energy grids must be built. Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder of the MIT Media Lab, supports a global network of low-earth-orbiting satellites to connect Africa’s talent to the Internet at broadband speeds. AT&T Inc.T -0.23%, a firm that has invested in Africa’s telecom infrastructure grid since the last 1970’s, prefers the approach of a global network of undersea cables with multiple drop-off points surrounding Africa. Facebook Inc.FB +0.06% and Alphabet Inc.GOOGL +0.07%’s Google also are exploring technology aimed at connecting more of Africa to the digital economy.

This is one debate where there are no losers. Whether it is satellites or cables, Roman Pacewicz, senior vice president at AT&T Inc. responsible for global marketing and strategy, claims “when combined with mobility adoption rates that are growing faster than any other part of the globe, the continent of Africa is poised to realize remarkable advances in resource efficiency and productivity.”

Network infrastructure and energy grid investments are costly. But there is encouraging news out of Africa on those fronts too. The Brookings Institute reports foreign direct investment flows into Africa increased 500% to $133 billion from 2001 to 2012.  And just several months ago, The Blackstone Group BX +0.84% and the Carlyle Group CG -0.06%, two of the world’s biggest private equity firms, made a joint $5 billion investment in Africa’s Sub-Saharan energy grid. China also is an active investor on the continent.

So what’s in it for chief information officers?

Tiffany Nash, an executive with the Computer Science Teachers Association, summarizes the talent potential of Africa. “Africa is India 2.0,” she says. The talent potential of Africa 2015 is similar to the talent potential of India in 1995. In fact, in the World Economic Forum’s 2015-2016 “Global Competitiveness Report” Kenya ranks higher than India in areas like “business usage of technology”, “individual usage of technology”, “quality of education system” and “capacity for innovation.”

But comparative rankings of African countries are not the most important issue for chief information officers. Affordable human talent is. Andela Co-Founder Jeremy Johnson says “if you believe brilliance is evenly distributed but opportunity is not, then you have to conclude that there are places where there are staggering numbers of extraordinarily bright people who just don’t have a path to the global economy.”

Africa is one of those “places” and in talent assessment tests administered in Nigeria, Andela routinely finds skilled tech talent that Plum, a global technology talent testing firm, ranks about the top two percent of skilled software developers worldwide.

The World Bank cautions that growth in the near term will remain “uneven,” because of civil unrest, corruption, governmental bureaucracy and other regional challenges. So where can a chief information officer find these “extraordinarily bright people” right now?

I recommend you start, or expand, your African journey in any one of these seven countries: South Africa, Mauritius, Botswana, Zambia, Namibia, Kenya and Nigeria.

Rob Enslin, President of SAP SE and a native of South Africa, writing about Africa says, “there is so much more to do but through intense collaboration and selfless partnerships, we can seize this opportunity of a lifetime” to connect what Nicholas Negroponte calls “the last billion people on the planet” to tech employment opportunities in the 21st century.

http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2015/12/15/tech-talent-born-in-africa-will-play-a-transformational-role-in-it/

Gary Beach is the publisher emeritus of CIO magazine.

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New Guys- An Orientation For Offshore Colleagues

By: LIZZIE WIDDICOMBE, New Yorker

It’s tough being the new guy at work. There are protocols to master, computer programs to navigate, desk locations to commit to memory. Then there are the social perils, best encapsulated by an old Onion headline: “INTERN STRIKES UP FRIENDSHIP WITH LEAST-RESPECTED EMPLOYEE.”

When Tolu Komolafe and Jesmine Omonori, both twenty-five, started working for Everplans, a tech startup in the Flatiron district, earlier this year, they faced the additional complication of living five thousand miles away, in Lagos, Nigeria. Everplans is a digital platform for end-of-life planning. Komolafe and Omonori had been hired as programmers through Andela, an organization that pays talented Nigerians to learn computer programming, then puts them to work, remotely, for international companies. Unlike most offshore firms, Andela encourages its people to forge close relationships with their new colleagues. Because Komolafe and Omonori couldn’t meet the Americans in person, Komolafe said, “we went online and read everything about them.” They hit Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. For months, they lived, virtually, in the Everplans office: joining meetings via teleconference, hanging out in Slack chat rooms, even contributing the occasional office in-joke—such as when Komolafe circulated a video of Omonori moonwalking.

The extra effort helped. “The video of Jesmine dancing is amazing!” Bernie Kravitz, the company’s V.P. of technology, said the other day, in Everplans’ Manhattan office. Abby Schneiderman, a co-C.E.O., added, “We consider them part of the team.” The office has the kindergartenish look of many tech startups: whiteboard walls covered with scribbled code, a conference table piled with Legos.

After months of working remotely, Komolafe and Omonori had just been flown in for an orientation. Neither had left Nigeria before. Komolafe is petite and peppy. She had her hair in long braids, and she wore a pink polo shirt and little diamond hoop earrings. Omonori is more reserved. He wore an orange T-shirt that said “Head to Toe Rock n Roll.” They said that their favorite thing about New York was the variety of food. The night before, they’d joined colleagues for happy hour at Rosa Mexicano, where they ordered virgin mango margaritas. Komolafe said, “We actually loved guacamole!”

At around 10:30 A.M., Komolafe and Omonori aced their first hurdle: the daily “standup” meeting, which the tech team conduct on their feet, to keep it speedy. (Komolafe demonstrated a flair for office-speak by announcing that she was done—“but not done done”—with an assignment.)

At eleven, it was time for the “new guy” orientation, an office tradition. Adam Seifer, the other co-C.E.O., explained, “When you start at the company, you’re the new guy.” In the orientation ceremony, the previous new guy meets the new new guy and teaches him or her the ropes. The tech team filed out, and Everplans’ less-new guys—Matt Kempin, Justin Valle, Scott Schmugar, and Peter Bogart Johnson—filed in.

“How are you guys liking it so far?” Schmugar asked.

“We’re so excited,” Omonori said. “I couldn’t sleep yesterday.”

Schmugar opened a black binder called the “new guy Bible.” First order of business: bathrooms. “We’re responsible for the whole floor,” he said. “If anything’s out, check under the sink for more toilet paper. Don’t leave anyone hanging.”

Next, the whiteboards. “You can write on any of the walls,” he said. “If you want to save what you wrote, take a picture.”

Komolafe pointed to a regular wall that was not covered with whiteboard paint. “Can I write on this wall that’s white?”

“No.”

Bogart Johnson took the binder. “We have four printers in the office,” he said. “Two are color, two are black-and-white.” He flipped back to the bathroom page. “In the men’s room, there is a butt-washer that was introduced by Ammon”—a member of the product team—“fairly recently. It is exactly what it sounds like.” Omonori grinned.

Next came notes about coffee—“There’s a special coffeemaker called an AeroPress,” Bogart Johnson said. “Bernie and I know how to use it”—and snacks. Mondays are “bagel breakfasts.” Kemper told the new guys about an in-office bar with “a lot of high-end liquor.” They nodded politely.

Schmugar brought up local lunch spots. “Where have you gone?” he asked.

Komolafe and Omonori looked at each other. “Dig It?” Komolafe said.

“Dig Inn. That’s a good spot.”

Schmugar said, “Now tell us something people might not know about you. Do you sing, dance?”

“I play the snare drum,” Komolafe said.

Omonori thought for a minute, then said, “In high school, my tuition was less than eight dollars for one year.” He added that he’d represented his school at the state Math Olympiad. The less-new guys seemed intimidated.

Omonori offered another fun fact. “I did standup comedy in college,” he said, adding modestly, “I don’t think I’m that funny anymore.”

Komolafe assured him: “You’re not funny.”

This seemed to satisfy the old new guys. They packed up the binder, and everyone went to lunch. ♦

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/new-guys

[thisisandela]

Stack Overflow and Andela partner to provide education beyond borders

By Jon Chan, Stack Exchange

When I think about the impact that Stack Overflow has had on the world, it’s tempting for me to think about numbers: how many active users we have, how many questions are answered in a day, how many jobs get posted on our Careers platform. These are things that I, as a developer, think about on a daily basis to measure how we’re helping programmers around the world grow. But I find that these numbers are hard to wrap my head around: it doesn’t quite give me a feel for what our work is doing. What is the quality of our impact? What does it feel like at an individual level?

In just a week into our new partnership with Andela, that impact is becoming clearer than it ever has before. Over the course of eight weeks, six of Stack Overflow’s developers based around the world are providing one-on-one mentorship to six new Andela developers in Lagos, Nigeria. Twice a week, the developers “meet” over video chat and cover everything from pair programming to preparing for technical interviews and sharing career advice. We chose Andela as a partner because of the amazing work they are doing training world-class developers in Africa. We have a shared commitment to remote work and providing access to tech education in underserved communities, and we are so excited to advance these goals together.

Our initial sessions with the Andela developers have been incredible, and we’ve all been very impressed by how bright and energetic the fellows are. Marco, one of our developers has said of his mentee Bosun: “[He] is veryenthusiastic and smart, and constantly reminds me of a kid in a candy store. I am very impressed by him.” It’s a testament to how thorough Andela is at finding and growing top technical talent. As we were talking about our first few sessions, Nick, another one of our developers, recalled a conversation he had with his menteeAbimbola: “the Andela program itself is pretty crazy…if you haven’t talked to your mentee about it yet, I highly recommend it and prepare to be amazed at what they go through just getting into the program.” The level of training the Andela developers gets prepares them to hit the ground running and it allows each mentee to get personalized training from their mentor. Max and Fiyin covered how we do automated testing and builds at Stack Exchange. Oded and Adeleke are going over MVPs and user-centric design. Pairs are covering everything from data structures and algorithms, solving coding challenges like N-Puzzle, to building apps targeted at the African market.

Another thing we’re picking up on is how everyone’s cultures intersect and what challenges we face working across so many boundaries. In just our group of twelve developers (both mentors and mentees), there are four different countries represented across different ages, genders, and races. Given our own focus on remote work, some of this comes pretty naturally to us. For example, coordinating meetings across time zones is something we’re used to, but there are some challenges unique to our partnership with Andela. For example, some of us had connectivity issues with Google Hangouts, and many of us have switched over to Skype for its reliability on Andela’s end. We quickly realized some of the things many of us as developers take for granted are larger factors in our partnership. But even with these challenges, we’re finding that individuals across the world are thinking about the same issues in the technology industry. Roberta, one of our developers based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil brought up the following about her first few sessions with Mirabel in Lagos, Nigeria: “She also had questions and concerns regarding diversity and I think I convinced her that things are getting better and that being a programmer is super awesome. <3” We’re learning that many of the questions we think about at Stack are the same questions individuals in vastly different parts of the world are thinking about.

We’re just getting into our first few sessions with the developers at Andela, and we couldn’t be more excited to be working with such bright individuals in a truly transformative organization. Over the next several weeks, we’re going to continue to see how we can help the Andela developers grow and discover what we learn working across boundaries we’re not used to crossing. As the program reaches its end, we’ll give another update here. My sessions with my own mentee, Babajide, are something I look forward to every week, and they give me perspective on how the work Stack Exchange and Andela is doing to educate developers around the world really impacts people at the individual level. It gives richness to the numbers that I think about every day.

If you would like more information about our partnership with Andela, email me at [email protected] or reach out to me on Twitter.

Jon is a web developer and heads up developer evangelism efforts at Stack Exchange.

[thisisandela]

Andela is Expanding to New Countries: Where Should We Go Next?

Over the last year, Andela has proven that we can train world-class remote software developers and place them with leading companies around the globe. In less than one year, we have received over 12,000 applications and trained roughly 60 full-time developers at our campus in Lagos, Nigeria. Andela developers are currently working remotely with clients ranging from startups like Udacity to large public companies like 2U.

Building on our success in Nigeria, Andela is now planning to expand to other key markets across Africa. After an in-depth round of market research, Andela is excited to formally launch a Call for Applications from talented, driven young people from Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa.

Each of these countries presents a strong case based on their vibrant youth populations, levels of innovation, strong signs of growth in the areas of technology and entrepreneurship, and more. With a combined population of over 100 million, these markets represent a path towards Andela’s vision of training 100,000 developers over the next 10 years.

In the months ahead, Andela plans to begin operating in one or more of these countries.  To make the decision about where and when to launch its program, Andela will be reviewing the applications from each of these countries to identify the best location for Andela’s next country of operations.

Andela is building a movement of quality technology talent across the African continent that will drive tech-enabled growth around the world. We believe Africa is one of the largest untapped markets for talent development. The Andela team is made up of young professionals who are leading this movement of next generation technology leaders across Africa and who will show the world that while the digital revolution may have started in America, its future will be written in cities and towns across Africa.

If you want to see Andela in your city - whether it’s Nairobi or Mombasa, Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg or Accra - submit your application and help us spread the word.

Apply in Kenya

Apply in Ghana

Apply in South Africa

[thisisandela]

Andela and thoughtbot Partner to Deliver Premium Services with a Social Impact

We are proud to announce a new partnership bringing together the design and development consulting services synonymous with thoughtbot and the world-class software development and social impact of Andela.

Through this partnership, startups and global enterprise organizations enlisting thoughtbot for premium design and development services can benefit from Andela developers integrated into their teams at no additional cost. This means clients can not only leverage Andela’s pipeline of technical talent, they can also pave a path to the digital economy for brilliant, driven young men and women in Africa.

thoughtbot, one of the country’s highest quality and fastest growing elite software consulting firms, and Andela, the technology partner for mission-driven companies, not only share a commitment to deliver world-class software development services. We also share similar values. These values include a strong commitment to providing opportunities for talented people who are willing to work hard for them.

Reflecting these values is thoughtbot’s apprenticeship, a 3-month paid program where apprentices work alongside thoughtbot designers and developers on real projects, and are assigned a Mentor as their primary instructor. Through this partnership, thoughtbot will begin accepting apprentices from Andela's corps of developers.

The first apprenticeship kicked off this month with Andela developer Bosun Olanrewaju who joins the thoughtbot team in New York from Nigeria. The office culture and team-building activities at thoughtbot, including Friday morning drawing sessions, have been a particular highlight during Bosun’s time there.

We couldn't be more excited to bring this premium level of quality and talent to companies around the world while also offering clients the opportunity to expand their social impact. We invite you to participate and learn what we’re all about.

                      Jeremy Johnson                     Chad Pytel                       CEO, Andela                           CEO, thoughtbot

[thisisandela]

Developer Spotlight

The stories that shape Andela developers inspires us on a daily basis. The goal of this series is to share some of them with you. This month we introduce Olalekan Sogunle, a member of our second class. 

Why did you decide that you wanted to become a software developer?

After college, I stopped doing everything related to coding. I told myself that I either needed get to a Masters degree or find a job. One day, I made the mistake of reading Paul Graham’s "Hackers and Painters." I call it a mistake because it completely took me off the “get a Masters degree or find a job” path. I read the book 10 years after it was published and it was as though I was having a conversation with the author. It changed everything about my thinking, orientation, and future pursuit of success. From the book, I realized that to code, all you need is your brain, a computer, and the internet. After that, I decided to learn coding myself, with or without help. I was determined to create something out of nothing, because that was the lesson I got from the book. As a result, I started seeking the fastest and most effective way to learn to code. During my research, I stumbled upon Codecademy where I started my first HTML/CSS course online. What I discovered was fun and amazing. Realizing that I could actually code, poured a river of encouragement into my blood and made me determined to push further.

Read the rest here.

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[thisisandela]

Andela featured in Inc: 10 Tech Companies Shaking Up Their Industries

“Andela, a "global talent accelerator," is aiming to alleviate the shortage of software developers by finding and training Africa's brightest youth to be programmers, and then placing them in jobs at American and European companies. Andela brags that it is harder to gain acceptance to its programs than to Harvard. Those who make the cut go through intensive training, and nearly all of the graduates wind up with virtual, full-time jobs.”

Read the rest of the article here.

[thisisandela]

Case Study: Knotwork

Knotwork distinguishes itself from other professional networking applications through a “pay-it-forward” approach to networking. The effortless - what Knotwork calls "karmic" - mobile platform uses data-driven recommendations to drive more impactful introductions among users. Founder and CEO Bill Bricker and his CTO found themselves armed with an innovative concept and ready to get started, but short on development help and capital. They turned to Andela to supply developers with the skills to launch the MVP on time, but at a cost-effective price point. Andela developers Johnson Ejezie and Shittu Adedamola joined the Knotwork team with a mission to deliver an alpha version of the app for Knotwork’s private launch. Under the guidance of Knotwork’s executive team, Johnson and Shittu wrote the app using Objective-C and Cloudkit for managing and storing user data.

At the time Johnson was assigned to the project, he had been focusing on Swift, but was able to pivot quickly to Objective-C. For Shittu, iOS was new territory, but his training paid off. One week into the engagement, we received the following feedback from Bill: "These guys rock. They're moving along faster than I expected and are both super enthusiastic about working on this." According to Bill, the consistency of his team’s output helped mitigate the potential challenges of a distributed workforce and the time difference between California and Nigeria. Instead of just waiting for instructions, Johnson and Shittu proved themselves to be highly engaged members of the team. Bill describes a typical troubleshooting session as an active conversation: “We'll tell them something and ask, ‘What do you think?’ And they'll say, ‘We tried that. And, we tried another way. And, we tried another way.’... They are thinking through the problems and coming up with solutions." In the coming months, Knotwork expects to release a beta incorporating feedback from its first group of private users. Johnson and Shittu will continue leading efforts to test and develop the beta. Over time, Knotwork seeks to facilitate professional networking through more meaningful, on-demand connections and make the process more enjoyable along the way. We are proud to have Andela developers contributing to this new technology.

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