By; Adel Farig
Andela, the global tech company that specializes in providing software engineering teams as a service to enable companies to build their teams and products faster, hosted an all engineers event dubbed the ‘Remote Heroes’ Event at Greek Campus on Saturday, February 22. Following the launch of its campaign Grow With Andela, the event is part of the company’s plans to recruit more experienced engineers and scale operations in Egypt. Since launching its operations in Cairo and thereafter in Egypt, Andela has so far hired over 100 employees and is looking forward to further expand in the Egyptian market.
The global tech company is expecting that the number of its employees in Egypt will double by the end of the current year 2020. The event themed “Brilliance of a borderless software engineer”, the event was attended by Mr Tarek Zidan, Chairman and CEO of Athear Marketing Services, Ms Rama El Safty Country Director Andela Egypt, Mr.Ahmed Tolba the Principal Engineering Manager at Microsoft as well as over 50 software engineers and tech leaders who discussed what it means for software engineers today to work in a remote, distributed team and the tips to succeed at it. They also engaged in intriguing discussions concerning to major shifts in the global tech-eco system and the major change in employment policies heading towards distributed business models as a result. According to a report by Upwork, 73% of companies will have distributed teams by 2028 with employees spread over multiple locations. “More international companies today are changing their employment policies to rely on distributed teams,” said Ms Rama El Safty in her opening remarks.
“According to the latest statistics, 54% of companies have become flexible with regards to the working hours of their employees. Among the companies that deal with teams distributed across borders are Github, Coursera, Weave, and Women Who Code.
This trend is rapidly increasing and changing the shape of the labour market to keep up with the shift. As a result, it is important to understand the concept of the remote work model for both the organization and software engineers in order to achieve excellence in a remote working environment to cope with the constantly changing and rapidly evolving technological industry.
” The opening speech was followed by a talk from Randa Fahmy, one of Andela's senior software engineers and a mother of two - a 6-year-old child and a baby. She spoke of her general professional experience followed by her working experience at Andela where just a few months after her joining Andela, she was able to enhance her skills and learn IOS, which enabled her to lead a remote team at the American software company “Weave”.
Highlighting the benefits of Andela’s unique remote work model and the advantages of working in a distributed software engineering team, she said “For engineers, working remotely offers work-life balance, access to global companies, increased productivity, and impactful work with top international companies. At Andela, in addition to all this, you get to interact with engineers from all over the world.”
After that, a panel discussion took place featuring Mr Tarek Zidan, Mr Ahmed Tolba, and Ms Rama El-Safty, as the moderator, on the benefits for companies choosing remote workers.
According to a 2019 Hacker Rank Report, 80% of developers stated that one of their top priorities when looking for jobs is remote work to help them maintain a work-life balance. For companies offering remote work, this enables them to retain workers and access top talent. In this panel discussion, Mr Ahmed Tolba made it clear that software engineers can benefit greatly from the flexibility that is provided by remote working.
Engineers can devote more time to gain more skills and self-development through e-learning. It also allows them to achieve the right balance between the benefits of working with talented people abroad and earning a good income while enjoying a healthy personal life with the family in Egypt.
In the same context, Mr Tarek Zidan pointed out that the new generations are smarter, faster to learn, and more knowledgeable because of their ability to access information via the Internet, which facilitates remote work. At the conclusion of the conference, Mr Sherif Olama, Talent Partnerships Lead in Andela Egypt, announced the launch of the new round of the Andela Learning Community Program "ALC", which was created with the aim of giving software engineers the skills they need to improve their employability.
Andela entered into partnerships with Google and Pluralsight to provide an intensive training program for 16 weeks. The program targeted 60,000 applicants last year, however, it received 120,000 requests. The target number for this year has been increased to 65,000. The program is available in 10 countries, with greater priority given to Egypt.
It is also worth mentioning that this is the sixth event in a series of Remote Heroes event hosted across Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda as part of its “Grow with Andela” campaign launched in November 2019.
On the 8th of February, Andela hosted its Remote Heroes event which was attended by key stakeholders and leading technologists in Ghana such as Edem Kumodzi, CTO at Africa Foresight Group, Ivy Barley, CEO of Developers in Vogue, Williams Adu, Principal Engineer at Andela and Stefan Froelich, Principal Engineer at Andela who all shared insights on “Toolkit & Essentials for Engineers on Becoming World Class” at a panel session. Engineers interested in Andela can apply at andela.com/egypt-engineers "
