I am happy these conversations are happening here. Andela is one of the great programs happening in this nation at this point of her growth.
I am really interested in joining the Andela program but 4 years is really much to ask.
Is there some business training involved within this four years like the equivalent of an MBA? if you say you want to develop world class developers who wuold later become world class entrepreneurs such training is needed and it would be an easier pill to swallow.
Also, is there a system to check a persons experience and codability and short circuit the number of years involved?
@iaboyeji Interesting interview. My question for Andela would be in terms of scalability. When we think of growth, we typically think of insane growth a la Facebook, Whatsapp, Amazon etc. Andela is obviously and inherently different. You guys have the huge (& beautiful) Yaba campus. If such campuses are to be built across Africa to reach your goal of 100k developers in 10 years, then question arise like;
Do you buy or rent?
What would overhead costs for say 15-20 campuses look like?
How does the campus model affect the speed at which you can move? Is it the determining factor in terms of scalability?
How many developers at maturity would Andela house?
How much would each developer have to make in order to cover recurring costs?
It seems from the outside that although you guys are a âtalent acceleratorâ, your actual business is in getting outsourced work (correct me if Iâm wrong).
Are the other revenue sources apart from âfreelancingâ? e.g developing and selling proprietary software
Do you consider your core competency âtalent accelerationâ or software development?
Let me stop there before this starts bordering on intrusion lol. Given the novelty of the Andela model, I think if some of those questions are answered, then people might begin to get an idea about the actual business.
As it is with startups, we are still figuring out some of these questions and the rest are operational intellectual property or not in my
own specific area of expertise so I will prefer not to answer them
The one point I want to address though is outsourcing. A lot of people think we are outsourcing and we are not. We do remote work. The biggest difference between the two is with outsourcing people, process and outcomes of a technology product are managed by an external party. You donât know or care who builds your product. With remote work however, we give you the qualified people and the company will manage its own process and outcomes⌠Our developers work as members of your team using your own process and tools and the outcomes are produced in collaboration with more senior engineers on your team (this is something we insist on for our clients). Our developers work on your timeline, communicate in your slack channel and have company email just like anyone else in your company.
It is an emerging area brought about the revolution the internet has brought to the workplace. We now have the ability to maintain distributed workforce across the globe and tap into brilliance in parts of the world most people wouldnât visit not to talk of work in.
Thatâs the magic we make possible at Andela and excited to see how this translates to other industries as others learn from our example.
First of all @iaboyeji, You know you are doing something right when people start felling entitled to it.
Four years is a long time? Of course. So the plan is to dust your sweet little behind and take it to Andela, develop their skills, eat their food, breathe their air, get paid while youâre on it and just up and leave as soon as you can?
I studied computer science in UNN, paying school fees and listening to beat-up lectures for 4 years. I felt (and still feel) like I was duped all through those 4 years. We were taught ABSOLUTELY NOTHING of relevance. We had first class graduates who canât produce a Hello World program in any language. INTRODUCTION TO ALGORITHM was a FINAL year course. Curriculum hasnât been changed in close to 15yrs. Needless to say that the lectures had NO idea what the heck they were teaching or how to even go about updating the curriculum. My first HOD was a PHYSICS lecturer. I would later discover that it wasnât just UNN, it was like that in almost every computer science department in all Nigerian Universities. That is the reality of a 4 year computer science training in Nigerian Uni, and you had to pay to get that. If you wanted to get any real skill, you had to go pay for NIIT with one arm and one leg.
Now Andela is paying people to become world class developers. 4 years after I spent 4 years in UNN, Iâm seriously fighting the urge to go spend another 4 years at Andela! Even if you donât get all the way to world class, the thought of going through hands on professional development (especially considering the current trend in tech startups) sounds too good, even if it takes 4 yrs. Heck, if they were here earlier, I would have ditched secondary school! They are the only ones doing something this good around here right now and it couldnât be more timely!
Since I learnt about Andela, all I can think about is how they can integrate with Nigerian Universitiesâ Computer Science departments to offer some real value for school fees paid and time spent.
Whether Andela produces âworld class developersâ or âtechnology leadersâ is long story. Nobody is producing what they are producing right now, and they pay.
Andela is a great institution. Theyâve only decide to challenge the conventional and traditional way of how Learning is done in Africa and frankly the World too.
Our Local tech ecosystem is still in its infants stages and needs more technology companies like Andela to evolve and challenge the norm.
We all need to assist and help each other for our Ecosystem to develop and have significant impact in Africa and the world at Large. Rather than criticise Andelaâs model, I think we should give Constructive Feedback which are in the real sense viable solutions to temporary problems that might be wrong with Andelaâs model.
We need to support ourselves and encourage each other.
Andela is a great program, an initiative that is timely, Students spend 4 years studying computer science at a university and canât do jack with a computer. Andela plans to covert newbies to code ninjas in the same 4 years. This begs the question @iaboyeji have you considered pivoting Andela as a degree awarding institution at the same time maintaining your current program objectives and teaching methodologies. I think that would be a serious game changer for your start up.
Thought about it but my last startup was in the heavily regulated University space. Still scarred by the sheer number of man hours I spent in NUC. I also doubt our current program structure will be approved by those old school professors at the NUC. It could happen but we need to show some light and day difference in the educational outcomes first. Another reason I am excited for 2020.
What I donât understand is why there is so much heat on Andela here. Why? First, you donât even get to criticize them if you are doing absolutely nothing yourself to improve other peoples lives. Second, I honestly donât care if they are here for cheaper labor (which is probably still better pay than what a lot of people are getting around here) Dude, you are getting paid to learn! Quality education is expensive! Just ask all those Americans with huge debt after college!! Unless your daddy is Donald Trump you probably have to keep a job on the side just to keep up. And here you are complaining about a 4 year learning experience that will let you rub minds with developers at some of the biggest software companies in the world. Not free o! Even better - PAID. As for everybody whining about the 4 years! If itâs a problem for you, donât do it. Simple. And honestly, if you think 4 (paid) years is too much sacrifice for significantly improving your coding, maybe coding is not for you. I welcome the 4 years and I canât wait to meet me 4 years after. But first I have to get in (yaâll stay on here and criticize away - freedom of speech lol)