Andela, the Venture-backed firm that builds distributed engineering teams with Africa’s top software engineers, is set to potentially let go of approximately 420 junior engineers and staff to deliver stronger engineering support for its clients.
Around 250 of this will come from its Nigeria and Uganda hubs with another 170 potentially impacted in Kenya. A company spokesperson tells TechMoran no one has been let go as we speak and the firm says the position might change and the numbers might reduce or a different solution might be found for its staff and developers.
In a statement, the firm’s CEO Jeremy Johnson said the move aims to help it restructure its talent pool to more closely align with global market demand for senior quality talent fit for its engineering-as-a-service model.
“It has also become clear, however, that the majority of the demand is for more experienced talent, and to keep up with it, we need to grow our senior talent base even faster,” he said.
“This shift in demand also means that we now have more junior talent than we are able to place. This is a challenge for the business, and for these junior engineers who want, and deserve, authentic work experiences that we are not able to provide.”
The firm says its working with all impacted junior engineers and staff to provide them a holistic professional and financial support package.
The firm has been reaching out to job boards and recruitment platforms to get the affected teams placement and job opportunities. Andela is also working with Nigeria’s CcHUB, Kenya’s iHub and Uganda’s Innovation Village to help connect impacted developers with opportunities in their local ecosystems. These hubs have identified over 60 companies who are looking to hire top quality junior engineering talent.
These hubs will also offer impacted engineers the opportunity to use their co-working spaces free of charge for the next three months as they look for their next big opportunities or innovations.
Just yesterday, ex-Andela engineers launched Eden, a TaskRabbit for Nigeria. The team describes Eden as an automation for house chores, they call it a room service for homes.
To make up for this, Andela plans to hire an additional 700 experienced engineers by the end of 2020 to meet its customers’ demands.
Janet Maingi, Andela Kenya Country Director said, “Andela is a community as much as we are a business and, as such, our immediate priority is to provide support to those potentially affected by today’s news and the means for them to find stability. Change in an organization is not easy, but almost always inevitable to maintain performance and growth. We believe our most recent change in strategy positions us to be a stronger engineering organisation.”
Moving forward, the company will continue to invest in the Andela Learning Community (ALC), which has already introduced over 30,000 learners from across the continent to software engineering. Over the next three years, the company expects over 100,000 engineers from across the continent to take advantage of programs within the community.
Johnson concluded, “To succeed in our long-term mission, we have to make tough decisions to continue growing a company that we know will change the way the world thinks about talent.”
