Andela has lately been in the news for laying off software developers in most of its African Operations. The effects of COVID-19 plus operational costs have forced the software engineering company to go fully-remote. This comes weeks after announcing plans to go 100% remote, Andela is finally losing off its offices in Africa and also selling off their equipment.
The rumors were confirmed way back in May, by Andela’s CEO, Jeremy Johnson in a tweet when he said, “it is true that we’re going fully remote, but it’s not a secret. We announced it earlier this week to all Andelans”.
In a long medium post the CEO confirmed that;
This week, we announced at an all-hands that we are going to be a remote-first company. While we’ve always been a leader in distributed work, we’ve now proven that we can operate fully remote by delivering excellent work to our customers over the past couple of months. We will continue to ensure that our engineers have the infrastructure needed to operate at a world-class level.
A source at Andela Uganda has already confirmed to Techjaja that yes, indeed the software development firm has already sold off his equipment to few employees and is now reportedly selling to asset disposal companies.
Andela’s lay-off history
In September 2019, Andela carried out its first lay-offs–saying goodbye to over over 400 junior software developers in Uganda, Kenya, and Nigeria as the company made big changes from within –in a new strategic move. The technology outsourcing company first launched in Nigeria over six years ago, its business model was to–train local new-level developers to be able to compete on a global market.
A second -wave of lay-offs occurred at in March, as the company struggled to find job placements for the more junior engineers, on top of the internal communication issues that have long troubled the software firm. At that time, an internal memo that was issued on February 26th confirmed that Andela had launched a voluntary exit program targeted at all “idle” developers. Andela is requested the Eng 1 and Eng 2 developers currently in its employ who are yet to secure placement to leave at their own will if they so wish.
By May, Andela announced that it will lay-off a further 135 staff across 4 countries as directors took pay cuts in order to survive the COVID-19 effects. The company’s USA customer base was held up and the majority had been impacted by the economic downturn. Expectations for slow growth necessitate cost-cutting measures to ensure that we make it to the other side.
ALSO READ: How Ugandan company leaders should guide their teams on Working Remotely
The future of work is remote
In addition to going fully remote, transition will help the software development firm focus on enabling talent required to think differently about talent itself. Andela has broadly been known as the top network of engineers across the continent of Africa. While they’ve trained more than 100,000 people through programs like the Andela Learning Community, in order to actually be placed with a company, they’ve historically had to be a full-time Andela employee.
The company says that this limited the opportunities they’re able to provide, and it also reduced the breadth of talent available to their customers. As Andela expands its network to include top engineers from across the continent, and eventually around the world — they won’t require engineers to be full-time employees to apply for opportunities, Andela’s CEO, Jeremy Johnson confirmed.
This means Andela’s future plans include having a global engineering talent network not only confined in Africa. And this transitions will allow the company to expand access to top talent for our customers and increase opportunities for the best engineers around the globe.
