Andela, a software engineering scouting company, has announced the departure of 420 engineers and staff, 170 of them in Kenya, as part of its restructuring that has affected its operations in Uganda and Nigeria, where about 250 have been affected.
The company is restructuring its talent pool to “more closely align” with global market demand.
Mr Jeremy Johnson, Andela co-founder and CEO, says the bulk of the demand in asoftware engineering is for more experienced talent, and to keep up with it, the company needs to grow its senior talent base even faster.
“This shift in demand means that we now have more junior talent than we are able to place,” he said in a statement released on Tuesday, Sept. 17th, 2019. “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.”
Andela plans to hire an additional 700 experienced engineers by the end of 2020. “Today’s announcement will not affect Andela customers’ operations, as the company evolves to deliver even stronger engineering support for their teams,” he said.
Andela says it is working with impacted and potentially impacted employees to provide professional and financial support.
Engineering Talent in Kenya
In addition, the company is partnering with CcHUB (Nigeria), iHub (Kenya), and Innovation Village (Uganda) to help connect impacted developers with opportunities in their local ecosystems. Together, they 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.
Ms Janet Maingi, Andela Kenya Country Director, says the immediate priority is to provide support to those potentially affected by the restructuring to find stability. “Change in an organization is not easy, but almost always inevitable to maintain performance and growth,” said Ms Maingi. “We believe our most recent change in strategy positions us to be a stronger engineering organisation.”
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The company says it will continue to invest in the Andela Learning Community (ALC), which has already introduced more than 30,000 learners from across the continent to software engineering. Over the next three years, the company expects more than 100,000 engineers from across the continent to take advantage of programs within the community.
Mr Johnson said five years ago, Andela was launched to solve a global challenge: Brilliance is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not. “To succeed in our long-term mission,” he says, “we have to make tough decisions to continue growing a company that we know will change the way the world thinks about talent.”
