Andela, the Africa-focused software developer training and outsourcing company is laying off more than 400 developers from its hubs in Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda. The move comes as the company looks to restructure its talent pool to more closely align with global market demand.
According to Jeremy Johnson, Andela co-founder and CEO says the move will affect junior engineers. The company will now focus on growing its senior talent base instead.
“As the talent world has evolved, we have as well, and over the past few years it’s become increasingly clear that the world needs what Andela provides: high-quality engineering-as-a-service. 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.” Jeremy Johnson, Andela co-founder and CEO says.
“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.” he adds.
Andela says it is now working with all impacted and potentially impacted employees and is committed to providing a holistic professional and financial support package. The company says it is partnering with CcHUB (Nigeria), iHub (Kenya), and Innovation Village (Uganda) to help connect them 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.
Beyond this restructure, Andela continues to grow rapidly with plans to hire an additional 700 experienced engineers by the end of 2020. Andela says today’s announcement will not affect Andela customers’ operations, as the company evolves to deliver even stronger engineering support for their teams.
“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.” Janet Maingi, Andela Kenya Country Director says.
Moving forward, Andela says 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.
“Five years ago, we launched Andela to solve a global challenge: Brilliance is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not. 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.” Johnson concludes.
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