Open letter to the attention of "Employee"
Dear former colleague,
I've read your evaluation with interest, and even if I understand why you write certain points and that you are right about some others, still others deserve a second opinion. Also, I guess it's important to clarify that your time with us dates from more than 2 years ago, so your experience is not up to date so not entirely valid anymore.
When we started working together, we were just transferring all developments from Belgium to Krakow. So it is correct that the codebase we inherited needed some love. Which was also the reason we changed from the original team to a new team in Krakow. The team needed time to establish itself but that we improved the quality of the platform was attested, amongst others, by Microsoft itself which featured Avantida on its EU news homepage. https://fssrt.be/2ImXlep About the refactoring, we indeed focused on creating new versions of the products, rather than on solving existing issues. This did result in a lot of firefighting, till the new versions were released. If my memory is correct, you were not with us anymore at that time, so I do understand you are not familiar with that situation.
You state that we believe in hire and fire, which is a, verifiable, factual wrong. In the three years the company exists, I never fired anyone. However, it is correct that we had a turnover which is higher than I would wish for. Sometimes because we mutually decided to end a collaboration, sometimes because colleagues left. Recently, we lost some truly excellent developers, some wanted to go travelling or move countries, another felt he needed a new challenge. One left, a.o., because he didn't feel happy about the way the team had to interact remotely with the Business. Important to clarify he worked on a new project we launched, he was there in the beginning and that team feels we made important steps on this issue. The hire element is of course correct, when you were with us, we were a team of 5, today of over 20.
Other of your points are more difficult to follow. I invite all readers to verify with our colleagues, but we built self-managed teams. Tasks colleagues work on, they selected themselves in the backlog. Also, not sure how as small group can block all promotions, if we have such a high turnover as you describe. Also, knowing how much we grew, not sure how a small circle could monopolise all interesting developments. What is correct is that the team most of the time didn't follow your technical proposals.
You state that we are not a company for people with ambitions. I guess that would depend on the definition of 'ambitions'. We consist of self-managed teams, so indeed, creating a middle-management layer for the sake of that layer is not in the cards. If you mean by 'ambitions' to work on a wide range of technical solutions, I disagree.
Indeed we changed names, well, the reality is that we got acquired by our biggest customer. There is an important difference in that, and even if not all acquisitions are necessarily a testimony of high quality, here it was. Which also means that we own what we work on and are not just another outsourcing company.
If any reader would have questions regarding Avantida and our solutions, please do not hesitate: jeroen[at]avantida.com We do believe in an open communication, so I'm all yours to discuss.
Best,
Jeroen Fossaert
Co-founder Epikia / Country Manager Avantida Poland
