Engineering Experience at AdaKerja
I just finished my eight-month-long work at AdaKerja as a Software Engineer. In this article, I’d like to share my experience at this company. I’ll tell you about the company and why I think you should join AdaKerja.
The Company
What is AdaKerja?
AdaKerja aims to connect the blue-collar labor force to employment opportunities and sources of income. Some of our main features include job search, recruitment, attendance management, payroll management, and talent exploration.
Check out our product here and here
The Tech Stack
We use popular technologies like:
- React for our web application (PWA)
- React Native for our mobile app
- Node.js for our server app
We’re also using Elasticsearch for our search engine.
Recruitment Process
If you think the product and the tech stack fit your target of exploration, you can go ahead and get yourself ready to apply!
Here, we believe the applicants can show their best work under a more realistic working scenario, for this reason, we will give out a take-home coding challenge to start with the recruitment process. The best way to prepare is to get familiar with our tech stack and practice building things with them.
If you pass the challenge, then you’ll continue to a phone interview with topics including knowledge about the tech stack and your past experience.
Why I Think You Should Join the Company
The Compensation
Let’s get this one out of the way, I know you want to learn, but I know you also wanted to be compensated fairly. At AdaKerja you’ll receive one of the most competitive compensation, notably higher than many companies, so don’t worry about it.
Great Onboarding Process
When you first join a company, you’ll be onboarded as a new employee so that you’re comfortable with the workflow and able to contribute as soon as possible. From my past experiences, I think AdaKerja has applied best practices on their onboarding. Here’s how we do it:
- You’ll be given a mini-task for each repo you’ll be involved with
- Mini-tasks start with making sure you’re able to run the repo (seems negligible yet, in reality, can be quite difficult without complete steps documentation)
- Then, you’ll be required to run its main functionality
- After that, you have to be able to make small changes in the code and see the result in the product
- Finally, you can complement what you think is missing from the steps, making it a better guide over time
By following these steps, you’ll be contributing confidently in no time.
Serious Review Culture
If you’ve worked on an engineering team before, you know a PR review plays a big part in pushing your code into production (about pull request).
In practice, sometimes a PR review is taken just as a formality instead of being a chance for a genuine assessment. Some other times, there’s not even a review at all. This, of course, might introduce bugs and lower code quality.
I believe the review quality is heavily tethered with the review culture. In some teams, PR reviews are taken less seriously because they’re less appreciated and seen as less valuable work. Meanwhile, the team at AdaKerja understands the benefits of these reviews and values them just as much as writing the code itself.
By having this appreciative attitude, the team members are more likely to write a substantial review. Especially for new engineers, this will be a great opportunity for them to grow their knowledge about the codebase.
Friendly Learning Environment
It’s completely normal for an engineer to be stuck with a problem. Sometimes you can’t find what you’re looking for on StackOverflow, you don’t know what to google, or reading documentation gets a bit frustrating. At times like these, it’s good to have a friend to ask for help. At AdaKerja your fellow team members and seniors are your friends. They are both talented and friendly. Here, we have a learning environment where you don’t have to worry if the question is too trivial.
If the problem is too hard to explain in writing, people will happily help you over a call. After resolving the problem, you can be a good fellow by making sure other people don’t run into the same problem as you. You can do this by improving the documentation or contribute to the company knowledge repository.
Also, the team lets you try out different things during your time at the company. For example, if you want to know more about the product or UI/UX, you can ask to be involved in their team. This is a great way to explore your interest outside of coding, some people I know learn their true passion through these things.
On a final note, I had a great time at this company and I think you will too.
If you are interested to join AdaKerja, feel free to email your résumé to ashwin@adakerja.com and cc to sibel@adakerja.com!
