My Reflections on Andela’s EPIC values
Andela’s mission is to advance human potential by powering today’s teams and investing in the today’s batch of world class developers. At the core of Andela sits it’s EPIC value, which not only improves the company but goes further to shape each developer into better persons to work and collaborate with.
To me EXCELLENCE has to do with believing you could be a better version of yourself, that you can still learn whatever you set out to. It also means failing at something and working so as not to fail again when faced with the same situation. For someone like me this attribute has helped me get better at a lot of things, be it my code pattern and also my attitude to gaining new knowledge. I have been able to let go of the mentality to want to look for an easier way out of a problem, to a mentality of taking the bull by the horn (doing things the hard and smart way) and devising an easier way to do it for next time. According to Wikipedia,
Excellence is a talent or quality which is unusually good and so surpasses ordinary standards. It is also used as a standard of performance as measured e.g. through economic indicators.
Which goes to show that any work done with a high level of excellence is hard to be pointed out as a having a fault or below standard, but they are rather referred to as “surpassing all ordinary standards”. Little wonder Andela Developers are called “world class developers” and this they exhibit not just on each block of code but also in their way of life.
PASSION as a trait makes you never want to give up, it’s what keeps you awake late at nights figuring out how to solve a problem. I believe that passion is actually a very strong feeling you have towards something. To me passion and curiosity go in hand with each other, when you are curious about something, passion for it could set in. Passion is the willingness to keep doing and keep learning about something even at times when it seems the road is rough.
Passion kept me going at a time when most people thought I wasn’t cut out for the technology scene. I couldn’t get the kind of job I wanted, the kind of job my other developer friends got. But I never gave up, I love programming, it was something I could do for free, so I kept on improving and growing till I landed my first job, where I am currently shipping out applications to make lives better.
INTEGRITY as a trait refers to the quality of being honest and having strong moral standards. It could also mean not sugar coating the truth just to either please your team mate or someone in position. It means being the kind of person that would be seen everyday as being truthful. Integrity builds trust and with trust a team can achieve whatever laid down targets, little wonder Andela expects it’s developers to exhibit this quality, because without trust no two persons can work together to attain an agreed Goal.
COLLABORATION is a key feature of any successful team, without which a team could easily fall apart, not withstanding the amount of trust they have. Collaboration leads to the constant growth of individuals within a team. It refers to the ability to be willing to point your team mate in the right direction. Collaboration doesn’t just involve giving feedback or assisting a team mate, it also involves reaching out to be assisted. And this is one skill that is been built into Andela Developers starting from their first day at Bootcamp. On my first day at the Bootcamp that seemed to be what my LFA kept pointing out, the benefits of being a team person. And as a person collaboration has helped me grow, i easily ask questions when i’m having an issue and i immediately reach out to help others as well.
We need to live by this four qualities everyday, it shouldn’t be what we put on while going to work every morning. At Andela all of these Qualities or traits have to work hand in hand, none works in the absence of the other, you can’t be a team player if you are not truthful. Being excellent at what you do but not having passion seems to be impossible, and having passion and excellence but not being collaborative helps no one. But in all when we combine this four traits EPIC we cannot be triumphed but rather we would triumph.
