Sometimes It Isn’t About the Money: A Story About Improving Indonesia’s Education Through Technology
When a giant tech company like Facebook gave you an exciting offer in Europe, many would pack their bags and build their career there. Or, another scenario, when a local startup offered you several million dollars of compensation to be one of their C-levels, many would say yes without a doubt. Well, that is the rule.
But Ibrahim Arief, or Ibam as he is often called, is an exception. When he was approached, interviewed, and offered a position by Facebook, he took a step back and pondered. He was considering another offer in Indonesia– which, according to him, may not be super exciting in terms of material benefits, but gives him a sense of fulfillment.
“My initial plan was to leave for Europe and build my career at Facebook London. But after careful consideration and tough decision making process, I chose to stay in Indonesia working with GovTech Edu,” he said merrily via video chat on a fine morning.
GovTech Edu is a team, part of Telkom Group, consisting of 200+ professionals working directly with various ministries in Indonesia. They are on a mission to build large-scale, high-quality, and user-centric tech products that can rapidly help millions of teachers and schools across Indonesia and accelerate policy executions to create permanent and long-lasting positive changes to Indonesia’s public sector education.
Their products include: (1) Merdeka Mengajar, an education superapp to help teachers in teaching and self-development; (2) Kampus Merdeka, an education app that allows college students to hone their skills according to their talents and interests by experiencing working life to prepare their future career; and (3) Rapor Pendidikan, a big data analytics platform that allows schools and education authorities to look at their respective learning outcomes and to identify, reflect, and act upon the results.
“I understand the difficulties of getting hired by Facebook– the chance’s maybe one in a thousand. But, as we know, rarely does our government use a user-centric tech approach in their programs– the chance is probably one in a million, I’d say. GovTech Edu is a good, rare opportunity. It is our time to tell the world what Indonesia’s government could do with technology,” he said.
As if Facebook’s offer wasn’t enough to test his commitment, another offer came in while he’s setting up a team at GovTech Edu. One well-funded tech startup, which Ibam declined to disclose the name of, offered him compensation on the order of several million dollars. As much as he’s tempted to take the offer, Ibam decided to stick with GovTech Edu.
Hence, we are curious as to why he chose to stay.
“One day I was watching video testimonials from our users– they are teachers in remote parts of Indonesia. They told us how much our product helped them and how they have waited so long to have the kind of support provided by our apps. It touched my heart deeply. I feel that all of our work at GovTech Edu is worth it. Someone out there benefits from our effort. I must say this is my number one reason,” he said.
On a personal level, Ibam, a father of two, also sees his children as his driving force. “I am creating something for my children. Something they can enjoy years and years from now,” he shared.
At GovTech Edu, Ibam isn’t the only one driven by the mission. A lot of his colleagues have teacher relatives in their families, and they joined GovTech Edu because they care a lot about Indonesia’s education.
GovTech Edu’s Head of Product Nada Haroen shares similar experience. “The mission is in line with my personal values. Other than that, my strong interest in education and tech has brought me here. I myself have enjoyed the positive impact of education and it’d be great if we could bring this impact to more people out there.”
100% Work from Home
The GovTech Edu team was set up amidst Covid-19 pandemic, forcing them to work remotely from their own homes. The team’s spreaded out across the globe– some in Indonesia, others are based in the USA and Europe.
“It is a blessing to be able to team up with these mission-driven talents. They are passionate about improving Indonesia’s education system. Everyone’s reliable– they know their capacity and deliverables. We believe that they’re committed and will deliver in a timely manner. No one abuses the trust,” he said.
He added that it is better to over communicate in remote working settings to avoid misunderstanding. Each member of the team is encouraged to communicate their ideas and intentions as much as possible.
While it is flexible, working from home may affect one’s personal space– increasing isolation and disproportion of work-life balance to name a few. Yet Ibam finds no issue in that regard.
“Though productivity is important, we’d like to ensure that our team’s taken care of well. We always communicate and find solutions if there’s a member who’s burned out or has too much on their plate. We also respect those who are taking leave. Everybody needs some time to recharge and that’s totally okay. ” Ibam said.
The Challenge
There are many government institutions and regulations that involve GovTech Edu, not to mention the vast territory of Indonesia, making it even more challenging.
“We’d love to create a simple tech product– something that caters the government’s needs while also being simple and easy for our users. And, honestly, it’s pretty challenging as we also need to consider the regulations. We would sit for hours with the stakeholders from the government side to discuss the design and flow of their programs. It will always be a challenge for both us and the government, but we’re working on it together,” he shared.
Developing a giant tech infrastructure in the archipelago isn’t an easy task. It, indeed, requires cutting-edge technology to handle a massive volume of data and traffic. Therefore, GovTech Edu utilizes modern tech stack such as Golang and Kubernetes, and scalable infrastructure such as Cloud SQL and BigQuery to cater for such a need.
In addition to advanced technology, GovTech Edu is also supported by mission-driven and experienced talents to deliver the best quality tech products for the nation. Ibam said, “More than half of our talents are former unicorn engineers, and we are always looking for experienced engineers with good track records in developing massive-scale user-centric tech.”
