An engineer beats the odds to a dream job

The journey of Taufan “Kip” Aeroperkasa to software engineer position at GO-JEK is not the one that people would describe as an “ideal path”. Kip learned everything he knows about computer from textbooks, he has no engineering degree from a university or any degree from university.

Kip had a dream of working as a programmer, a dream that was crushed before it even began by family economic condition and months of helping IT-major students to complete their final thesis.

My current project in finding people with a captivating story inside GO-JEK has somehow, always ended with people saying “you should talk to Kip”.

When I got in touch with Kip for the first time, he signaled that he might not have anything worth writing, the same thing that I always heard from other people with fascinating stories.

Kip’s love of software engineering started in his senior high school final year when his stepfather bought him a second-hand PC. As he spent more time with the new device, designing simple program and creating basic code, it quickly became his playground.

However, things didn’t go as smooth as expected. On his graduation day, he found out that his grades were not good enough to secure him a place in a state university, while the private university was not an option at the time due to his family’s economic condition.

It could be the start of downhill from here. But not for Kip. He kept it together and tried to find a freelance job whenever and wherever he could.

He also managed to keep his learning curve improved. One of the things he did was to take part in a short basic computer program at the University of Indonesia. Unfortunately, what he learned in the class was not as he expected, and he started to wonder if he just made a wrong decision by spending the little money he had on the course.

But if there is a silver lining from the course it was the connection he made with IT college students from the program has helped him financially. With his knowledge, he helped the students to finish their thesis in exchange for money.

Still, that is not how he pictured life would be on his productive age. Like a lot of other programmers, he was looking for a full-time career where he can work with peers of people who code and create something big.

The opportunity came in 2014 from an unknown ojek call center company.

The Start of his GOJEK’s Journey

It was begun with a casual meeting with our senior engineer, but back then the unicorn start-up was very much different. The GO-JEK software engineers worked in a very small team, in a small office, developing an app that most of the people haven’t heard about yet.

What made him sure that GO-JEK was on the track to create a wave of changes was the leadership of Nadiem Makarim.

Nadiem isn’t an engineer, but his business strategy skill is beyond others. Nadiem is a pilot who knows exactly where the plane needs to fly.

“As an engineer, you have self-defense when your boss told you to do things that you initially weren’t sure about, but at the end, Nadiem showed us that he could see things that we couldn’t,” he said. “And that’s how GO-JEK can be as big as it now because we believe in him”.

Four years on, he now spends most of his days to solve problems in GO-PAY software and infrastructure system. The GO-PAY system team, as he called it, is divided by several smaller teams that are developing various open source projects.

The man sat in front of me knows he is lucky, but Kip believes that everything happens for a reason. Once in a while when he sipped a cup of coffee in GO-JEK’s Bangalore office, he still could not believe that he can come this far, working in a large tech company and got the chance to see other parts of the world.

But the reason why he stayed was not the job itself, it was the experience of seeing a lot of new engineers joined the company and how he could help them to grow.

“I have given the opportunity, for now, I just want to make the most out of it and help others to learn more,” he said.

In GOJEK we see people beyond piece of paper with grades written on it. We dig deeper on their capacity and how they can play a role in our exciting journey.
Check our avaliable positions here , we look forward to meeting you!