How Gojek equips thousands of students to be world-class tech engineers

Changes are coming to Southeast Asia. Indonesia’s digital economy is predicted to reach 100 billion US Dollar in 2025 making it the largest in the region. All eyes will turn to the country as it sets to drive the future of Southeast Asia digital economy, but this privilege comes with a challenge, talent shortage.

Consultancy A.T. Kearney reported that Indonesia produces only 278 engineers per 1 million people each year while neighboring countries like Malaysia or Thailand produce well over a thousand. The lack of high-quality human resource in technology — such as engineers, programmers, and developers -, might hinder the growth of Indonesia’s digital economy.

To close that gap, recently GOJEK collaborated with the University of Indonesia, in supporting more than 8,000 university students across Indonesia, to become world-class talents in the tech field. This was the main idea behind COMPFEST or Computer Festival, Indonesia’s largest annual one-stop IT (information and technology) students festival, initiated by the Faculty of Computer Science of University of Indonesia.

The 11th COMPFEST this year kicked off in April and held both in University of Indonesia campus and Gojek headquarters. The festival covers various program from seminars, workshops and will have tech exhibition as the main event in September

What is different about this year’s COMPFEST is the 2 month-long “The Academy” program will be exclusively powered by GOJEK. A carefully selected group from 2,000 participants nation-wide will be mentored by our senior engineers and data scientists. The Academy, which takes place from July 6th to August 18th at GOJEK HQ, includes 3 programs; Data Science Academy, Software Engineering Academy, and StartUp Academy.

In the Software Engineering Academy program, GOJEK Senior Engineers will share various methods of developing software, including the Clean Code technique, a method- in writing code with the high discipline to reduce the likelihood of programs getting bugs or crashes. Another interesting topic for the program is Test-Driven Development — a test method conducted before building a program.

Meanwhile, in the Data Science Academy participants will be trained by our senior Data Scientists to master the Python programming language that combines statistical methods with machine learning to analyze complex data. While in the StartUp Academy program, GOJEK share insights to help students build a startup — from mapping out initial opportunities, developing business models to achieve scalability, to presenting data and presentations to potential investors.

Do you geek out thinking of ways to solve everyday problems with the use of technology? Join GOJEK and be a part of the solution!