Tech at PhonePe: Positive Disruption and Creating Learning Culture

Being at PhonePe is all about bringing your expertise in service of solving some of the biggest, most complex problems of the day. We bring together the smartest people in their domain who are passionate about their craft, and own and drive their work and careers. Our role is that of an enabler, we create the ecosystem for employees to deepen their skills and create value for the org in the process.

While learning has always been a focus, over the last few years, we have piloted more systematic endeavours to accelerate learning and impact. Let’s take a look at some of the programs and learning models that exist at PhonePe and how they work to achieve the goals of both employees and the organisation.

Tech Learning Programs: PhonePe University

The PhonePe University initiative is designed to help engineers leapfrog the experience cycle and gain learnings that are existing in fragmented pockets in the organization. It has been developed into an umbrella program which helps in scaling the learning needs of Phonepe Tech. The university broadly focuses on two modes of operation — project-based and workshop models. Some of the key programs we offer under PhonePe University include:

Learning Groups — The Workshop Model

This program caters to a larger group of participants undergoing a specialised training/course session together as a working group to develop expertise on a technical topic. We envisioned this program to be a mix of theoretical learning and application-based problem solving, facilitated by in-house subject matter experts. So far, our subject matter experts have coached 280+ engineers across 18 workshops, covering 7 topics, contributing to 10k+ learning hours. Of these, 30% of the participants signing up are repeat registrations and 72% of participants have been with PhonePe for less than 2 years, thereby fulfilling our mission of distributing tribal knowledge in the system.

On-The-Job Project Model

This program has a mentor-mentee approach that allows engineers to solve problems with the help of a mentor from idea to production. The focus of this track is to help individuals grow in specific areas by assessing their current capabilities, identifying a technically complex problem to work on, defining necessary support paths (including mentorship by a senior member in the team), and skill development for end-to-end execution of projects. With periodic checkpoints and reviews by the engineering leadership team, candidates are also provided with holistic feedback both on technical and behavioural aspects throughout the journey.

The Engineering Induction

This is a 6-week intensive induction program for campus graduates (Bootcamp For Campus Freshers), and an induction program for lateral hires (Lateral Induction Program) with technical workshops and stretch assignments via cross-domain projects. This is a structured program curated with a deep organisational and functional overview for faster assimilation. Both the programs provide freshers with adequate context on the org, tech systems, and platforms including sessions on computer science fundamentals, design patterns, architecture used at PhonePe, product and business context, leadership sessions, and tech talks.

Promoting Diversity — PhonePe Tech Scholar Program

This program aims to provide equal opportunities to women across tier II & III institutes to bring in more diversity in the tech world. Women developers in the final year of their education can apply and if shortlisted, they go through a rigorous three month work-integrated learning program powered by Crio.Do. During this online externship program, they improve their foundational skills and work on real-world PhonePe-specific problem statements. This learning opportunity is a great experience for candidates to get exposed to the practical side of things, while also getting acquainted with the PhonePe way of working.

Product Management Kickstarter: Associate Product Manager Program

The PhonePe APM program aims to provide participants with an opportunity to develop their product management skills through a combination of mentor support, hands-on experience, and a practical experience of problem solving. It also provides young professionals in other roles in the organisation an opportunity to seamlessly switch over to the Product Management track. There is an opportunity to work in different pods in planned rotation stints, solving real problems while creating impact for PhonePe and its customers, and be part of the PM community at PhonePe. APMs in PhonePe are involved in brainstorming, strategising and building products in alignment with engineers and designers, and drive towards creating the best user experience.

APM Bootcamp

The APM Bootcamp at PhonePe is an accelerated program that emphasises learning, building, creating impact and beyond. Product Managers are committed to creating an environment that makes learning and application impactful and provides opportunities to the APMs to grow, both personally and professionally through mentorship and hands-on learning sessions. The Bootcamp is structured in a way so that APMs are exposed to learning and apply them parallelly as they proceed to work at PhonePe. It also serves the agenda for making the APMs feel valued, networked and supported. Product Managers play an active role in providing, guidance and context and help APMs with direction on how to improve on specific feedback and development areas identified through the program duration

APM Reviews

All APMs present a walkthrough of their work to an identified product lead each quarter. The primary purpose of this review is to expose the APM to different perspectives. The reviewer is encouraged to act as a sounding board and provide 1:1 feedback towards problem solutioning, for example:

• How I would have solved it
• This is how I approach any problem
• Why have/ have-not you thought about this

The reviews focus on progress made on each of the assigned deliverables, suggestions to the APM on approach to problem-solving and execution and identifying APM’s strengths to assess potential role fit/pod alignment.

Product Design Learning: Design Associates Program

The PhonePe DAP program is a curated one-year learning journey for budding Product Designers (UI or UX). This journey will provide participants with a unique opportunity to develop their design skills through a combination of mentorship, hands-on experience, and exposure to real-world problem statements. The program is a stepping stone to becoming a successful UX/UI Designer at PhonePe. It also sets the bar for what good early-stage design skills look like and thereby raises the bar for the rest of the organisation.

The DAP program starts with a three-week bootcamp, followed by the opportunity to work in different pods — solving real problems which impact PhonePe and its customers. After a year of learning, rotation and re-assignments can be considered based on individual aspirations and organisational needs.

Learning as a Way of Life

PhonePe Tech University is only one component of PhonePe’s learning culture. One key area of focus is training the leadership and providing team managers with the tools to drive and sustain team motivation and effectively deal with performance issues.

The Manager Capability Sessions include:

• New Manager Orientation: Interaction with the seniors leadership covering organisation philosophy, process and PhonePe ways of working
• CATALYST: A structured program on developing managerial skills
• Competency Workshops: Building uniform and consistent understanding of org competencies to drive motivation
• Feedback: Techniques for effective feedback conversations; identifying & managing poor performance
• Session for CM, ASM and TSM: Customised sessions focused on structured and effective feedback to drive the team motivation

The Learning Assistance Policy at PhonePe provides every PhonePe-er with upto 5 lacs of reimbursement every year to pursue certified skill based learning.

At PhonePe, learning is truly a way of life. The growth opportunities are ample and the world can be your oyster! Explore more hiring opportunities on Careers @ PhonePe to join our thriving Tech, Product and Design communities and learn from some of the best minds in the industry.