What we did when we were 5
An old story, worth re-telling
Almost 3 years ago, in a blog that’s now gone, we published a story about the lessons we learned in our 5 years of existence. We’ll publish something new soon, when we reach our 8th anniversary. But we feel this story is worth telling again since the lessons are still more than worth a read…
We rescued this post from the archives of the web (written by the amazing Stephanie Goldner with the help of all the inakos) and we updated it a bit.
Enjoy!
There comes a time in everyone’s life when we must pause and reflect on years passed. Reflect on our mistakes, and recognize our accomplishments.
The same goes for a Company.
Why now? Well, we are just around the corner from Inaka’s 5th year anniversary!! That doesn’t seem like a whole lot in human years, but in Company years it’s A LIFETIME! Especially when you look at all of the milestones we’ve hit in such a short time.
Now in honor of this great organization and the many talented people who are part of it, I’d like to reflect upon and celebrate our accomplishments over the past 5 years.
Here’s to 5 years of Inaka:
Our History
- September 1st, 2010: First employees in Argentina
- 2011: First big project release (MTV/VH1)
- August 25th, 2011: First Blog Post
- March 2t7h, 2012: First Conference Talk
- Summer, 2012: Moved to our last offices
- March, 2012: First Whisper Release
- Winter, 2012: Inaka Pong is Born
- May 9th, 2014: First Inakathon
- August, 2014: Joined Erlang-Solutions
- November, 2014: Expansion To Second Office
- June 9th, 2015: Erlang Dojo with Rosario University
Whew! That’s a lot.
What we’ve learned along the way
A wise person once said:
“Progress isn’t possible without lessons learned along the way.”
What’s important is not the mistakes themselves, but what we learn from them. On our anniversary I’d also like to share some of the top lessons learned at Inaka:
Don’t get attached to a particular piece of technology
We use Erlang, Ruby, Node.JS, whatever language fits best for each system. We used MySQL, Postgres, Redis, Riak, CouchDB, etc… and sometimes a combination of them.
Communication is FUNDAMENTAL
By far the largest drawbacks and missteps in our lifetime were due to poor communication. We are nothing and we are no-one without communication.
Open-source is GREAT for a company
Most of our clients in the first 2–3 years came to us thanks to the open-source community. We get contributions from multiple open-source authors and we contribute to multiple open-source projects in various communities, which makes us part of them. We’re regularly invited to conferences to talk about our open-source projects.
Don’t fear the guidelines!! Guidelines are good!!
They have to grow organically. It’s better if they are also open-sourced.
Android design is not the same as iOS design
Maybe one day, but probably not for the time being. You have to let each one grow organically, on its own, to provide the best experience for your users.
Embrace the power of git
git will be your best friend or your worst enemy. We prefer to make friends. With branches, pull requests, code reviews, tags, etc. we ensure the quality and coherence of our code to share it among our developers.
Project Managers are Key
Developers are typically not great at talking directly to clients (especially non-technical ones). Leaning on a project manager to manage the client relationship, organize team members, facilitate much needed communication (see paragraph above) allows developers to stay focused and progress more efficiently.
QA is EXTREMELY important
What is good technology without solid testing to validate quality? Sometimes when you’re in the weeds it’s hard to see the big picture. Our QA team quite literally helps us see things more clearly and provide the kind of quality Inaka is known for.
Programming is not everything!
Inaka Pong, however, is a different story! It has been said that it came close to becoming a globally recognized olympic sport but it got behind in the race against ultimate frisbee and extreme ironing. We program because it’s our job, but we love our job because we love programming, we love what we do, and we love who we program with. Loving what you do and who you do it with is the secret sauce that holds us together. That’s why we hold our Friday team lunches sacred! “Those who meal together stay together” …or something like that. Sometimes scheduling a time for everyone to relax together and chat about what’s new is essential.
A World-wide Company
Good developers and team members come from all over the world, and the more variety the more creativity and brain fuel in our case! We’ve worked with team members from Argentina, Australia, Brasil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Germany, India, Panamá, Russia, Spain, Sweden, USA, Venezuela, … just to name a few.
Thank you for 5 wonderful, challenging, and successful years, and here’s to many more!
Sincerely,
A Note from 2018
It’s so impressive to re-read this article now and realize how, by 2015, we had already learned our most valuable lessons. Stuff that made us a great company and provided the foundation over which we built the amazing community we are today.
Long live the inakos!!
