Guilds and Chapters in Trendyol: Collaborative Learning and Innovation

At Trendyol, we create the most positive impact with technology. Taking responsibility and leading results is much more important than hierarchy. With this perspective, we encourage our teams to make decisions depending on their domain needs. Teams could freely choose their technology, design, etc.

Even this freedom gives us to isolated, powerful teams; we could try to solve the same problems already solved in another team of Trendyol. For leveraging this problem, we have several solutions to share our experiences. We do weekly technical meetups, share experiences on Guilds, spread knowledge to practice channels on Slack, make Lunch & Learn sessions or Special Interest Times, and write RFCs, ADRs, etc. We love sharing and believing;

In this article, we want to share our Guild experiences that boost spreading expertise on techs and building internal communities.

What is Guild | Chapter?

A guild (company-wide) or chapter (tribe-wide) is a voluntary, bottom-up initiative united by common skills or interests. The main goal is to build best practices, become an expert community and promote knowledge sharing around a specific area. Anyone can join any guild anytime.

Although we create many best practices within our teams, we need a way to share these with the company efficiently. And sometimes, discussing specific/challenging topics with a wider expert group is helpful. For example, we could discuss web3 and blockchain technologies with our blockchain guild.

Guilds also provide a place to meet, develop PoC projects with like-minded people, and discuss new ideas and best practices. After aligning ideas and techniques, these groups can also share this knowledge with the company and build know-how via internal tech talks.

Guilds/chapters may work on the following topics:

• Creating a friendly environment for learning
• Supporting teams when they face challenges
• Work on raising the bar by sharing best practices and new technologies
• Become an expert community for Trendyol
• Collaborating with other guilds to learn from each other

Benefits

Guild members have access to various benefits that can help them grow and succeed in their careers. For starters, the guild provides various opportunities for training and development, seminars, workshops, and special working groups. We could also share some of our seminars externally, like the DDD Days. These opportunities allow members to sharpen their technical skills and stay up-to-date with the latest improvements.

In addition, being part of the guild means having the chance to share knowledge and skills with other software engineers. We can gain a deeper understanding of technical issues through discussions and idea exchanges, leading to more effective software development processes and a stronger overall knowledge base within the company.

The guilds also encourage exploration and innovation in advanced technologies. Members are empowered to pursue their interests, conduct experiments, and evaluate new technologies for integration into company projects. By doing so, the guilds can increase the company’s innovation capacity and provide a competitive edge in the market.

In guilds, we work together towards common goals and celebrate successes. So memberships improve motivation and interaction between domain teams. Ultimately, this can lead to greater success and accomplishment for all members.

As a result, guilds and chapters are great and powerful sharing opportunities in Trendyol. We also share the responsibility of writing this article with Onur Can Avci, Sinan Baran, Burhan Günaydın, and Enes Turgut.

Thanks for reading this far. All feedbacks are welcome. If you like to “share” with us, you could apply for our open positions.