Case: Twiik
Internal stakeholders are exceedingly satisfied with Developers Shore’s excellent candidates. The teammates are productive, committed, and highly competent. They meet deadlines and are flexible and professional in their project management. They also communicate well via Slack and Google Meet.
Developers Shore provides staff augmentation services for a fitness coaching platform. They’ve found and hired two senior developers to work with the internal team on React Native and web development.
Who are Twiik?
The idea for Twiik came at a time of exponential growth in the availability of workout apps and services. This was also a time when there was a lot of the “right” sort of instructors available. However, establishing and maintaining healthy habits had never felt harder.
Along the way we’ve learned that the more you include a human element (and yes we mean real people) the better the result. At the same time, digital services have created the perfect conditions to easily reach whole new target groups.
Who are you (Leif Magnusson)?
”I’m the CTO of Twiik, a coaching platform. The product is partly a marketplace where coaches or fitness influencers can sell workouts or personal training to end users. We also provide the platform to different gym chains that want to offer online training to their customers.”
What challenge were you trying to address with Developers Shore?
”In Sweden, there’s a shortage of software engineers. Many big companies, like Tetra Pak and Sony, hire a lot of engineers, so it’s difficult to find local developers.”
What was the scope of their involvement?
”We use Developers Shore as near-shore developers. They’re outsourced staff, but they’re integrated into our software team, so they work closely with our developers.
First, we tell them the profile we need; for example, a JavaScript developer. They don’t have a pool of consultants, so they go out and find the candidate in Ukraine — with the Russian Invasion, they’ve broadened their scope a bit to find people. Then, we interview the candidate. If the person is fit, they hire them to work with us. We don’t have to worry about the legal side.
In summary, we only have to specify the kind of developer we want.
We’ve hired two senior developers, so they didn’t need training; we only needed to onboard them on our products. One is an application developer that knows React Native and has experience with mobile apps. The other one is an advanced web developer.
Our site has a coaching tool that allows building workouts and programs, so they work on that.”
”We feel they’re part of the team and contribute just as much as any local team member.”
How did you come to work with Developers Shore?
”They found us. We’re often approached by companies who want to help us find consultants. However, what set Developers Shore apart was that they hired specifically for the role. In addition, they were able to facilitate a pathway to hire these developers ourselves if we chose to.”
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
”Since we’re working closely with them, our measurement is the cultural fit. We like to work with the engineers, and they’re productive. We feel they’re part of the team and contribute just as much as any local team member.”
How did Developers Shore perform from a project management standpoint?
”They’re good at following up and ensuring everything is good for our engineers and us. Their developers meet deadlines and are very flexible. As a small company, we often change our plans. We initially picked those two developers because they said they liked working in changing environments. All in all, they’ve been very professional and flexible when we’ve given them curveballs.
They work out of Eastern Europe, so they’re close enough to have the same schedule. We communicate directly with them and can bring them here for events. We use Slack and Google Meet for daily stand-up meetings. Additionally, we have Trello boards with the tasks we’ll do.”
What did you find most impressive about them?
”We’re impressed with Developers Shore’s ability to find good candidates on short notice. We’re also impressed with how quickly our candidates got started and became productive team members. Moreover, since we get someone explicitly hired for the job, we feel the developers are more engaged.”
Are there any areas they could improve?
”We asked Jonas, and they collect feedback from our engineers. We’d like them to share that with us; it’d be good to verify that they’re happy to work with us as much as we’re with them.”