Codurance - Looking forward to 2015

One year ago Mash and I were thinking how great it would be to be surrounded by great craftsmen, work with good clients, mentor talented apprentices, and a have decent office. We thought to ourselves: “We don’t want a company with employees. We want a company where we have friends. Friends where besides enjoying their company, we also admired their professionalism and knowledge." One year later, we are happy to say we achieved all that. We had a great first year and managed to build a very talented team, which we are hoping to grow even more next year.

Codurance is going through a new phase. We are refining our services and training offerings and we are also increasing our capacity to work with more clients—from small start-ups to large corporations. We are adjusting our business model in order to be fully aligned with our decision to grow our own craftsmen via an apprenticeship program. We believe that the mix of very senior craftsmen - who are internationally renowned developers with a lot of well earned scars on their backs - combined with the freshness and youth of our apprentices - raring to become fully fledged craftsmen - is what gives the diversity and dynamism we want for Codurance.

We have also been paying a lot of attention to how we build our team. So far we have been very lucky to have had so many amazing people show interest to work with us. We are also very fortunate to have access to amazing craftsmen that are very active in the London Software Craftsmanship Community (LSCC). We don’t hire developers for specific opportunities, body shopping them straight to clients. We hire craftsman and apprentices when we feel we are in a position to do so, even if we don’t have a client for them to work with. This allows us to always make sure that we are hiring the right people to join our team, never hurrying to hire anyone, and never lowering the bar of our selection process.

All craftsmen at Codurance share the same principles and values. We all believe in Software Craftsmanship and in what it means to be a software craftsman. But that doesn't make us clones of each other. We all have our own preferences when it comes to tools and technologies, which leads to a lot of cross-learning and interesting debates. Selecting specialists on different technologies to join Codurance was not a coincidence; it was by design. We believe in using the best tools for the job and having specialists in different areas helps us to provide a great service to our clients regardless of the technologies we use.

We strongly believe that next year will be another great year for us and we can’t wait for it to start. New clients, new projects, new apprentices, new craftsmen, and a bigger office. That is what is in stock for us.

If you own a business, are a CTO in a start up, or manage an IT department in a larger company, please have a look at our website and get in touch. We would love to hear from you. Just drop as a line at hello@codurance.com and let us know how we can help you.

If you would like to become a Codurance apprentice, have a look at our careers page and get in touch.

Looking forward to 2015.