2021 for iRonin.IT was a year of sustainable team growth. As of December 31st, 2021, we are 55 people excited about delivering outstanding software products that succeed on the market. See how we cultivated our unique culture of quality and collaboration last year and where it took us.
We’re closing the year with 55 people on board. Our 3-people recruitment team went beyond our wildest expectations, as 30 of us joined the company in 2021. And they did not compromise our hiring standards or the happiness of our current employees. The average time software developers stay The average tenure for software developers at iRonin.IT is 4 years, which sets us above the industry average of 35 months.
iRonin.IT is a Ruby on Rails company
Over the past 10 years, our main technology has been Ruby on Rails, and we stuck to that last year as well, hiring 15 RoR developers. 2021 was a great year for Ruby on Rails and finished with a successful launch of Rails 7, which made the framework more powerful than ever. We believe it’s the best technology on the market for bootstrapping startups and delivering large enterprise applications in a short time.
Diversifying our Web and Mobile development tech stack
That being said, since around 2 years ago, we’ve been diversifying our tech stack to increase our versatility and be able to better assist our clients in achieving their more and more challenging business goals.
In 2021, we created 4 new development teams. Our team got stronger with a bunch of new engineers specializing in different technologies:
- Node.js, Elixir, iOS – 2 new faces per each technology
- Haskell, Java, QA – one new person in each team.
Expanding our expertise sustainably
#1 Top quality code and effective problem-solving
Our engineering team is 90% seniors. We define a senior as a person with a 5-year programming experience (at minimum) gained in at least a few different projects and the ability to deal with any kind of task in a project. As our CTO, Paweł Dąbrowski summarizes: “We are always looking for developers who consider a bigger context when they want to solve a problem and are proficient with tools and core technologies on top of which those tools were built.”
#2 Effective remote collaboration
We’ve been fully remote since day one. A 10-year experience in managing the company, cultivating organizational culture, and ensuring top performance, without having a traditional office life, gave us a big advantage in the last 2 years. In 2021, we worked with 14 international clients in a remote and asynchronous setup.
Experience in remote, asynchronous work in a dispersed team and multiple time zones, is also among our key recruitment criteria.
#3 Streamlined onboarding
We take our UX expertise beyond app development, and delivering outstanding employee onboarding experience is an important element of our HR strategy. It helps us grow our teams organically ensuring they stay cozy and their members have meaningful connections with each other. Moreover, a well-executed onboarding results in the whole company being connected and coordinated.
Krzysztof Hołtyn, who joined our team in 2021 says:
“It was the smoothest onboarding I have ever participated in. Most of the information was there for me when I joined. The atmosphere was great from day one. The team is well-coordinated and friendly. I’m sure I’ll develop my skills in the project I was hired for. Many challenges are waiting for me and now I’m ready to face them.”
#4 Taking time to learn
The key trigger for growth and sustainable success is continuous learning. We take education and knowledge sharing seriously, and, apart from learning individually, we participated in a number of events:
1. Personally: Infoshare in Gdańsk, Poland, and WebSummit in Lisbon, Portugal
2. Remotely: London Tech Week, Reuters Momentum, EU-Startups Summit, Running Remote, Viva Tech, and more.
Your success is our success
We’ve always worked in a diverse environment, specializing in custom software development. In 2021, we focused even more on partnering with entrepreneurs from different industries and regions and taking on technically challenging projects. We worked with 14 different clients and 9 of them were new partnerships. Working with both disruptors and experienced leaders in FinTech, MarTech, EdTech, HrTech, PropTech, E-commerce, Hospitality, FMCG, and other industries, gives us a wide perspective of the tech world and helps us grow as IT experts.
As a boutique consultancy, we stay close to our clients and their business KPIs, making sure that our services directly impact their companies’ success. Even though our team is mostly composed of software developers, we make sure that our designers and project managers are involved in the relevant parts of the projects. Last year, for example, our design team supported a number of clients providing UX audits that helped optimize application usability and profitability, identify user expectations for further product development.
Building a software startup in 2022?
That was our 2021. Now, we’re more than ready to move on to a flawless new year!
If you’re looking to build or transform your software product in 2022, we’re looking forward to when our paths cross.
Check out what we’ve built over the years of successful delivery, and let’s talk about your project!
Happy New Year everyone!
