The Tech team, based in Cape Town, South Africa started the year with a move to a new office space. We are now located at Woodland house, 17a Woodlands Rd, Woodstock, Cape Town. With the Group CEO, the new Heads of Verticals and marketing team also working from the same office, Cape Town will now be our new HQ. Exciting stuff!
Though the move was only into a building across the road, it has made a huge impact. There is much more space and the offices have been designed for the larger, growing team.
We could tell you all about it – or we could just show you…
The Tech Team
In 2017, the Tech team doubled in size, so far this year we have welcomed Jolene Fairman as Product Manager of Sokoso and are still hiring more software developers. Hoorah! Keep checking our sites for exiting positions!
Sokoso is Africa’s leading job search company. Every day we search thousands of job openings directly from employer websites and provide premium job sites for job seekers, valuable exposure for employers, and insightful job market data across Africa. Though we are currently working on jobs only, this can and will be extended to other verticals and horizontals in the near future.
Just to have a snapshot of our team; The software development team is divided into verticals and horizontals – 3 verticals and one horizontal. Each of these teams consists of the following: Chief Technology Officer, Product Manager, Front-end Developers, Backend Developers, API Developer, Mobile Developer, Quality Assurance(s) and Head of Verticals. Over and above these roles, the tech team is also home to a few shared resources who work across teams; SEO Tech Lead and specialists, UX Specialists, UI Designers, BI Analysts and Scrum Master/Project Manager.
Things you didn’t know about our team:
- The tech team began as a startup called One Africa Media in 2014 with only one employee! In 4 years we have grown to 39 employees and we have changed the name to ROAM.
- Our staff is comprised of 11 nationalities representing: South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Germany, Denmark, Nigeria, Italy, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Algeria and Cyprus.
- We use 6 kilograms of coffee beans in the office coffee machine every month. Plus we frequent the coffee roastery across the road – so that figure would be closer to 10kgs in total 🙂
- In January, we sent a total of 42,740 messages on Slack!
Drought in Cape Town
Despite the excitement of the growing team and new projects for the year, we have a new challenge in Cape Town at the moment: water.
This region of South Africa is currently experiencing the worst drought in the past 100 years. The entire city and its residents have been placed on strict water restrictions for the last one and a half years, and it shows no signs of improvement. We wait anxiously for more rain!
Starting February, each individual will be limited to a maximum usage of 50L per day. Government is predicting that by April they will need to turn off the taps (day zero) and residents will need to queue for 25L of water per person, per day. This date keeps changing based on current water levels, so we are all currently preparing for day zero, and hoping for the best.
That said, as it stands, we will be business as usual – ROAM will be making provisions for water in the office and the new building we are located uses a greywater recycling system to help minimize impact.Thanks to ROAM management for making the situation bearable for us!
