Scalac

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Scrum Master of Sky

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Telecommunication/Technology/Entertainment

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Scalac to accomplish?

• Expand and enchance Scala Developers knowledge and expertise

SOLUTION

How did you find Scalac?

• Online Search

Why did you select Scalac over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Scalac were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Scala C provided an in depth training course covering Scala 3 across 5 days for a large group of developers. It included group mentorship, ample opportunity for questions and clarification with the instructor and was well received.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• The training was very well received by the developers that attended, who all provided useful positive feedback and comments.They felt better equiped and interested to use Scala 3 given the insight and expertise that was shared and nurtured with the group by Scala C's instructor.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Highly professional, great communication and patience when dealing with organisation and cross company processes. Anton and his team were nothing but a joy to work with and I would happily use Scala C again.

What was your primary form of communication with Scalac?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Personal touch, interested in understanding requirements and needs and came to each step with a wonderful collabroative attitude. Even to go so far as changing the training approached based on feedback provided mid-way through.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Scalac could have done differently?

none

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of LIGADIGITAL, a software development company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Scalac?

We needed to extend our existing team for development, software architecture, and DevOps.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Scalac provides staff augmentation services. Whenever we need an expert from their team, we coordinate a call with their manager. We describe the position we’re looking for, and they start searching for it. Then, Scalac provides us with candidates to choose from, and we add them to our existing team.

What is the team composition?

They’ve provided us with more than 10 teammates.

How did you come to work with Scalac?

We searched the market and evaluated a few companies. Scalac was the first nearshore partner we added to our company.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2017, and our relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Working with Scalac has had many benefits. We can scale our team quickly with well-trained, senior, professional experts. We’ve had a good experience with their staff; they’ve helped us improve our existing product and build new projects. Overall, we’re very happy with Scalac.

How did Scalac perform from a project management standpoint?

They deliver on time and are well organized. Communication is good; we have daily meetings with the staff we’ve added to our team. If we need to extend or shrink the team, we have one dedicated person to help us.

Moreover, we don’t have communication gaps; we always get immediate responses. We communicate via video calls, Slack, and Jira.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very professional; we can rely on them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I wouldn’t have them improve anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I suggest contacting Scalac, but you should be precise in your requirements with any company you hire.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of engineering for a startup that builds observability software. We monitor production systems, collect metrics and logs, and infer the application’s structure to Extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) agents running on the actual nodes. We have around 30–40 employees.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Scalac?

We needed specialized Scala development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Scalac has helped us with Scala and backend development. We have a frontend-focusing React script from them and some SRE and DevOps teammates helping us out on the platform. They’ve been our go-to contractor when it comes to determining if we want to make a permanent new position.

What is the team composition?

The project manager is our main contact, and we’ve worked with 6–7 engineers.

How did you come to work with Scalac?

I watched many training videos by John Degos, and he mentioned Scalac. They made it onto our list when we were looking for a contractor. We reached out to them directly by searching their name on Google.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between €500,000–€1 million (approximately $536,000–$1 million USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in February 2022, and our relationship is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Scalac has consistently found us excellent engineers faster than expected. We’ve been super happy with them. Moreover, they’ve given us a few extra teammates. Initially, we only had a Scala backend developer and needed a few more. At some point, we also needed frontend engineers. Since Scalac specializes in Scala, we didn’t expect them to have those resources, but when we reached out, they had someone for us with React skills. Later on, they did the same with the DevOps and SRE engineers.

How did Scalac perform from a project management standpoint?

They quickly respond to our needs. We regularly speak to the engineers because they’re on our team. We have one-on-ones with them, giving them feedback and seeing them during daily stand-up meetings.

Scalac has a project and account manager; we speak with them once every two weeks through a scheduled call. Additionally, we meet up with the CTO and owners once or twice a month.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’ve been impressed with the teammates they’ve gotten for us and the speed at which they find them. Moreover, Scalac is excellent at tools and programming languages.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Scalac could spend more effort getting the engineers up to speed in the industry. When it comes to understanding the space we work in, we do most of the heavy lifting.

Any advice for potential customers?

Be bold, tell them what you need, and be very specific about the people you're looking for.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am CTO of small engineering company working on problems in sports betting space.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Scalac?

Help and advice around challenging R&D project - in memory message broker service.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Experts in field Positive network references

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

Given that we already had well established use cases for the system, Scalac side was quickly able to comprehend and clarify requirements and start with design and development phases quickly. Scalac worked in very iterative manner, presenting us with challenges and solutions on weekly basis and rigorously engineered solutions to problems that arose during the project.

Last mile of the project was involving lot of relentless testing against our performance criteria and needed careful performance tweaks, which team delivered.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

• 1 tech lead
• 2 senior software engineers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We were able to minimise latency that is critical for our business operation and gained a very solid codebase with solved core problems which we can work with and optimise further as it was our own.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Very lean process driven from our side by our manager - weekly sprints finished with demos and planning for next week. Very effective use of resources and me as a key stakeholder in the project could keep on track with ongoings while having time for my own agendas.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Long term experience with Scala. They were friendly, had a constructive approach to project issues, and always had our interests in mind.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Perhaps we should have started to collaborate sooner :)

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a department head for a fintech company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Scalac?

We use some bespoke technology in our tool suite, which works very well for us, but presents challenges in recruiting resources to use those tools; we’re also in an industry that can require us to scale quite rapidly. We reached out to Scalac because they have a bench of engineers who were able to start quickly, and we knew they could augment our teams to allow us to meet requirements.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The initial engineers we hired from Scalac could program in the Scala language, but since the start of our engagement, we’ve brought on frontend engineers who can use React, TypeScript, and platform engineers with AWS  and DevOps experience. 

We reach out to our contacts at Scalac and ask for additional engineers, and Scalac sends us to their CRM, which has candidates that meet our requirements. Within this tool, we can look at the engineer's details, including their background and skill sets in specific languages; from there, we choose candidates we’d like to speak to. Scalac sends us the contact information of those engineers, and after interviews, we bring them onto our team. 

What is the team composition?

They were a referral. 

How did you come to work with Scalac?

We primarily work with two individuals; a project manager and a business relationship manager. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in July 2021, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

This is difficult to measure because they’re integrated as team members, but we measure success through the product team's ability to deliver. We use an Agile scrum methodology, so we have several metrics regarding velocity and story points delivered; there’s also revenue from the projects they work on.

We hold regular meetings with our product team leads and frequently discuss the individuals on our teams; we’ve had very few issues with the Scalac engineers since we started working together. We know that when we work with Scalac we will get quality people because they go through an internal training process that ensures we’re getting a certain benchmark of quality. 

How did Scalac perform from a project management standpoint?

They've been able to mitigate issues quickly, and their response time has been superb. We primarily communicate via email, and have a monthly Google Meet. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The process is easy because of their standards. All we have to do on our end is make sure the engineer is a fit for our company and run through a quick technology assessment to ensure they can do everything we need. We work with a few agencies, but none offer the scaling capabilities that Scalac does. 

We have a very friendly and professional relationship with them, and it feels like a real partnership. Overall, they have access to more resources in the market than anyone else. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing we can come up with immediately. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open with your requirements in the early stages regardless of the project size. We gave them an overview of our business because it’s a niche market, and we found value in that. Let them go through their process because it is very effective.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of the prevention and wellness portfolio for engineering at a healthcare technology company. We build consumer-facing healthcare experiences.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Scalac?

We needed qualified Scala engineers who were experienced in functional programming to support the engineering capabilities of our internal team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired Scalac to provide Scala engineers to support our internal capabilities. They specialize in Scala development, but we have gotten some React engineering support from them as well.

They’re in charge of prescreening candidates before we interview them just as we would an internal hire. We’ve found that the quality of the engineers they’ve sent us has been much higher than we generally see from the previous applicants for our full-time jobs.

What is the team composition?

My main point of contact is Scala’s project manager. We initially started with 10 contractors from Scalac, but we’ve since scaled their team to 40 engineers.

How did you come to work with Scalac?

We met Scalac through a referral.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent somewhere between $2,500,000-$3,000,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2021, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

When we hire contractors, one of the metrics we look at is the percentage of candidates that pass our interview process, which was designed to find high-quality engineers. So far, we’ve accepted a higher percentage of their candidates than we usually do when we’re hiring ourselves, and we haven’t seen any poor performance from anyone that we’ve hired.

Even though they all work offshore, we’ve found that they’re just as productive as our in-house engineers — sometimes even more so. We haven’t had to spend a lot of time ramping them up; they just joined our team, we started assigning them work, and so far, everything has been going smoothly.

How did Scalac perform from a project management standpoint?

Scalac has done great in terms of project management. They’ve provided a project manager to us to help coordinate with the engineers, and if ever there’s a language barrier issue, they’ll step in and help resolve it.

Outside of that, they've been very transparent and communicative in terms of finding additional contractors for us. To give you an idea, we started with 10 contractors to see how they would work. They've all done great, so we've ramped up to 40 contractors. We keep telling them that we’ll take as many contractors as we can from them, so they’re always on the lookout for more to provide us. In that regard, they’re probably the best staff augmentation firm I've ever worked with.

We primarily communicate through email and Slack, but we’ve also given them accounts in our environment. We really do treat them as a part of our team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Scalac is very cost-effective. Their prices are very competitive — we have contracts with some US-based service providers, and we pay them almost double the hourly rate that we pay Scalac.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they could improve on. They’ve all done a fantastic job so far. I’m taking a new role in our company in the near future, and I’m planning on collaborating with them again.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure to integrate them early on into your team so they can easily communicate with you in real-time and collaborate on issues directly.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm an IT Director in logistics company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Scalac. Backend Software Development Company.?

Scala organized 2 sessions of Scala trainings for about 20 employees from our company.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

I know, that Scalac's main business is Scala development and this is their position in the market from my side, therefore, I decided to choose them to train my Frontend and Java team in Scala programming language.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

2 x 2 days sessions about Scala programming language

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

2 people; 1 sales representative and 1 trainer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

People who took part in the training are now more familiar with Scala programming language.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Everything was fine, when talking about communication during organization part. In the training itself, developers were not satisfied with the way the communication was. Participants of the training were not able to ask questions directly during the training, they were using Discord for this. This is the first time that I'm seeing such type of live online training for dedicated group. At the end some participants had a feeling that it was a training like Udemy or similar.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I value the knowledge and level of experience in Scala programming language of the trainer and company.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

• Allow participants to ask questions and be in contact with them - even if it's online, at the end participant should feel like he is in offline training in a room.
• Level of the trainees should be evaluated by the company before the training and training itself should be configured basing on this information.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Fugo.ai. We’re a digital content management software company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Scalac, Inc.?

They helped us develop our software.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provided us with resources to work with our in-house development team. They included a software architect and Scala developers. 

We wanted to build software that used functional programming technologies, specifically Scala. We wanted to use ZIO framework. ZIO and Scala allow you to build a composable and modular program in the software that is statically tagged which means that you can build high-quality software in a short period of time with a small team.

What is the team composition?

We had three full-time developers, one part-time architect, and a project manager. There were also two frontend developers that we worked with for some periods of the project. There was one DevOps developer as well.

How did you come to work with Scalac, Inc.?

We chose them because of their expertise in the technologies that we use, their role in the Scala ecosystem, and their software development expertise in general. They are one of the main contributors and authors of ZIO technology which is one of the things that made them stand out from other development companies. 

How much have you invested in them?

We invested around $70,000–$80,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working on the project in April 2020. This was the first phase of the project and it finished in November 2020. We are not working together at this moment, but we are planning to use them again in February 2021 to work on new features.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

It was very good. Their onboarding process is good, and the quality of their senior engineers is really strong. Their attention and care for the project impressed me. The quality of the code that they produced is quite good.

How did Scalac, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

They have a really good onboarding process. I flew to Gdansk in Poland to meet the team. We discussed the project for an entire week and estimated the project. After we signed the contract, we began working on the project together remotely. 

We use Slack, Google Hangouts, GitHub which is where we stored our code and collaborated on the project.

In general, every software project I have worked on has gone over the deadline, so this was not an exception, but we anticipated that. Initially, we had a deadline, but the probability that it would overrun was quite high, so we had a window of additional time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I think we enjoyed working with their developers because they are very knowledgeable, so it was a good experience for us. Culturally, they matched our startup working environment as well. It was quite easy to merge two different companies and work on the project, so we enjoyed that as well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were a few challenges. Sometimes the correct people were not assigned to do the task on time, but when we raised this issue, it was immediately corrected. There is nothing major that comes to my mind. Every project has challenges but the main thing I remember was that anytime we had a concern it was immediately corrected.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Plan the project before starting to work on it.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of an animal shelter management company. We’re a platform that helps animal shelters rescue and manage pets, applicants, and volunteers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Scalac, Inc.?

Our technical stack is a little complex because we have React clients but Clojure systems on the backend. It’s hard to find Clojure developers in the world, but Scalac, Inc. filled that void for us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We wanted to build a system for animal rescues and shelters. This platform would send notification reminders for pets’ medical treatments. This development required front- and backend work. Scalac, Inc.’s developer was able to do both, which is very impressive.

He built a system that allows users to select dates and times for reminders to start as well as reoccurrence intervals. It’s a pretty complex web form to build. The developer built a backend that parses those cron expressions and then delivers the reminders. He used React.js and Clojure.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a developer and project manager.

How did you come to work with Scalac, Inc.?

I got a referral from one of my partners in Poland. They said Scalac, Inc. would be a good fit for this project. I connected with one of their account executives and vetted the developer. It seemed like a great fit and they were.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested around $15,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project lasted from January–February 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

I was really impressed with how thorough the developer was with this project. Not a lot of contract developers would take the time to do test-driven development on the client-side. What’s more, he also prepared a design system storybook so it’s easy for other developers to use it in the future. Overall, it was a breeze for them to do the work and then hand it right back off to us.

How did Scalac, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

They were great at project management, and we used Asana. Our project manager was very communicative and thorough. We used Slack and Zoom for correspondence.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Our team was impressed by how flexible they were. I wasn’t anticipating a developer to do both the front- and backend. Originally, I found them hoping they could just do the backend; but this developer could do both, and he did so excellently.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there are no areas for improvement. All their account managers, project managers, and developers are excellent, and I’d happily work with them again.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure your project is very well documented so they can get up and running quickly. Their developers are incredibly skilled and onboarding won’t be a problem as long as you’re well-prepared.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We offer an accounting platform and ERP as SaaS for Swiss SMEs. I am the head of software development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Scalac, Inc.?

We hired Scalac, Inc. to take care of the Payroll module, a piece of software that we acquired in 2018. The challenge was to be able to learn, maintain and improve the package within 6 months so that the original developers could leave.

What were your goals for this project?

The main goal has been to maintain and add new features to the Payroll application which is written in Scala. The current main challenge is to improve the performance and allow SME of more than 25 employees to use the software.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

The selection was based on location (Europe), skill sets, cost, and resource availability. Scalac, Inc. was selected among 3 other vendors. It came with high recommendations from former customers and a solid reputation.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The project is still on-going with no end-date. The vendor is responsible for the Payroll application, which encompasses maintenance, new features development, implementations, and improvements. We needed a self-sufficient independent team that could work in Kanban mode, responsible for their CI/CD pipeline, and able to react quickly to new requirements.

What was the team composition?

3 Backend developers (Scala) 1 Frontend developer 1 Business analyst 1 DevOps

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Within 6 months, the team was able to take over the payroll software and work without the original developers. They are releasing several times per week and are able to react to scheduled and unscheduled tasks very quickly. Overall the Scalac team met our expectations and went beyond.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The team has been impressive in terms of communication and being able to work totally independently. The tools used are Jira, Confluence, bitbucket, Slack and G Suite. The whole team can communicate clearly in English.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The vendor has a selection of very talented professionals. Compared to other vendors we work with, the cost/skills ratio is excellent.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There is little to improve apart from the team to feel more empowered to take challenges without waiting for the senior management approval.