Monterail 12th Anniversary - Striving for Longevity

Monterail has recently celebrated its twelfth birthday! This milestone is a good opportunity to think back and appreciate all the good things that happened over time. We grew and developed but our growth wasn’t only about the data. In the blog post below we share the biggest highlights from Monterail's 12th year of operation, important changes and exciting news. Let’s have a closer at the current state of Monterail.

People Team

• Monterail team is currently 170+ people with over 120 in the delivery team and we aim to achieve 40% growth YoY in the delivery team.
• Since January 1st, 2022, 3,584 candidates have applied and 47 new people were hired, which is the top 1%.
• We started gathering feedback in the form of eNPS regularly each quarter and noticed more engagement every time - 76% of people responded on average to the survey.  
• We’ve organized 3 Monterail Bootcamps (2 dedicated to Ruby and 1 to Vue) and our plans include more initiatives like this for 2022 (another edition of our Rubycamp is starting in September!).

Our company structure evolved. Starting at the top - the C-level has grown to five people with Marta Klimowicz becoming a Chief Growth Officer and Grzegorz Hajdukiewicz taking the role of Chief Delivery Officer. Also, we gained “new heads” - Krzysztof Maruszczak manages Finance, Krzysztof Kaiser is the Head of Product Design and Yevheniia Zakharova takes care of Business Development.  

However, promotions and changes happened on all levels of the organization. We introduced the roles of Team Leads and Managers in almost every team giving people the opportunity to grow into the leadership path. Besides, the development team structure changed by distinguishing the roles of Principal Engineers and Architects.

Diversity&Inclusion 

If you follow us for at least some time, you must have noticed that Diversity&Inclusion has become one of our strategic pillars and still is in 2022. We are a company where words like diversity and inclusion are not just buzzwords. We want everyone in our company to be treated with the same respect, kindness, and patience; no matter who they are, where they come from, or what they believe in. Here are some activities within this pillar that happened last year:

• The document "Principles Of Inclusive Organization" was created
• Two webinars with external consultants were organized
  • Work-Life Balance - Mental Health At Work
  • Diversity in a company with Kultura Równości where we learned the Five D model of reaction (Distract, Delegate, Document, Delay, Direct), How to react as an ally, How to act as an LGBT+ Ally.

• We organized 8 Workshops about Unconscious Biases at Work 
• We created a safe space for knowledge sharing (a dedicated channel on Slack)
• Conducted D&I Roundtable Lunches for everyone to join discussions and make a change
• We created a bunch of helpful guides such as Inclusive Language, Diversity Management in your organization, Diversity and Inclusion in Design (get your copies here)
• Recorded a series of videos with Her Impact, the first platform supporting women's development in Poland, about myths concerning women in IT and the Impostor Syndrome.

Remote First 

Starting quite some time before the pandemic, we introduced the remote-first approach to our organization. We wanted to continue attracting and staffing the best talent here at Monterail, regardless of their preferred location or the work mode. In the context of cooperating with talent, we have operated locally for many years - employing, in the majority, people who were interested in working in our Wrocław office. Our remote-first initiative changed our modus operandi — for the better. Those who decide on moving to another Wrocław or another city in Poland in pursuit of their dream job are offered the relocation package.

We’ve opened up to hiring from other locations in Poland and abroad. In 2022, 18% of our employees are from abroad coming from countries like Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, USA, Spain, Brazil, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Romania, Georgia, Armenia, Hungary, Nigeria, Azerbaijan, the Czech Republic and we are not stopping there.

Although working remotely has become the default mode for many, we still like to meet in the office from time to time and work in our favorite spots. To adapt to our growing team’s needs and efficiently use the office space, we created an application ODRA - Office Desk Reservation App. It’s especially useful now since we volunteered to share the office space with Fundacja Ukraina to support all activities aiming to help refugees during the war.

Hi5 Going Strong

Remember when we introduced Hi5 Sabbatical leave three years ago? The idea was met with huge enthusiasm in the company and a dose of skepticism from the outside world. Our co-founders believed in this initiative and looking back, we are able to tell, they were right. Already 18 people have been to or planned their Hi!5 holidays (see how they spent in the stories on our blog).

The pandemic has changed the way we work, think about work and affected the mental health of many–free time has become the most sought benefit that’s hard to replace with any tangible assets. That's why we're proud to offer this to our long-term team members. Another way that supports mental health at Monterail is the program with free online psychological help for every employee that we launched in 2020 and use ever since.

The beginning of every Hi5 is now even more pleasant than ever! Every person starting holiday gets the proper package.

Events Are Back

For events enthusiasts and community supporters, being finally able to meet in person was the highlight of the last year. We kicked off or continued a series of different events, attracting hundreds of people:

• MonteTalks live events on Facebook, Linkedin and Youtube about: Project Management, Node.js and Python. We wanted to share the knowledge and expertise of our employees, according to the pandemic situation. 
• Live event (held in Polish) about new roles in our company and senior developers’ development, called “Senior Dev i co dalej?”
• Vue.js Meetup, organized in a hybrid mode, together with Vue.js Poland, where we invited top Vue.js experts speakers, like Filip Rakowski, Carlos Rodrigues, Daniel Roe and our own: Szymon Licau
• Since Vue.js Meetup was such a huge success, we decided to move our MonteTalks series to offline as well. That’s why another MonteTalks about Ruby was available online, but also in our office.
• Live webinar with our long-term partner Cooleaf, an award-winning US-based HR-tech platform about “How to create a successful HR product

We also had a chance to be on the other side of the stage, too - our experts were speakers at the largest Vue conference in the world - Vue.js Amsterdam. Artur Rosa, Frontend Architect gave a keynote speech about a developer’s romance with Vue and presented the gist of the special edition “Vue Report: Amsterdam 2022” while the Head of Technology, Tomasz Kania Orzeł showed how to move a Web application to the Web3 universe in five steps.

Artur Rosa, Frontend Architect and Tomasz Kania-Orzeł, Head of Technology

Let’s Talk Business

In our 12th year of operating, we continued to deliver innovative software for industry leaders. Our clients' portfolio grew by adding inspiring digital products such as the NFT-based platform, live-shopping app for e-commerce, complex system for engineering and many more. Here are some numbers:

• 360 successful projects delivered so far
• 215+ clients
• 47 currently ongoing projects
• 11 business trips to the biggest conferences all over the world including Washington DC, Dubai, Helsinki, Amsterdam, Paris

“There’s a moment in Monterail's life that I have always celebrated, no matter how big the company has been or my current role in it. Adding a new client’s logo to our home page. To the outside world, it may not seem like much. Some people may not even notice it. But I remember when we hardly had any logos to be showcased. Fake it till you make it was the name of the game. Each year new logos started appearing.”

Szymon Boniecki Co-CEO
at Monterail

Clutch

It’s not only the number or logos that count but the opinions of our clients matter the most. We managed to sustain the Clutch Score at the level of 4.8 while reaching already 40 comprehensive reviews. The overall NPS score that we reached at the end of 2021 was 71 - quite an achievement considering the turmoil in the last two years everyone has been going through.

As a cherry on top, we were listed in the Clutch Top 1000 companies, under the first 100! This award is the most prestigious one from Clutch.co as the list covers only the top 1% of industry leaders in the global B2B market. It proves that the commitment to our customers and dedication to work we made a long time ago translates directly into customer satisfaction.

12th Birthday Party

We’ve had quite a lot of serious reasons to celebrate this year’s anniversary! After a long break caused by the pandemic, we could finally meet in person, catch up with everyone and enjoy this time together. During the event, our co-CEOs took us down memory lane and reminded us of some company milestones, shared personal stories, and impressive numbers.

As you can see in the photos - the vibes of the party were unique! The organizers planned lots of interesting activities for everyone - catamaran cruises on the Odra river, ceramics workshops, huge board games, pub quiz, beer workshops and driving the DeLorean from the “Back to the future” movie.

A few more statistics from the party - yeah, measuring it is fun, too!

• 600 - The number of kilometers made with the DeLorean during the party
• 44 - The number of people coming to Wrocław from other cities/countries 
• 15,500 - The number of kilometers these people made to the party
• 370 - The number of Monterail-labeled beers produced since the last anniversary

Let’s Pursue Longevity

Growth entails changes and in the last 12 years, Monterail has changed a lot. When we started in 2010, we were just a small, tight-knit group of people dedicated to software development working from a rented flat. Now, we’re close to reaching 200 people on board working both remotely and from a well-designed office in the heart of Wrocław. Still dedicated to software development, though!

Over time, we introduced new roles, processes, and initiatives and resigned from some things that were no longer beneficial. But what made us drive this whole time was the same core values our co-CEOs shaped:

Figure it out, Embrace responsibility, Stay humble and Be honest. They help us grow healthily and keep us in the right direction.

Naturally, our company was created with growth in mind. However, it is and always will be important for our growth to be healthy and steady. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon and we aim for longevity. We wish ourselves many more years in delivering innovative software!