No, not specifically. But we know our name can be confusing. Let us explain…
Here’s where the name comes from: instead of “outsourcing” software work overseas, we “edusource” it to local university students. That’s the simple explanation.
And there are a lot of benefits right there. Have you ever worked with an overseas team? If so, you know the problems. Imagine:
- No meetings at 2 a.m. to accommodate time differences. (Even though our students do sometimes work at 2 a.m., the company as a whole operates during normal business hours, so we can chat when it’s convenient for you.)
- No language barrier. (Unless you count the millennial jargon that sometimes makes things difficult. But let’s be honest, we have the same problem with our kids.)
- Possibility of face-to-face meetings. During the summer, we often bring apprentices to client meetings and like for clients to get to know them. (Though we do like to give them advance notice, so they’ll be sure to wear shoes to the meeting…)
Our name has come to mean so much more than just sending work to local students. That’s where EduSource started, but it’s not where we are now. EduSource has evolved to also mean:
Commitment to Education.
At EduSource, we exist to develop tomorrow’s tech leaders and culture. More than just throwing software at young, inexperienced developers, we believe in training students to write code exactly how we want it to be written. Our standards are strict. But we teach them a lot more than just coding standards. During a summer of working with us, students have weekly opportunities for education in the form of classes, book clubs, and forums.
But we also believe in educating our young software engineers. We hire students right out of college (or preferably, right out of our apprentice program!), and have high expectations of them. At EduSource, engineers don’t start at the bottom. Instead, they do almost everything our senior engineers do. How can we do that? Because we believe so strongly in education. We teach. And mentor. And all those weekly opportunities for the apprentices? They’re available for our full-time employees, too.
So if you come into EduSource with 10 years of experience, do you miss out on the opportunity for growth? Absolutely not. EduSource is all about the idea of constant improvement, so we assume that ALL of our employees have much to learn. We invest in conferences and lots of other opportunities for all employees at EduSource. That’s a pretty perfect segue into the next thing EduSource means to us.
Coaching.
Every employee at EduSource has a coach (including our apprentices). We believe that everyone needs to be pushed for improvement, so we have every employee meet with his/her coach to set a goal for the next quarter. Coaches are available for career advice, and force employees to be future-thinking. Setting goals keeps us in a constant state of self improvement.
And we put our money behind that coaching promise. Currently, we have employees using EduSource budget for conferences, books, podcasts, classes, and memberships to online communities of knowledge. That’s why you can work with EduSource with confidence that you’re getting the best solution to your problem. Our commitment to getting better is built right into our budget.
Community.
The problem with the original definition of EduSource as outsourcing software to local college students? It sounds so cold. One of the major issues with outsourcing work overseas is the lack of relationship. We can only build so much community through a screen or a telephone.
We believe that community has to exist for a truly great coaching/partnering relationship to take place. It’s next-to-impossible to effectively manage without face-to-face contact. So even though our name can imply a lack of relationship, that’s certainly not how we operate.
Instead of hiring isolated teams at universities, and asking them to complete projects, we first ask students to spend a summer at EduSource, so they can get to know our software processes and developing the relationships that will be needed to sustain them through the school year, when they work remotely. And instead of using university-based teams, we put student apprentices right on our full-time engineer teams, so our apprentices always have someone to go to with questions who is well acquainted with the same code and is likely to know the answers.
So that’s it – that’s what EduSource means and what it’s evolved to mean to us. But there’s a more fun story about how we came up with the idea of EduSource, and you can read all those details in our company story.
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