What it’s like working in Cambodia with Web Essentials
Do you want to make a difference in the world and are you tired of shoveling snow? Christian is a German developer with expertise in Continuous Delivery. He joined our team as a consultant last year, after learning about Web Essentials at a TYPO3 conference in Europe.
“I visited Cambodia in 2010 but did not know Web Essentials existed. I went home to Germany, and then I heard about some TYPO3 work in Cambodia,” Christian said. He came on board to support the IT team and Quality Assurance teams and significantly improved the way we define quality assurance and process automation in order to deliver more frequently to customers with more confidence. What took us days in the past is now a matter of minutes. “First thing we did was to implement a process to check the version, review, and then to release” said Christian.
Continuous Delivery automates and improves software delivery, and makes it easier for clients to receive a product that matches their specifications. In short: It makes the production process more transparent. Christian explained that this simplifies the development process for clients. “There's less confusion now because we know exactly what we deploy.”
Christian also helped improve Web Essentials’ infrastructure by introducing a local development environment that runs isolated on the developers' machine. “It’s much faster to set up an environment, much more secure, and they can play around without destroying their computer” Christian said.
It was fun being part of a multicultural team with a majority of Cambodian staff, Christian said, though he learned it was important to build trust with other team members before getting buy-in for new ideas. “It’s exciting to challenge the team. It’s hard and it’s rewarding, being the leader for that, pushing through and then celebrating together.”
As Christian prepares to move on to other opportunities, he will miss the enthusiasm Web Essentials staff had for learning about continuous delivery. “People here want to understand Continuous Delivery more. They want to understand everything. They ask good questions.”
For those interested in working at Web Essentials in Phnom Penh, Christian had some words of advice. “Be patient and learn Khmer [the local language]. When I started to speak more Khmer, there was more respect. Don’t get angry about failure, just allow a warm environment.”
If you’re interested in using your development expertise to develop software in Cambodia, get in touch.
