Going international: Our South Africa experience

Choosing South Africa

First of all, Hi I’m Noni and I am the new Recruiter of Touchtribe, and also working for Elements. Touchtribe is part of MakerStreet, a collective of specialised companies. One of the other Development companies, Elements, is already quit international. With currently 17 different nationalities and an office in Barcelona, they are the perfect inspiration for the international roadmap of Touchtribe.

When I joined Touchtribe in May 2022 we made the decision to go International. But why South Africa? With the current pressure on the market, especially in the development world, we are looking for high quality developers abroad. For us, the most important thing is being able to work well together as a team, so it is important that the developers are in the same time zone. With this we thought South Africa was the perfect place to start our remote working.

Russel joining Touchtribe 

We made the decision and after two weeks it was time for me to meet Russel. Little did I know, he would be my first hire for Touchtribe. I can tell you all about this, but it would be better to hear it from Russel himself. 

Russel: “I was already working remotely for different companies. Right when my current project ended I was contacted by my old colleague Evan, who is currently working at Elements. He told me that Touchtribe was looking for Front-end developers, and I thought, why not take a shot. After a couple of talks with Noni and other colleagues I was sold. The skillset matched and I felt a good energy with all the people. I started quite quickly and the whole onboarding process never felt so effortless within a company. I feel like there is no barrier between me and my colleagues in Amsterdam and everyone is so nice! Sometimes I do feel bad for making them speak English though, but no-one seems to mind and they’ve all been very welcoming and accommodating, which is great :) Currently I’m working on the project Cadeauconcepten with a mix of colleagues from Touchtribe, Elements and Freelance developers. I hope I can travel to the Netherlands and meet everyone in real life soon!”

South Africa vs the Netherlands 

I need to admit, changing to English has been a little challenging for me. But after two months I can say I’m used to it now. The different accents came as the next challenge, but hé if that’s all I have nothing to complain about my job. People often ask me: what is the biggest difference between South Africa and the Netherlands? Well apart from the language I must say that the conversations are quite similar to the ones I have with our dutch developers. Of course they are even more curious about how we work and want to know everything about our clients, as they know less about them than our Dutch applicants.

Maybe a small difference is that I have contact in a different way with Russel then my other colleagues in the Netherlands. I see most of my colleagues in Amsterdam at the coffee machine and ask them how they are doing and about the projects they are working on. As Russel’s coffee machine and mine are a bit far away from each other, I regularly speak with him through slack and online calls. As working remotely can be challenging if you are not used to it, I really wanted to stay in contact with him to check how he is doing. Well up until now I think we are good! 

Join our development team

After this smooth first hire I can’t wait for all the people that are joining next! So are you enthusiastic about working with Touchtribe? We are not only looking for developers in South Africa, but also in the Netherlands. On our career page you can find some more information about our projects and tech stack. You can also go directly to our current vacancies:

→ careers.touchtribe.nl  

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me: noni.pulungan@touchtribe.nl. I would love to hear from you!