Pros
- If you just gather some really smart Nigerians together, you're going to have a good workforce. They'll succeed regardless of what the company does with them. Pretty amazing fellows here.
Cons
- The pay is low for the Nigerian fellows/employees. Call it whatever you want (training, fellowship, whatever), but at the heart of it all, the company is really capturing the difference between what you charge foreign software companies and what you pay Nigerians. The Nigerian pay is somewhere around $10,000 USD which even for Lagos, is fairly low. This business model wouldn't work or be legal in the USA or Europe, but marketing and messaging has somehow elevated Andela above the law. - The fellowship isn't worth it for the Nigerian fellow. The training is poor and outdated and management has moved the training away from a education-first model to a Get-the-fellow-working-ASAP model. The education system is constantly revamped to prioritize speed over learning. Even worse, the company kind of charges the fellow for the 'training' in way; if the fellow leaves, the fellow has to pay the company for the training they received (which is way greater than the fellow is making) so they feel kind of locked-in to the company for 4 years. This obviously is not in the fellow's best interest as their skills are worth far more than $10,000 a year. So, really the deal to the fellow is to join Andela for shoddy training, and then be locked into the company for 4 years which is way too long a period of time for way below average pay (the average software engineer makes upwards of like 90,000 USD in the US). The average Andela student/employee can/should be out of there in 2 years. - Lots of koolaid drinkers here. People are reprimanded for giving advice to Andelan fellows to immigrate or find work elsewhere even though it's obviously in the fellow's best interest. Lots of lectures on brain drain and bettering Nigeria even though it's obvious in the best interest of the company and nobody has enough of an understanding of politics or economics to really say what's best for the fellow's interest or for Nigeria. The company takes the side of discouraging immigration probably because it's clearly in the company's interest. - Mission has taken a backseat to profit. How many fellows do they have again? Like 150? That seems like a small number compared to the original mission here which was something like 'democratizing tech education for Africa' or some nonsense like that. Recruitment for new fellows has stopped so they don't seem to be doing much else for Nigeria or Africa at this point.