Loading...With the inauguration of its 5th delivery center in Romania (and the 9th worldwide), Pentalog is not only celebrating an important milestone in its evolution, it’s also praising the solid understanding of the word “responsibility” by its people.
If I’d been asked 3-4 years ago what made a city a great location for launching a new Pentalog delivery center, I would have listed the same criteria we still use today when benchmarking locations across the world. We are constantly assessing tech markets, in terms of:
- Existing workforce, skills in volumes and quality, as well as growth trends.
- Existing digital infrastructure as well as higher education infrastructure – the long-term potential of the local universities is critical.
- General quality of life and value-fit with our own community of customers and talent.
- Existing organizations and companies committed to the sustainable growth of the community.
- Then, of course, cost effectiveness.
So, why Timisoara?
Timisoara is an industrial and vibrant academic center. As the largest city in western Romania, it’s one of the most cosmopolitan communities – a crossroad of many cultures, and home of 10% of the country’s IT workforce.
Timisoara ticks all the boxes of a great Pentalog destination.
After initiating our international journey outside France with Brasov (in 2000), then expanding our capacity with 3 more delivery centers in Romania (Bucharest in 2004, Iasi in 2007, Cluj in 2011) and other regions across the globe (Chisinau in 2005, Hanoi in 2009, Lyon in 2013, Guadalajara in 2018), we always knew Timisoara would become a home for a Pentalog team. But it wasn’t until the pandemic that the first members in the region joined us in the new remote-work reality.
Embracing a freedom of choice policy early in 2020 allowed people to choose whether they wanted to work from home or the office. This was not only beneficial for the wellbeing of our colleagues and maintaining operational continuity, it also enabled Pentalog to ramp up Top 5% talent from anywhere, regardless of their zip code.
Two years later, we had a team of over 20 engineers in Timisoara who had chosen Pentalog to partner their career growth with meaningful projects and a positive tech impact.
Giving this team a dedicated identity and structure, with the right means to scale and contribute, was the natural step forward.
The #SuperHumans who chose Pentalog
To quote Frédéric Lasnier, Pentalog’s CEO, in his on-site inauguration speech, for the first time in Pentalog’s journey it was no longer the company who chose the location of a new delivery hub, but it was the community of people in Timisoara that chose Pentalog.
A strong core of elite digital engineers onboarded on Pentalog’s Agile framework are already contributors to some of our 200+ teams of product-makers.
None of our other delivery centers had this advantage at their launch. So, when you ask me today what makes a city a great location for a Pentalog delivery center, I’ll add one obvious answer above the other criteria: it’s the people!
It’s the quality of the people, their talent and ambition for excellence. It’s the quality of their relationship with the community, their passion and their responsibility in facing the challenges of a complex world.
And I know they’re in for a ride. Having taken the first steps of several Pentalog delivery centers, I know firsthand how rewarding this experience is and how it shapes the intrapreneurial mindset of a long-term contributor to the organization.
Our first day in Timisoara
We didn’t come to Timisoara empty handed.
We brought our commitment to play a decisive part in futureproofing the careers of our colleagues. To exchange our knowledge and practices with the community. And to humbly sustain students and young passionate learners in gaining relevant exposure to the best of the digital product engineering world.
And we brought our commitment to ensure Positive Tech Impact through our projects.
Naturally, we couldn’t have ignored the opportunity, in the first symbolic day of Pentalog Timisoara’s existence, to engage with the community and organize the first PentaBAR tech meetup in the city. This also happened to be our first offline PentaBAR event in the last 3 years.
Our colleague Előd Tobiás shared some of his lessons learned with Typescript. Having analyzed and written more than 1 million lines of code, Elod loves to challenge the way we think, write, test and improve code. If you didn’t already have the chance, watch the replay of his talk in our video library.
Timisoara loves offline events, and we will honor that vibe by facilitating more tech meetups regularly.
Our future plans in Timisoara
The new delivery center will be managed, in a regional approach, by Mihai CIMPEAN, Customer Success Manager of Pentalog Cluj and Timisoara. Together with the core team, management team and future colleagues, his mission is to scale Pentalog Timisoara meaningfully as part of the world-class software engineering and product talent Pentalog is all about.
