First Factory has adopted the quarterly Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS), a tool used by Human Resource departments to gain insights into employee satisfaction and loyalty. Taking its cue from the Net Promoter survey used for nearly two decades to measure customer sentiment, survey scores range from -100 to 100. Through our HR Info System provider, BambooHR, we have conducted these anonymous quarterly eNPS surveys starting in early 2022. Our current eNPS is 82 and we have yet to fall below 80, with upwards of 77% of our team responding.
Leading organizations deem that an eNPS score above zero is good or acceptable, while scores above fifty are considered excellent. In their 2022 blog post, “Employee Net Promoter Score: A Brief Guide” Vantage Circle indicates that, “a score of over 70 is deemed to be groundbreaking” and represents the top five percent of companies worldwide. We are incredibly proud of what our eNPS score of 82 represents and are fully committed to making First Factory one of the best places to work.
We recognize that the strength of our company lies in the dedication and generosity of our employees. As such, we provide open communication channels, incredible tools to perform their jobs, and managers that are very hands-on. We invest in employee development, including but not limited to: education reimbursement, English courses, monthly tech talks, whitepapers, training housed in our custom LMS, and more. We work hard to create and maintain a culture antithetical to the transactional hire/fire of so many software development vendors. Here at First Factory everyone is treated with respect, all input is welcome, and every employee has the opportunity to learn, share and advance along a career path they are excited about.
We will not stop listening to our employee’s feedback and working to improve the quality of our work environment and the opportunities they have as software creators, all while ensuring that this translates to client satisfaction and business impact.
Bob Dylan poignantly wrote, “Times, they are-a-changin’.” In a world upended by a global pandemic and the business, supply chain and consumer behaviors that followed, this statement seems to ring truer than ever. An evergreen anthem to the varying societal and economic turbulence we face has proven this song’s impact through varying obstacles. We’re becoming more familiar with cryptocurrency and staying in awe of the self-driving cars we’ve been anticipating for years, all while hosting virtual meetings wearing AI headsets and, perhaps, pajama pants. Yet, business owners and consumers alike wonder how the world can adjust to this sudden shift to a “new normal” and how we can continue to gain momentum when much of what we knew has slowed to a halt. Even though the Jetsons made it seem like we’d be flying our automobiles by now, the point is that technology has continued to be the critical component in allowing us to meet the new challenges we face head-on with speed and agility. 
In the development environment, the developer does their individual unit testing, the team does code review and automated process run regression tests.
This is a shared environment where we give the product one last look over before handing it off to the client for beta and user acceptance testing. Before making any delivery to our clients, the quality assurance individual will do a manual smoke test to ensure major functionality is still working in the new environment that the software has been pushed to.
First Factory is well connected in the development community and is able to attract and retain great talent. In addition to targeted recruitment ads on job sites, we leverage a growing social and professional network of over 20 thousand people. This community follows our team through our Facebook posts, and other channels, celebrating our culture and highlighting our developers. We work directly with developers and recruiters on a regular basis to identify candidates with whom we can directly communicate when the right role becomes available, thus reducing the time to hire. Once our network is energized about our open positions, we begin a thorough screening process to ensure that only the best candidates make it through.
Entry-Level Developers are placed into a customized training program to reinforce foundational knowledge of object-oriented programming, test-driven development, and to refine soft skills needed for successful client relations. Training programs last up to six months, with the first half of our Academy focused on technical skill building and the soft skills required to effectively communicate with our clients and within the team. The second half of our Academy is spent building actual internal products using the latest technologies and design patterns. 