Software development that makes a difference in demanding projects – sound like your kind of thing?
Nora Nirhamo | 2022/01/13
Softability attracts developers who know what they want from their career; to be involved in coding meaningful software. As a small software agency, we care about the people who work for us. Read more!
Working in a large organization you might be just one dev among hundreds of others and you have to work on several software development projects at once in a hurry. Some of the projects have already entered admin mode and the work can be a little mind-numbing. Even if the technology is state-of-the-art and you’re on a great salary the lack of meaningless of the work can make it unpleasant. If the work you do holds no great meaning for you or the wider world, and it makes you dissatisfied, it’s time to look forward.
Employees come to Softability via different routes, but they often share the same state of mind; will to do good, meaningful work.
What kind of software development does Softability do?
Softability’s core idea is software development that makes a difference to society and people’s lives. We’re talking about meaningful software development. Around half of our turnover comes from the health care industry, and the other half from industrial equipment manufacturers.
In health care projects, our people get to develop software used to take extremely precise MRI images of people’s brains, to name just one example. AI can be used to search for anomalies in the brain that indicate whether a patient is developing cancer.
In industrial applications, we are involved in projects relating to energy saving and the environment. One good example is the XReach remote support solution, which means that companies no longer need to fly specialists from one side of the globe to the other to solve issues with industrial equipment. That helps to save travel costs and the environment.
When software development directly affects wellbeing and nature, it adds a deeper meaning to a software developer’s work. The developer leaves their own mark on the world through meaningful software development.
Quality assurance, software development, and various XR technologies
We carry out quality assurance on applications and embedded systems. We also develop quality assurance processes. Automation helps to minimize the possibility of human error during the testing phase. This is a huge benefit to customers and also makes work easier for the coder. The DevOps model plays a significant role in our work.
In software development, we carry out embedded and hardware development across a wide scale from low-power devices to large and complex systems. On the user interface development side of things, we code software for desktops, mobile devices, browsers, and cloud services.
Our work revolves around creating new things. New technologies are also created by our very own XR Studio team. The team creates immersive new XR technology applications for use with smart glasses, and mobile programs for a range of different devices.
What’s it like working at Softability?
As a software developer, your handiwork will have a direct impact on people’s health, wellbeing, and safety. At the same time, projects are meant to support your own career goals. We won’t assign you to any project without listening to your opinion. If, for example, you have a burning passion for Azure, health care, and cloud services and you want to work with those things, you can!
We give everyone space to be themselves. Too many employees at different companies know how hard it is to work when your mind is filled with distractions, such as a workload that is too high, overlapping projects, or when your values conflict with a project’s values.
If there are too many distractions in your work, we will try to help you solve them so that you can start your morning enthusiastic about an interesting project. Software development is very creative, so it’s important that you can focus properly and give it your all.
We work on numerous different projects, but you will only work on one at a time. To us, you’re more than just a resource. You’re a person whose skills should not be suppressed by overworking. This means that you can put all of your skills and knowhow into your work.
Read what our software developers and testers say about working at Softability!
At Softability, values guide software development and everything we do
Do you feel like workplace values are sometimes just empty words?
Too often our applicants tell us that software development agencies value efficiency. They try to squeeze every last drop out of their employees. No-one utters a word about the meaningfulness of work, though.
We do things differently: in fact, we do the opposite. Meaningful work and soft values are at the centre of our work – and we’re proud of it. Values guide our work every day. When we interview new applicants, we discuss values. We already chart motivating factors in the job application so that we can see whether we share the same values.
So what are our values?
Softability’s values are
- Empathy
- Common sense
- Responsibility
Empathy
People aren’t just resources to us. We are flexible and we’re also genuinely interested in you. We work together to think about the most important things for you that would allow us to take things forward.
Common sense
We have pruned unnecessary processes from our work and aim to make decisions with common sense wherever possible. It is important that the things we do feel natural. We also don’t get stuck in rigid patterns.
Responsibility
We aim to avoid short-sighted solutions. Responsibility is highlighted in our relationships with customers from the health care and energy-saving industries.
We also donate 2 per cent of our net profit to charity each year. For the last two years, our donations have gone to Pelastakaa Lapset ry. We also hold a volunteer day on Ascension Day, and profits go directly to charity in full.
We genuinely take care of our employees
We want to be the kindest and most desirable workplace in the industry, an employer that takes good care of its employees. Genuinely. It’s an extremely tough objective, but what concrete action do we take to promote software developers’ job satisfaction?
- We meet employees personally and respect their individual career goals. To us, every employee is an individual with their own hopes and dreams.
- We come together each month around enjoyable and laid-back activities to foster a culture of community and belonging. Everyone is part of the group.
- We’ve cut out hierarchies and give employees a voice to have a say on their work. The CEO is everybody’s closest supervisor.
- Employees can choose suitable tools for their work. If you need something, we’ll get it for you.
- We offer extremely comprehensive accident and illness insurance, which also covers accidents and illness during leisure time. Occupational health care also includes wellbeing coaching for our employees.
- We measure our employees’ satisfaction using tools such as the Great Place to Work survey, and aim to continuously improve our employee experience.
Our employees come from a dozen different countries, and we regularly seek out top talent from beyond Finland’s borders. We make our new arrivals feel welcome. We take concrete action to help employees who are moving to Finland – among other things, we organized housing for our new colleague from abroad.
Because our employees enjoy working for us, our employee commitment and enthusiasm is passed on to our customers. Our customer satisfaction is an impressive 4.6/5. That’s one reason to be proud.
Our employees are a skilled bunch and are always enthusiastic about developing their skills. The work we do supports that learning, and we supplement working with various training courses.
Even if your technical knowhow is top-tier, recruitment places particular emphasis on teamwork and interaction with others. Above all else, we want to find more good people for our team.
If you would like to work on meaningful software development as part of our warm-hearted Softability family, check out our vacancies and shape your story.
Keywords:
Best workplaces meaningful software development Softability family software development work community