Top brass at Airtel's Parkside Towers offices were furious with a local developer who opted to shut down code that subscribers rely on to make USSD queries such as balance, reloading bundles and the like.
The developer, apparently hired through Airtel's IT support services partner IBM, reportedly pulled the plug on the code which had been deployed to several African countries operations after a disagreement with his client.
As a result, Airtel's subscribers have been unable to make simple requests or even purchase data bundles.
Reacting fast, bosses at Parkside have brought in two programmers who worked with the renegade developer to restore the code.
Kenya is largely said to have recovered and other countries are also being addressed as well.
Sources said the developer whom we can only name as Bob was "incredibly stupid" to pull of such a move especially with so many other local developers lining up to market their solutions to Airtel/IBM.
The move is seen as impacting negatively on local developers whom the multinationals might never want to enter into contracts with going forward.
It is unfortunate that he had to take them offline but then that incidence should not be used as a basis for which companies will use as a reason not to hire services of Kenyan programmers. This country has some of the the best talented programmers in the region and our universities & colleges are still churning out more.
ReplyDeleteA well paid programmer is a happy coder and companies which have valued and treasured their programmers have had their programmers produce great software solutions and this too ensures business continuity.
I may not have so much insider information on what transpired but one thing I can almost be so certain about is that the terms were not so favorable to him. I hope they get to resolve that issue because even if they plug and play programmers there that is not going to be the end of it and in the end they Airtel will frustrate their customers more if they do not resolve such like issues amicably in future.
Joseph, the guy was paid $1million but was struggling to service many of the countries hence he was asked to concentrate on some and leave the others for the time.
ReplyDeleteScribe thanks for filling me in on that info.
ReplyDeleteThe way I see it, the developer must have been bullied and probably not paid for hours spent on their projects.
ReplyDeletebestdeal word is, the developer became big headed and wouldn't reason with client...
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