Uber

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an engineering manager at Uber, a ridesharing company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Ready4S?

We had quite a lot of work related to some firmware. I was looking for a company that could provide us professional engineers who could very quickly understand what was going on in the project and build the system together with our internal team.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They are helping us with our firmware. They work closely with the hardware electronics. The technologies we’re using are C, C++, and Python coding. They’re writing drivers. They’re working with sensors, with IoT devices, with microcontrollers, and with near field communication (NFC) technology. There’s also GSM and GPS technology. There’s a lot of path sensors. There are LFD displays and LED displays. We have accelerometers, barometers, magnetometer sensors, electric motor controllers with better management systems, and also a login with microcontroller units where you have to have a real-time operating system (RTOS).

They’re also involved in building the automated assistant, so-called hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test system. It’s a standalone device that actually simulates the hardware system and adds all the functional automated and test scenarios together around that and integrates into our continuous integration system. They’re touching almost everything to some extent.

They help in our office and remotely as needed.

What is the team composition?

There are three guys in the office and there’s a five-person team remotely supporting us.

How did you come to work with Ready4S?

I looked at different companies. There are a lot of companies that provide outsourcing services but very few are professionals in this engineering world. It took me quite a while to find Ready4S. We had a very good discussion with them. They understood what our needs were. They tuned their recruitment very precisely for our needs. They were proactive. We gave them a tough interview. We had them solve some problems and the interview takes a couple of hours. They were very high-level compared to other companies we interviewed. They provided us 10 candidates and we picked eight of them. The other companies provided us 15 and we couldn’t pick anyone out of them because they didn’t match any of our requirements.

How much have you invested with them?

Over $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2019 and the work is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’re really happy with them. They’re quick to respond. They solve the problems. They listen and provide professional work for us. They’re really highly skilled engineers. They provide the right people. We don’t have to teach them. They know what to do.

How did Ready4S perform from a project management standpoint?

They work in a scrum methodology. Every week we have some kind of demo that they present to us. It’s a really good cooperation because it doesn’t take our time. They’re self-driven. They use tools like Jira and Confluence and repositories like Git.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They push me to make things quicker. Even though we didn’t sign all the paperwork between Uber and Ready4S to be able to pay them, they agreed to start working beforehand. We just signed an NDA so we could exchange data and information. They took a risk. After a couple of months, they signed the papers, everything was clarified, and Uber paid what was overdue. The project was saved because I had them at the right time. Compared to other companies, they wouldn’t start working until the papers were signed and that takes a couple of months. It was a game changer for me. They act quickly.

Are there any areas for improvement?

They a have a good understanding of scrum but they could train the people at the beginning. It’d be helpful because we have to spend some time with them to adjust them to our way of working. Some engineers might have better English skills.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a well-defined project or the part of the project you’d like to outsource. It will be much easier for you if you use Atlassian tools so you can see what’s going on with the project. Have your paperwork ready because they can act very quickly.