Celebrating 5 Years of Teamwork and Innovation at RebelDot

The humble beginnings  

As we stand at the mark of our 5-year anniversary, we take a moment to look back at the journey that got us here, while facing towards the bright future that awaits us.  

Our beginnings were as humble as one can imagine, a handful of people brought together by the same trait—trust, and a visionary founder with an intuition of what this handful of people could become, together. There was nothing fancy about it, just the desire to create something of our own, something that felt true to us, yet different from anything else on the market at the time.  

Our guiding star from the beginning was a simple promise that followed our name and our logo. RebelDot—Leading the Line was therefore born in 2018, a community of innovators, one visionary leader, and a promise to constantly disrupt the ordinary, and be pioneers in our actions.  

This promise means so much to us, as it doesn’t only reflect our approach to software development, but also our way of being. It drives us to challenge the status quo, rethink the old boxes completely, and pave new paths where obstacles seem like little bumps in the road. We embrace this vision and strive to be explorers and discoverers in many endeavors to this day.  

The past year has been like nothing that we’ve seen before. And we do realize that we say this every year. As our colleague Roxana Turos once said, “Working with RebelDot feels like working with a different company every year. We’re growing fast and we adapt even faster, so it always has a sense of new.” This is now more valid than ever before as the past year was truly eventful! But don’t take our word for it and look for yourself.  

In terms of care, fun, fulfillment, and togetherness

In 2023, we received the prestigious certification as one of the 'Best Places to Work,' a testament to our dedication in fostering an exceptional working environment. Undergoing a comprehensive two-part audit and colleague surveys, we were recognized for our outstanding practices, culture, career development, team relationships, compensation, and benefits.  

This honorable distinction doesn’t mean that our efforts will now cease to exist in bettering our processes and offer to our colleagues. On the contrary, it’s proof that we’re on the right track and we should keep this direction whilst being open to innovation and changing for the better.

It was also an eventful year surrounding the idea of care and fun. We’ve expanded our event-organizing capabilities and invested in many moments that brought us together. We kicked off the year with the anticipated Happiness Week where each Rebel gets a secret buddy that works restlessly to brighten up each day of their assigned colleague. At the end of the week, you get to guess who was ‘responsible’ for the increase in your serotonin levels. It’s a great opportunity to get creative and find new ways of bringing joy and smiles to our colleagues' faces and hearts both in the office and remotely. The latter requires a bit more help and creativity!    

Later on, we’ve moved to the colorful Swing into Spring gathering. March marks the beginning of Spring and the coming to life of the world around us. We celebrate yearly through different activities or gifts for our team members, parties, gatherings, and any form of celebration. This year’s edition was marked by playful activities together.

Giving back to the community  

Our care extends the boundaries of our offices. It spreads to people around us, the world, and lives around us, so much so, that it sparks fulfilment and togetherness. Of course, giving back to our society and having an impact is extremely important to us.  

Together with velements, a local sustainable brand, we’ve been working on turning the old into the extraordinary with an initial collection of 10 unique tote bags, crafted from more than 40 repurposed clothing items of our colleagues. We’ve raised 500 euros through auctioning for the tote bags. The money raised went to Little People-important organization for cancer fighters and cancer survivors in Romania. Find out more about this campaign here.  

Another annual event that’s dear to us is Cook for a Smile. Every Rebel can participate by either cooking something for the team or buying cooked food. The money gathered goes to the charity that we promise to offer our support to yearly. This year’s edition, the first one after the pandemic, started a bit shy but our actions and the entirety of 2023 are dedicated to doing as much as possible for the Little People Association.

Our well-being program for 2023 touched on many subjects so far that was interesting and useful. The first part of the year was marked by financial well-being and later by physical well-being. During the yearly program, we offer access to curated information, workshops, and training, and we sketch out well-being challenges. As a matter of events, during the financial well-being dedicated quarter, we invited Eusebiu Burcas, one of the most respected fiscal advisors in Romania to hold a seminar for the Rebels. Later, on physical well-being, we organized a 10k steps/day challenge that got...quite competitive! It created various new habits that we now keep and practice for a more active life. We’ve managed to achieve a total of 12,439,133 steps, meaning around 9,479 km (about 5889.98 mi)! The winner achieved a whopping number of 648,971 steps through the whole month of the challenge.

The focus of the third quarter of this year will be on creating awareness around subjects of emotional well-being within our organization. Throughout this period, we will actively engage in a series of themed posts centered around emotional well-being. Additionally, we will initiate internal meditation workshops, with one physical workshop that can be done from anywhere. During this session, participants will learn and practice valuable techniques such as Deep Breathing, Progressive Muscular Relaxation, and Mindful Walking. Some of our activities were already kicked off, while some are still a surprise for most of our colleagues, so make sure you follow us on social media to keep up with our well-being program!

You can get to know the Rebels better by listening to our Rebels Deconstructed podcast or reading our tech stories. Starting in 2023, the podcast is also filmed, so that you get to experience the Rebel spirit through all senses.

Year of growth & commitment to sustainability

2023 is also the year we were surprised and thrilled. Why? We found our name in the Financial Times Top 1000 Fastest Growing Companies in Europe list. This recognition reinforces our hard work, resilience, and positive impact on the European economy.

As a company committed to making a difference, we acknowledge our responsibility to future generations. Thus, we are actively contributing to building a more sustainable and equitable world. Our inaugural Sustainability Report documents our continuous strides towards a greener environment and meaningful CSR actions.  

This commitment was also honored by the certification ISO 14001. This internationally recognized standard is proof that we are embracing our responsibility to protect our planet and preserve its resources, helping to build a safe future for generations to come.  

Our journey is not a solitary one, but a collaborative experience that requires the participation and commitment of every Rebel in the house, as an organization, as individuals, and as a community.

Growth is shown in numbers too, and we’re proud of the 65 Rebels that joined our team in the past year. We’re grateful to be an employer of choice and find so many people that believe in the same values and imagine the same future. In 2023, we also added an initiative called Lunch with Tudi where our CEO, Tudi (Tudor) Ciuleanu has lunch with all the people that joined the team. It’s a great way to connect and share ideas, ask questions, and get answers straight from the source.  

2023 was marked by our Spring and Summer internships once again. We’ve finished our QA internship and added 7 tech-savvy youngsters to our mix. Meanwhile, the ongoing internships on .NET and React are still cooking up many surprises for us and we’ll come back with the results. The interns have lovely feedback from the team and mentors, and we’re eager to see them grow in our community.  

Our NPS of 91.7% and an eNPS of 70% in 2022 is still evolving for the best, ensuring that we bring daily value to our clients and colleagues while staying true to our values drives us forward.

In our relentless pursuit of staying future-proof, we completed the acquisition of steepsoft, a leading AI development company based in Romania. The integration of their experienced AI developers and cutting-edge technologies into our services will complement our expertise in various industries, including healthcare, finance, engineering, and manufacturing.

On this occasion, the 5 years anniversary of being Rebels with a cause, we have danced, celebrated, and created lasting memories during the anniversary party, the RebelFest.

Learning and development  

We believe in continuous development because nothing is ever ‘done’ but can always be improved. Our ISO certification marked an important moment of celebration, but the stage is shared with many other achievements.

We’ve organized training sessions for our colleagues in areas of Health & Safety, Leadership for Top Management and aspiring leaders, Public Speaking, Recruitment, Giving and receiving Feedback, Financial well-being, an intro to Sustainability with Cami Gui (local environmental superstar), and we have some more in store for the second part of this year.

We’ve got amazing feedback after these sessions, and we’ll quote some of our colleagues using extracts from some of our feedback forms that circulate at the end of each session.  

Biggest takeaways after the Recruitment training for Technical recruiters:

‘The full insights of the full recruitment process and the impact of what a hiring process can have’

Biggest takeaways after the Feedback training:

‘The feedforward method helped me get a new perspective on how to receive and give feedback’

Biggest takeaways after the Leadership training:

‍‘The idea of identifying the level of a team member and applying the right strategy to help that person achieve a certain goal. Also there was a valuable lesson about how delegating work (the whole process of research and implementation) is useful for certain team members.’

The #kudos channel on slack was overflown with party emoji in the certification period for our colleagues. Fourteen software developers and architects in our community obtained their certifications and titles of Blockchain Security Professional, Scrum Master, Blockchain Solution Architect, Az-220 IoT Developer, AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator, AZ-400 DevOps Certification, AZ-204 Developer, AWS Solutions Architect – Associate, Azure Developer Associate, AZ-200 IoT Certification, AZ-305 Solutions Architect Expert Certification. We congratulate our colleagues Daniel, Adi, Amelia, Adrian, Sergiu, Emi, Radu, Cip, Cristi, David, Sergiu, and Mihai. We’re proud of your achievements, your hard work, and amazed by your dedication to innovation!  

Some of our colleagues participated at the JS Heroes conference and later hosted a successful JS Heroes meet-up at RebelDot HQ, fostering a vibrant JavaScript development community. Additionally, part of our team made a significant impact at the Romanian Testing Conference, engaging with testing professionals from around the country and not only. Their dedication to knowledge-sharing and active involvement in these events have strengthened our team's reputation as passionate contributors to the tech community.

Final thoughts  

Our achievements and challenges have shaped us, and we approach the future with boundless enthusiasm. With dedication, talent, and hard work, we are determined to remain at the forefront of technology and innovation.

We have now almost 200 in-house souls. In-house meaning in Cluj offices, in the Oradea office, in Denmark, Germany, and anywhere that feels comfortable for the Rebels to work from. In-house meaning the center and soul of RebelDot, made-up of our people. Almost 200 engineers, creative, specialists in various fields, creators and innovators, each contributing to our shared success, each writing a bit of our story.

Here's to many more years of unitedly "Leading the line"!