A Letter from Our CEO to Candidates

Dear Candidates,

Congratulations for meeting the qualifications of your respective position. Kontinum Group is constantly looking for talented individuals to continuously strengthening our position in the IT industry in Indonesia.

This letter is intended for you in order to help you consider why you should join Kontinum Group and make a firm decision to develop a long term relationship with us. First of all, I would like to share our view about IT Industry in Indonesia.

If you have a chance to look closer at the IT industry in Indonesia, you may find some of these surprising facts:

1. Most of IT solution companies in Indonesia, if not all, are having long suffering being in survival mode. They have forgotten who they really are just in order to keep their business alive. A cool software product that is the very reason a company starts, is no longer in the picture – replaced by endless projects without unity.
2. There are very few IT solution companies that still enjoy decent profit though, but they are running a stagnant business – neither being creative in business model nor products. It runs the same model of projects, implementing someone else’s products, over and over again. They run an IT business like a grocery store. And, would stay the same for many years to come.
3. The market is still dominated by hardware centric purchase and low end consultancy outsourcing. Take a look at the biggest 10 IT companies in Indonesia, their revenue are dominated by those two mainstreams – not from providing solutions.

These facts show that the jobs that actually available are either working as 1-2-3 hardware engineers to earn a reasonably descent payment, or working on some high stake engineering projects – but no one appreciates enough because simply it is not the mainstream of the market. Without engineering demand, any highly skills engineering capability would slowly facade. And, we may not even realize it. Thus, it is a very destructible circle to the point of zero. Whether you are a talented engineer or just an average engineer, it would make no difference, would not matter anymore.

Then, why do you still want to work for engineering things, and especially why do you still want to join Kontinum Group? Here are the reasons why:

1. The first reason is about balance. Unlike other IT companies which are either hardware selling companies or IT solution companies, we are playing both fields as equal important and passion. We respect the hardware selling companies because they showed us the real market. We passionate to build an IT solution company because it is who we are. Then we say, let’s do both, let us use the hardware to open the door, then, let us use the solution to control the hardware market. We are not going to be trapped by just one of it. We would not becoming an IT solution company with small market and limited opportunities, but we would also not becoming a hardware selling company that just selling in discounted price. We would balance both.
2. The second reason is about engineering mindset. Every company could claim that they have engineering things and stuffs. But without real demand, it is just as sure as a vague mantra. Without embracing the balance as we put as reason number one – there would be no demand for engineering. Our love to hardware and solution would put us on a highly demanding of engineering skills. Because otherwise, would shut down our hardware business – which cannot be tolerated as it would also shut down the opportunity for our passion. This balance would provide us the luxury to pave the way to our engineering demand. This real and continuous engineering demand is the one that advances our engineering skills like no other companies. For example, we are not embracing object oriented nor design pattern per se. Not because those things are bad, but because we realize that Indonesian talents are not yet ready to talk on that abstraction level. Thus, we go deeper looking into things that are much more tangible than those things. We start our engineering training by asking the “WHY” of every engineering technique we are going to apply. Then we write our “WHY” in NUMBER. We would NOT stop by just saying this technique produces less bugs. It’s far than enough because the word “less” is just a very blur measurement. We would always say that this technique would save us thousands times less bugs than the other technique. Then we would show the case in mathematics alike run down from where we can get that number as conclusion. No more time wasting on endless unnecessary debates. When you go to interview, or if you have been on some company, please check if they have this kind of number proven as the basis of their engineering creation. If the answer is no, let’s consider us as your next career movement. And of course we still have many other things that you may not hear from others. Consider these : “technical justification”, “reflex”, and LEAN (Localization + Expressiveness + Abstraction + Notation).
3. The third reason is about entrepreneurship. The same thing. Every company could campaign their entrepreneurship. But have you ever heard a company that says : “a successful entrepreneurship needs a very strong engineering mindset”. You may argue… No.. entrepreneurship is about salesmanship. Or is about relationship. Or is about taking the opportunities. Or is about see things differently. Or is about determination. Well, yes it’s about all of those things, and in fact you cannot afford to lose one of them. Then, how are you going to take all those things in a reasonably fashion that a normal human brain can still manage? We say engineering mindset is the way. Why? Because to stand on all of those things, you need a motivation. Motivation cannot come from super fast “yell yell” from one day motivator. Motivation needs resources to charge and to progress. The only resources that would last to the end is only when you have understanding on things in a big number. The only way to understand is to practice. To ensure you practice the right thing, is only when you have big number as a differentiating factor. This differentiating factor can come only from engineering mindset. It is not enough though. A company that campaigns entrepreneurship must have an unlimited career. Ask any companies this question : what is the highest career available? If the answer is not clear enough, or the answer is just merely CEO / President Director.. then please consider us as your next career movement. Because we have one clear answer : “write your own job description”

Sincerely,

Ari Royce Hidayat

CEO