tapptitude: a Story about Growing and Evolving Together | tapptitude Blog

Slowly but surely, 2017 is coming to an end. And it just so happens that we celebrated 4 years of developing high-quality iOS and Android mobile apps a little while ago. Since we couldn’t help but wander down on memory lane a bit, we thought we’d share with you some of the best moments we’ve had in the past years.

And we’d like to thank every single person who was, or is, and hopefully will still be a part of our journey in the ever-evolving, ever-surprising world of mobile app development.

Office playground

Sometime in June 2016, we had our very first rooftop party and we had a blast. Though there were many more parties to come, it was then that we realized what an awesome office space we have here. We made sure all the must-haves of a cool rooftop party were checked. A DJ made sure only good vibes filled the air and our ears and a bartender was ready to serve us up with our favorite drinks. We brought the foosball table upstairs too, we grilled and enjoyed some yummy cakes. It was the perfect way to end the day.

In 2017, we used the warm summer days for going out more, enjoying a cold one with the team. And summertime may be great, but winter time is magic. Every year we grab all the Christmas decorations from where they’re neatly stacked to give our office playground the festive look it deserves.

This year we dressed up in our 4-year-anniversary t-shirts and gathered around the Christmas tree to make it pretty. The stakes were high: we had our Secret Santa 2017 gift exchange in that exact same place, so everything had to be perfect. And it was:

Continuously growing fresh talent

Most of us here started out as interns too. So when Deni, Robert, Mircea, Stefan, and Andrei knocked on our door, all aspiring to become mobile app developers, we knew exactly what it was they were looking for: a balanced mix of hands-on coding tasks, interesting insights into the world of mobile products, and bits and pieces of the app developer’s everyday life to prepare them for their bright future.

For this year’s internship, we had the entire team jump in and help out. Experienced members of the iOS and Android app development teams embraced their teaching positions in order to help the youngsters embrace native mobile app development. Up to two times a week, for one and a half months, the meeting rooms at the Tapptitude headquarters were alive with the chatter of app development do’s and don’ts.

Tapptitude started out as a 4-man-operation almost 4 years ago. The fact that it’s a strong team of more than 40 mobile specialists today – iOS and Android app developers, UI/UX designers, mobile product managers and marketers – is due to the company’s culture of continuously growing fresh talent.

Work hard, play hard

A full-stack mobile app development agency, we take an idea and develop it into a fully functioning mobile product. From product strategy, UI/UX design, native development on iOS and Android, to APIs and back-end services, along with testing and go-to market solutions, we cover the entire flow of building a mobile app – a veritable competitor on the chosen market.

We truly enjoy working together, so every one of the three floors we inhabit are organized as roomy, neatly decorated, and very welcoming co-working spaces. There are also a few meeting rooms to choose from for calls with clients or daily stand-ups. Though there’s a kitchen on every floor, packed with snacks, drinks, and fruits, it’s always the big kitchen on the ground floor we all gather in for lunch.

Due to our continuous growth – a 100% growth since 2016 to be more precise, we had no other choice but to take over the entire building in which we work and transform it into our very own innovation playground.

Team approved team building activities

Truth be told, our team building trips are the best. We have a history of going all out. We like to get away from the commotion of the city and the big screens at the office to somewhere nice and quiet, where we can just soak up some sun, sit back and relax in nature. And it’s really just the color of our t-shirts that changes (as you can see in the pics below). Other than that, we have a well-established recipe for super-fun team building getaways.

The ingredients for fun, effective and team-approved team building trips include:

• An awesome team like ours, ready to have some fun
• Industrious amounts of food and drinks
• Fun team building activities like: a treasure hunt with QR codes, a water balloon fight, rebuilding a dog figurine out of cardboard, building a cart out of some wood and ropes
• Plenty of leisure time to play cards or chess, or just lay back in the sun
• Branded attire
• Sitting around a bonfire
• A sports competition with prizes
• Beer pong
• A whole lot of laughing

And we can’t wait to update this list after our next team building trip.

Happy birthday to us

Last year we celebrated 3 years together. And what better place to celebrate, than the brand new co-working space we just had finished decorating? We played some games, we even went out for a round of laser tag. It was basically a mini-team-building evening.

This year, however, we decided one evening just wasn’t enough for Tapptitude’s 4 year anniversary. We felt a weekend getaway would be a lot more appropriate. So we did: we got away for an entire weekend to the exact same place we went to for our 2016 team building trip, since we liked it so much.

We dressed up real nice in our matching guy-with-attitude and girl-with-attitude t-shirts and for two days straight we didn’t do anything else other than have a great time. Other than the obvious – eating our faces off and relaxing like no one’s watching, we made sure to keep things interesting. We tried to build figurines that would stand on their own out of spaghetti, some glue tape, and marshmallows. We tried to build some sort of cage out of plastic straws that would hold an egg and keep it from breaking when hitting the ground after flying two stories. And we also tried not to get overly competitive when playing any of the tenths of board games that we had brought with us.

We do go the extra mile when it comes to spending quality time together. We go on regular trips together, we eat together whenever we get the chance (which is daily), we celebrate each other individually and as a group too, and we make it colorful. We go out for drinks, we stay in for a movie, and we make each other gifts.

But all of these efforts would amount to nothing if it weren’t for the people behind them. The real proof that we are truly glued together as a team is the fact that after every team building trip, we can’t wait for the next one. It’s in the fact that we show up for every team breakfast because we enjoy each other’s presence. Last but not least, the proof is in the fact that we truly work together to find solutions, that we build each other up and rely on one another to do so.

Need more proof? Keep an eye on us. We can’t wait to tell you about our 5th anniversary as a top-notch mobile app development agency right here in the heart of Transylvania. We can’t wait to see what our 5th year together has in store for us.

Want to know how it all started for us?