12 Insights from 12 months of Working at Gojek

Celebrating my 1 Year Anniversary GO-JEK

Photo by Afif Kusuma on Unsplash

Time flies despite the slow and long pandemic. It felt just like yesterday that I walked into Pasaraya and started working at Gojek for the 3PP (Third-Party Platform) team. It was one of my professional aspirations to work for a Big Tech ‘start-up’ anywhere across the globe and I finally got my chance to.

Looking back and reflecting on my experience that I am extremely grateful for, here are 12 Insights from 12 months of working at Gojek! (in no particular order)

1. It is fast-paced, like really fast-paced — I previously worked at a tech startup back when I was in Boston and like all startups, they placed heavy emphasis on being fast-paced and that you will learn a lot. I’ve never really experienced a work culture that is more dynamic yet structured (heavy documentation) compared to Gojek. Almost every week we introduce a new internal system, processes, and even product. This required each team member to quickly assimilate to the changes or new releases.
2. The sheer amount of Brilliant employees— Gojek has a challenging and also brain-stimulating hiring process to vet the incoming talent. Therefore, all my colleagues are experts in their fields and I can pick their brains and learn from the best talent across Indonesia.
3. Celebrating Festives — I can’t express how much I miss celebrating festives in America but luckily enough for me, Gojek celebrates fun local and international festives such as Halloween, Company Anniversary, Chinese New Year, and more!
4. Impact driven company — Gojek has not only provided office jobs but the main impact it has on the community is by providing jobs to lower-income households, giving them the opportunity to work full-time as a driver or part-time to earn extra income. The lesser-known impact it has on the community is that Gojek has started a digitalization phenomenon across Indonesia providing both the citizens and also SMEs with much more efficient and reliable solutions to reduce life’s daily frictions.
5. Doing Good — It seems like a distant past but at the start of 2020, there was one of the worst floods Jakarta has experienced. Multiple homes were destroyed and families left homeless for weeks. Fortunately, Gojek partnered with Kitabisa.com to create GoGive. This partnership has supported a collective amount of families across Indonesia.
6. The Brand — My first month back to Jakarta I realized that Gojek is part of everyone’s daily lives. People travel with GoRide or GoCar, order food with GoFood, send packages and documents with GoSend, and of course, everything is integrated with GoPay as it’s payment solution both online and offline. Now anything in Indonesia that has a “Go” at the beginning is associated with Gojek.
7. Pasaraya, Old but Gold — Pasaraya might seem like an old and dead location to most Jakartans but for Gojek employees it is HOME. Most of us take for granted how ideal the location is for both commuting (bunch of Ojeks, Taxis, MRT, Trains, Busses) & also fooood. It might seem like an old dead mall but the food inside the mall/office is decent and you have great options in the Blok M area. Ohhh also! You can always GoFood great meals in the vicinity or take a GoCar with your colleagues to eat lunch in other closeby malls or Senopati (so much good food).
8. Steep but deep learning curve — When I initially joined, I had no clue about most of the things I know today and honestly I felt like a dumb a**. Here at Gojek, people don’t spoon feed you but rather throw you into the deep end and expect you to look for resources and answers yourself; be super proactive. You are surrounded by geniuses and someone will be able to give you the answer you are looking for or at least point you towards the right direction. #PastiAdaJalan — There is always a way.
9. Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate — “If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together”. This is very true at Gojek since you need to collaborate with multiple internal stakeholders and also other business units to run effective and efficient campaigns or projects.
10. Experiment Always — Crystal Widjaja’s famous words when she was at Gojek, “1 Experiment per day” or we could translate that to 7 experiments per week. Personally, I have not reached that velocity but I’ve improved from 1 experiment per week since I joined to now 3 experiments per week.
11. Constructive Criticism — Learning from your mistakes is key to improving but how do you know that you are doing something wrong if no one points it out? At Gojek, there is a culture of providing feedback to one another for each other’s own development and growth.
12. Last but not least, Super App — Since I’ve joined my team 3PP we have grown from 6 Products 8 Partners (GoMed, GoMall, GoGive, GoNews, GoGames, GoFitness) & to now 11 Products and 17 Partners (GoMed, GoMall, GoGive, GoNews, GoGames, GoFitness, GoSure, GoInvestasi, GoService, GoTravel, GoGreener). In addition to these, Gojek also has GoRide, GoCar, GoFood, GoPay, GoSend and more!

I hope you readers find this information insightful and stay tuned for my next articles about life, work, and other fascinating things!