Salsita 2019: A Million Lines of Code and 90 Kilos of Hummus

Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. – Groucho Marx

There are way too many options when it comes to choosing a pretentious quote about time. Why waste efforts on the likes of William Shakespeare or George Bernard Shaw? Give me Groucho any day of the week.

If you haven’t yet noticed, 2019—the year of the pig—is almost dead. How was it for you? Did you keep your resolutions at least into February?

There are less than two weeks to go and now seems to be the appropriate time for reminiscing and celebrating. So, with 2020 looming, we look in our year-view-mirror to share some triumphs and fun Salsita tidbits that happened this year.

As of December 2019, 80 employees (24 new hires, including yours truly) work at Salsita. This time last year, there were just 70. And we’re not just from the Czech Republic. We have a slew of Slovaks, a few French, an abundance of Americans, and even a lone Kiwi. If you’re into developer-related statistics, read this article about where our devs hail from.

This great cultural mix means a lot of different languages. Between the 80 of us, 15 languages can be heard at Salsita at any given time. In terms of programming languages, we “speak” 31 of them, more than double the natural languages we know. Which isn’t surprising given the depth of our programming knowledge and cultural backgrounds.

At Salsita, we like to ask the right questions. Our CEO Matthew Gertner was the inspiration for this next one: How many bald bearded guys work at Salsita? The hairless headcount is up to six. Matthew and our marketing manager, Razi Alakhdar, share the same “look” and the first thing they told me during my interview was, “don’t worry, we’re not all bald and bearded here.” I’m thankful it’s not a requirement either. Check in with us next year to see if that number changes due to stress levels or hair plug operations.

This good-looking crowd is not opposed to hard work; it’s actually what we pride ourselves in the most. Here are some examples:

• 24 client projects
• 46 brown bag presentations
• 100+ repositories
• 118 project demos
• 1,562 stand-up meetings
• 13,500 commits
• 1.1 million lines of code

Projects and meetings aren’t the only thing we do at Salsita. Our hard work is celebrated with monthly team activities. This past year we had 14, some of which included ice skating, badminton, family gatherings, beer and wine tastings and, of course, our Christmas party.

We encourage a creative environment and support constant learning. Some other wonderful perks that we enjoy on a weekly basis at Salsita are our language and music lessons and yoga. This year we had 300 Czech lessons (ty vole!), 150 German lessons, 128 English lessons, and 63 Spanish lessons. The musicians at Salsita rocked out with 230 guitar and 480 piano lessons. Finally, the more flexible among us enjoyed 62 yoga lessons this year.

Doing these activities requires a lot of energy, which is why it’s important we stay well fed and caffeinated. Apart from daily lunches and the weekly lunch during the brown bag, we keep our kitchens stocked with fresh fruit, hummus platters, and coffee: the life blood of any office. Here’s what we managed:

• 90 kgs of hummus
• 143.8 kgs of coffee
• 770 kgs of fresh fruit
• 2,550 litres of juice
• 5,100 snack bars

Let’s bring things to an end by quickly talking about the office. If you don’t know already, we love chilis and anything chili related. As you walk through the main entrance of our HQ, you are greeted by a stained-glass chili pepper window. This beautiful piece of art was created by Czech Artist Pavel Fuksa. Fuksa also designed the colorful, abstract wall paintings in the Salsita Club.

Speaking of The Club, it opened two months ago, providing us the perfect place to work and play. You can learn more about it here.

As you can see, it’s been a productive and fun year at Salsita. We expect nothing less in 2020 for our employees and clients. See you next year.