Gojek's 2021 Blog Roundup: The flashback you shouldn't miss


By Soujanya Bhat

At Gojek, 2021 was spent feeling grateful. And just as we thought everything around us was opening up, we were back to square one. It was like everything had come to a standstill, except for one thing — Our spirits.

2021 was a tough year, no doubt. But, it was also the year our teams made the most of and went berserk innovating crazy stuff.

Before you reach a point in 2022 where you’re not accidentally writing ‘2021’ in the date column anymore, we’ve handpicked articles you must read to keep in pace with what’s happening in the Gojek world. Start with this one:

First things first. We unanimously agree working parents are capeless superheroes, right? Especially if their child is a toddler. Hapsari Muthi Amira, or Happy, as we GoTroops know her, uncovers what lies behind the sheen of convenience and flexibility.

Navigating the WFH Waters: Parenthood Edition - 4 min read
Is WFH really all hunky-dory? Beneath the sheen of convenience & flexibility, we uncover inspiring stories of resilience & unsaid hardships.

Be it Jan 2018, when a 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck the city of Jakarta, or right this moment as you’re reading this cocooned in a weighted blanket, people in our Dynamic Culture team have been our firefighters since forever. Here’s all they do to keep the place running. 🔥

The Team Behind Gojek’s Dynamic Culture - 7 min read
The inside story of building a People Team for a decacorn.

People 👤
Food 🍔
Packages 📦
Groceries 🥗
… and more.

At the heart of everything our 18+ products do, lies mobility. Simply put, we help move things, people, packages, and nations (not-so-humblebrag 😜). Needless to say, the Cartography team has a crucial role to play here. Here’s what the team does.

How Our Cartography Team Helps Us Go Places - 3 min read
People, food, fresh groceries, packages, and a whole bunch of things efficiently move from one place to another, thanks to this team.

While building a product, good design is one of the main ingredients, and motion design is the seasoning.

Ensuring motion design falls in line with product goals and guidelines of a design system is important. It needs to be reusable, time-saving, and consistent. Read on to know how we set the SuperApp world in motion:

Setting The SuperApp World In Motion - 4 min read
Here’s how we added motion to our Android Design System components.

No-Stove Warrior, Sometimes-Outdoor Warrior, Cashless Warrior… If all these sound like random made-up names, they aren’t. They were (VERY REAL) categories in which our customers were featured, for being with us in our journey. Here’s how we built a data-driven narrative to appreciate our customers who supported us in a year full of challenges. 💚

Using Data To Appreciate Our Customers - 4 min read
How we built a data-driven narrative to appreciate our customers who supported us in a year full of challenges.

Here’s this blog’s ‘don’t @ me’ moment. UX writing is designing. That’s all we have to say. Not convinced? Our UX writers are here with compelling points, where they take you through its working process and why it’s an essential part of design.

UX Writing Is Designing. There, We Said It. - 7 min read
Why UX Writing is an essential part of design and an inside view into the working process.

That’s the thing about working with engineers who work on Kafka and also read Kalfa — Even the worst nightmares that include multiple untimely failures are made to look poetic. Really. Look at this 👇

When Kafka Went Offshore - 9 min read
Two weeks. Multiple untimely failures. Here’s how we improved Kafka streams reliability.

In a rapidly growing org, when people start building with a “Launch now, think later” attitude, things can go south pretty quickly. Product Research shouldn’t be an afterthought. Here’s why.

Product Research Should Not Be An Afterthought - Here’s why - 6 min read
When Product Research starts in the beginning of a product life cycle, it saves plenty of time, resources, & the probable failure of a product.

Under our sustainability umbrella, we’re working on crucial things like climate change, sustainable development, and social inequality. Here’s how Tanah Sullivan, Group Head of Sustainability, and her team are working towards the three Zeros Initiative: a company-wide goal to achieve Zero Emissions, Zero Waste, and Zero (socioeconomic) Barriers by 2030. ♻️

Of Sustainability And Beyond - 6 min read
How our Group Head of Sustainability, Tanah Sullivan, has turned her childhood mission into a nation-wide gain.

And finally… Super-core-tech and loooong series alert 🚨

Time we take to process a GoFood order < Time you take to decide what to order. Yea, it’s true. 🤷‍♀️

This is made possible by ‘Courier’, the superhighway between mobile devices and our backend servers. Read everything… We mean EVERYTHING about Courier, in this five-part series. 🖖

Introducing Courier - The Information Superhighway Between Mobile & Server - 5 min read
Here’s how we built Courier, a persisting connection through which we’re able to push content from our server to the app.

Related blogs: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

Phew! But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It was a busy year for us, and one blog wouldn’t do justice to the amazing things the teams have been tirelessly doing. If you’re looking for some weekend binge reading, we’ve got you covered.

Oh, and if you want to work with us (and write about it when you do 😉), here’s where to get started.