sofatutorBlog

sofatutor has developed from a small start up to a top player in EdTech in the last few years. Our staff has grown as well and many employees have also grown at home and have become parents.
sofatutor tries to relieve and support parents in many different ways. In the following I will share my experience as a father and Caro’s experience as a mother working for sofatutor:

In 2023 at sofatutor, we will continue to work on providing students internationally with creative learning materials that allow them to learn at their own pace, independent of time and place. Thanks to our incredible creative content team, our content writers, illustrators, graphic and motion designers, there’s no shortage of fun in the process!
To kick off the new year, we would like to introduce you to some of our beloved sofatutor characters with whom you, your children or your students can learn and teach in 2023.

Company Christmas parties, last team meetings, big retros and plannings… Everybody seems busy preparing for the end of the year.
A good opportunity to review what happened on the sofatutor blog in 2022 and to thank everyone who contributed with knowledge, skills, creativity and planning. A more or less small team of helping elves is hiding behind every post. They remain unseen but only with every little contribution, ideas can be rolled out on the blog. Introducing you to one of those helpers, today you will get to know Lena. With her skills in Graphic Design and Illustration she brightens up posts with pictures and illustrations.

Since we are kicking off the penultimate week of 2022 in just a few days and many of us are already entering a holiday mood, our team joined online for an international Holiday Get-together. On Tuesday this week we looked back at the last months at sofatutor and enjoyed some team quality time while playing fun games.

Valentina and Christian are both Engineering Managers in two of our five agile teams (named by the colors pictured above), that form the Product & Tech area at sofatutor. Together with them we take a look at the work of Team Green and Team Purple and find out how agility is lived in individual and collaborative work. Today you will find out why agile ways of thinking have led to sofatutor’s product and tech team not working uniformly according to the strict Scrum style.

Learning – one of sofatutor’s core values. In order to meet that company value, sofatutor offers various possibilities for their employees to constantly develop themselves professionally and personally. One of our favorites took place yesterday, November 22nd: the remote Conference Day. A whole day dedicated to learning from and teaching your colleagues – no matter if the topic is about company-related aspects or just about something that an employee is personally passionate about and wants to share their thoughts on it.

Two months ago, sofatutor went international!
On September 5th, we sat in front of our screens in anticipation as Chris, Engineering Manager in Team Green, kicked off the final technical implementation of the US website. Closely after, sofatutor also went online in the UK. How are Jane the owl and Popcorn the penguin doing in these new worlds? Today we look at how sofatutor is doing internationally, getting some first-hand information from Team Content and Marketing. What have our international teams been working on and what else is planned for this year?

Sudden new requirements for the work of the team in the middle of an ongoing process? Technical innovations that need to be implemented quickly? Agility in mind and work makes it possible to react quickly to all such internal and external changes.
In a small blog post series we introduce the sofatutor way of agility to you. Among others, you will get some insights by one of our Agile Coaches in Product and Tech, Veronica. In this first post you will also get a short introduction into scrum by Viviana, People Business Partner for our content team, who recently certified as ‘Scrum Master’.

At sofatutor, learning and education are our top priorities – which is why learning is one of our company’s core values. Learning at sofatutor doesn’t just stop with pupils studying on our platform, employees can also benefit from regular training.

2019 was not only the year of the first climate strike in Berlin. It was also the year when we at sofatutor first participated, coming prepared with posters demanding to “Take action now!”. Three years later, the climate crisis needs action and attention all the more urgently. We at sofatutor are taking small steps to become more and more climate friendly: Apart from ecological cleaning and hygiene products in the office and sustainable companies like “Future Bens” and “Big Little Things” providing employee benefits, we have been offsetting our corporate carbon emissions since 2020. To demonstrate that we stand with Fridays for Future and their cause we joined the big annual Climate Strike on September 23rd once again.

We all know that feeling, you don’t have that much time for vacation left and you still get the urge to travel. That’s how I felt this year, so I thought, why not try out Workation? With our policy for global mobile work, this should be no problem.

Welcome to our vivid sofatutor office in Berlin-Friedrichshain! On a quick photo tour we show you which values ​​accompany our everyday work and where the innovation of digital learning happens. As we are a remote company and international team, our work life, meetings and communication take place digitally. Those who want to work on site and get together in person, can find the perfect spot for it in our office.

An excerpt of my sofatutor-summer-diary: Not romantic in the traditional sense but somehow a love letter to all those learnings I made, as a working student in our talent team, these last few months between the end of my bachelor’s degree and the start of my master’s. How my journey at sofatutor started as an intern – you can read about it here.

What a journey! After many months of preparation, we can finally tell you that sofatutor is now available in the US and UK regions. Since September 5th, both websites are live and online – Go ahead and check them out via us.sofatutor.com and sofatutor.co.uk.

There is one day we haven’t talked about yet: The peak and for many of us the highlight of our summer event week, that we don’t want to hide from you. In this post you will therefore get to know about what happened on Wednesday August 24th, the day of our big sofatutor summer event. Sneak Peek: In the linked video (at the end of the post) you can also immerse yourself directly in the day at the lake…

Who knows the game ‘Line Up!’?

‘Line up in order of your time as a sofatutor team member!’
When our Head of People & Culture, Rita, asked us to do so in our international gathering on Monday, it became visible that many team members haven´t been with sofatutor for a long time. In fact the biggest crowd was formed by colleagues who joined us within the last 12 months. While we are counting the last days until the launch of our website in the US, this project has been majorly guiding sofatutors development and team growth in the last 1.5 years. Working together with experts from the about-to-be-entered overseas markets, our team has grown in its total number of faces and gained in internationality.

Yesterday was the day: We kicked off our big Summer Event Week!
For everyone reading our blog: We wish you a warm welcome into this exciting week and fun following us around during the next posts! To review the first day with all its first impressions, we have collected a few moments of our team-morning at Holzmarkt in this post.

After curious waiting, we are more than excited to finally kick off our Summer Event Week next Monday! From Monday, August 22nd, to Friday, August 26th, the entire sofatutor team will get together in person, working in the office in Berlin-Friedrichshain and celebrating summer at different outdoor locations.

After two years of dry spells, our teams were all the more excited about this year’s Berlin Company Run. While some of us conquered the classical 5.5-kilometer track through Berlin Mitte, international team members joined for a jog at the same time at their location.
All supported by roadside cheerleaders and of course mental support from the rest of the team ;). We believe in: ‘Schweiß schweißt zusammen!’ (sweat welds together)

The motto “Employees train Employees” did not only apply during our conference day in April. On a smaller scale but with a pizza bonus, our Product and Tech team has started a series of learning events: At Lunch & Learn, team members, present interesting and latest topics in the areas of product and technology, which are then discussed in plenary with lunch and drinks.

At our Family and Friends picnic in May, we not only got to know our colleagues’ favorite drinks and snacks but some interesting backgrounds and careers. In addition to many new faces in very different positions and levels, there are also some team members who “grew up” together with sofatutor. Angelina is one of them. While she joined sofatutor as Marketing Trainee nearly five years ago, she now leads Team Organic Growth herself.

Summer is the time for picnics. Unfortunately, we could not continue the cherished tradition of our company picnic for the last 2 years due to COVID-19.Therefore it was an even greater pleasure when this year it was time again for the "Family & Friends Picnic” to come together with our work colleagues and get to know their families and closest friends at Treptower Park as we did many times before COVID-19.

What is it like to work 100% remotely at sofatutor? Get some insights from our Talent Acquisition Manager, Juliane:

As Berlin finally showed its friendly spring face at the end of April, our team was drawn in the fresh air. Work and laptops stayed on our desks, and we spent the day outside the office.

We remain saddened and shocked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine for over two months now. We hope for an easing of the situation and an end to the suffering that this war brings. Our thoughts in these difficult times are with the people of Ukraine.

Last week, on April 5th, everyone at sofatutor had the same appointment scheduled: Remote Conference Day… A day on which we could learn from and with each other. Learn about projects and structures of other sofatutor teams and about topics that are not specifically sofatutor-related.

To welcome the new year, the sofatutor team came together and showed that we are ready to meet new challenges. Whether unexpected, difficult or even scary – we will master them together with fun and commitment, as shown in our New Year’s crime dinner last week!

Being educated by an axolotl or a turtle. At least James, from team content, thinks so. He is joined by Axel, the axolotl, Tank, the turtle and other sofatutor characters.
Today’s blog-post introduces you to some of our newest team members. Whether human or animal, they share the mission of making digital education creative and exciting. Since a significant part of our team is international, the blog-posts are now in English :)

2021 hat uns ein Projekt besonders beschäftigt: die Internationalisierung.
Wir möchten E-Learning über die Grenzen des DACH-Marktes hinaus mitgestalten. Schüler*innen und Lehrer*innen sollen unsere digitalen Lerninhalte weltweit nutzen können.