Let's talk about Front End

… a little bit about yourself.

Originally, I’m from Ukraine, but have been living in Porto, Portugal, for almost 3 years. I like travelling and painting, as well as eating - mostly the delicious local food and vinho verde. No matter what’s going on, I believe there’s always a reason to smile and bring as much positive energy as possible to the world.

How much previous experience did you have before applying to us?

I came from a totally different professional field. I have degrees in food engineering and law. I first worked in a court, then at a law firm and even as a corporate travel manager for one of the biggest international IT companies in Ukraine. After moving to Portugal, I finally started learning programming as I had long been dreaming of becoming a developer, which I made happen by joining New Work SE.

Why did you choose to work in frontend software engineering?

I’ve been in love with art since I was a child. I can spend hours in an art gallery, so the visual aspect of frontend developing grabbed my attention from the outset. I also really like how fast I can see the results of my work: I write several lines of code and a second later I can see the result, test everything, and get feedback. Isn’t that wonderful? :-)

What does the current tech stack look like and what do you like about this choice?

I would say my main daily ‘work instruments’ are React, TypeScript, GraphQL and React Testing Library. And what do I like about them? Everything! It’s great how fast, straight forward, easy to test and flexible they all are. Besides, we do a lot of research on new technologies, best practices we can adopt, calculating existing tech debt, doing everything possible to make our huge code base more ‘bulletproof’, and streamlining our development process

How is your team organised?

We have a big team of around 15 people, so we divided ourselves into two gangs (yes, we call them gangs) feature and maintenance. We can switch between them during the year depending on needs and our wishes. Right now, I’m part of a feature gang and I collaborate a lot with other disciplines such as backend, Android and iOS. We have a lot of discussions together about outgoing tasks which helps us a great deal in coming up with best-possible solutions for our ideas.

How would you rate pair programming?

I find it very useful, especially for me as a Junior Software Engineer since it’s one of the best ways to learn something from my more experienced colleagues, while also adding my fresh ideas and vision to their work. We use it a lot for debugging processes as well because we believe that four eyes are always better than two.

To what extent do you feel you can contribute with your own ideas and create impact through your work?

One of the key things for me was to always feel respected and valued rather than just being a ‘coding machine’. I need to be able to have impact, to share my ideas, and to use all the creativity I have, and XING gives me these opportunities. We constantly gather ideas, brainstorm, hold discussions about new feature concepts before implementing them, and offer our suggestions on how we can improve existing functionality. The most important thing is that me and all my colleagues are heard. I have to admit it’s an unbelievable feeling when we later see how our ideas are implemented and have a positive impact on users.