Let's talk about Software Engineering

... why do you like working as a Team Lead Engineering at XING?

I love my job because I get to work with a lot of fantastic, friendly, intelligent, professional people on a daily basis. I look forward to interacting with these people on a daily basis and my job is never boring.

My role allows me to help others, drive people’s career paths, make teams work efficiently and effectively, bring people together to successfully collaborate, liaise with others on specific projects, coordinate the team and train members to do the same. I’m there to both offer a lending hand and ear for whenever they’re needed.

It’s very rewarding for me to see people progress in their career path, knowing I might have helped them along slightly. I also take a lot pleasure out of both delivering on things the team has committed to do and making things happen that I think are beneficial to the team and the broader community.

What does a typical working day in your job role look like?

It differs slightly from day to day, week to week and certain periods have their own particularities but more or less, my work day revolves around, getting updates, setting up prep and planning for our next sprint, scheduled and spontaneous calls to either listen, help, discuss, solve, understand with some occasional chit chat and social time sprinkled in. I’m often very busy as a team lead in XING but it’s very important for my team members to know that I always try to prioritize their needs over most other issues.

Then I try to block some time for thinking and ensuring I’m on top of matters as well as long term planning.

And wherever I can I always try to find a spare 30 minutes to keep my coding skills up to scratch (be that reviewing peer’s code or occasionally writing my own).

I will sometimes need to do ad hoc deep diving investigations, solve unexpected topics and the list goes on. Related to “adhoc”, you learn, the hard way, that in this role, important skills if you want to keep sane are: “delegation”, “saying no” ;)

I look forward to both lunch time where I can really socialize with friends and colleagues in the office as well as leaving work to see my kids and partner and getting some rest and hobby time. XING has always been a great place to work as regards work/private life flexibility and have always been very grateful for that.

Are there any initiatives in place that allow team members to pitch new ideas, improvements or new working methods?

No initiatives are needed. This is the de facto situation in many XING teams. Everyone is encouraged to think hard about the product we’re developing and how they can contribute with ideas or suggestions or working hack-week demos, or bringing back processes and workflows from other successful teams. Just the other day our newly added UX designer commented: “I’m so impressed with the level of feedback in this team. It’s soo helpful”.

What tools and technologies do you use for version control, collaboration, and task management?

We use, Git/GitHub.com for version control, GitHub actions for our CI pipeline, with some complex workflows for ensuring quality with end-to-end testing for production code. We collaborate via MS Teams (I have to say, we’re not big fans but it gets the job done) in real time using Jira tickets to keep our tasks clear and accountable.

Can you give us some insights on your latest project? Or Can you share an example of a feature you built that had a significant impact on user experience?

Our latest, and ongoing project was a particularly tough one and one that has been at least 3 years in the making. We have been trying to shutdown an older application in favour of a newer one with more features and goodies for our customers for a very long time. Thing is, that a lot of our customers are still on the old app and there are lots of different segments with different needs and catering to all these needs and ensuring all of these customers are happy on the new platform has been especially challenging.

This has required a mix of really deep deep dependency discoveries, challenging engineering architecture (Kafka, SNS/SQS), product changes, decoupling from old monolithic systems, coupled with complex account/user migrations and human/human interactions. The stakeholders in this project range from Tech, Product, Marketing, Customer Support, Customer Success as well as Sales and Business Development. A huge huge project, on which a large number of teams are waiting for it to be completed so they can simplify their own architecture on their side.

To get the point across, this is that type of project that everyone (it’s a prio 1 company OKR so even our CEO knows about this one) has heard of for sooo long and everyone wants to throw a party when it’s finally completed.

This year-long project has involved coordinating and collaborating with so many different multi-stake holders as well as direct customers, it boggles the mind really. Everyone in the team has had to take over responsibility for at least one or two of the areas that required managing.

We’re not 100% there yet but we’re very very close and I will try as far as I can to ensure it happens.

What were the biggest challenges you faced during this project?

The technical challenges have been very significant. A number of attempts have been made over the last 3 years to achieve this shutdown but none have come as far until now. The sheer number of technical dependencies that have required coming to multi-quarter agreements, trade offs, promises, help from within and between clusters. Everyone has helped towards making this project a success which is why I think we have the biggest chance of success this time.

Another very challenging part of this whole project is the human element. With thousands and thousands of customers, you have to ensure the vast majority are happy on the new platform and that’s not an easy task. Many many people are pulling together to make this happen and my colleague Shakeeb is coordinating all of them so big kudos to him and the team.

Speaking of the team, this has been a very high profile and complicated project which is still ongoing. They have had to work very hard, under a lot of pressure to get things done in time which they’ve achieved splendidly. A lot of the success of this project will lie directly with them and the extreme effort they put into this project. I’m very proud of this bunch of excellent folks.

What role does collaboration play in Software Engineering at XING?

Wether it’s Front-End or Back-End development, we couldn’t really achieve much as a team, without “collaboration” being a fundamental building block of how we do things. We have pure Front-Enders and pure-Back-Enders as well as Full-Stack Engineers. We try to also foster and understanding of the other side of the coin for those that have specialized on one side of the stack so that everyone always has an intuitive high-level understanding of the requirements of the other side. Our dedicated, product kickoffs, spontaneous product/UX/Tech sessions, pre-grooming and grooming sessions ensure smooth synchronization between interdependent tickets.

How would you describe the working atmosphere in your team?

Generally in XING, and as much as possible in teams I have lead, fostering a nurturing, friendly, safe, collaborative environment with efficient processes is very important. We couldn’t really work the way we do and as well as we do without that kind of environment. We’ve found that to be the most efficient manner of producing good quality products made with love and professionalism.

I try to lead by example in a very hands on manner but allowing the team to really drive topics forward. It’s vital that all team members get along with each other and are encouraged more often than not to pair on tasks and collaborate with external stakeholders as much as possible. We’re interested in fostering taking on responsibility and ownership for individual projects. We foster facilitator roles and support each other for adhoc service requests.

We take team dynamics very seriously and are continuously re-evaluating our effectiveness as a team after each sprint with retrospective meetings where everyone can raise the hand about issues that are pulling us back or ways we could improve even further. Continuous feedback loops are also encouraged between team members (apart from their 1:1 sessions with me). The idea is for everyone to be as independent as possible but at the same time with a team-oriented mindset.

At the same time, all work and no play can bring down even the most up beat of us so we alway try to have space for some cooling down and socializing as well as ensuring everyone has the time they need to polish/improve and learn new skills. Once or twice a year, we also have longer 2-3 day get aways to bind as a team in nice relaxing and fun locations.

I often think to myself, I’ve done a good job when the team can function by itself without my intervention. That’s often my goal as a leader.

What is the next big project you are working on? Any interesting challenges ahead?

Next up is follow up projects deriving from the big shutdown project. We still need to continue decoupling activities from the old monolithic service as well as spending more love on improving the new app. On the horizon, we also have another long term architecturally challenging project so we’ll be kept on our toes for a while to come ;) 

And last but not least: What qualities do you think are essential for succeeding in the Software Engineering field at XING? Any tips for someone who thinks to apply at XING?

For Web Developers, which is what most of my team members are, I would say, always strive to understand your domain (the web) as much as you possibly can, always keep the tools in your toolkit sharp and keep on the lookout for pruning out of date ones and adding new ones (work on side-projects to help with this). Work on the hard questions where you really need to roll up your sleeves, have deep focus and get your hands dirty. Read as much code as you can from your co-workers, other teams and open source code. Be brave and try things. Dig in. Be professional and strive to help others and to learn from them. Push yourself to come out of your comfort zone from time to time.

As for XING, we have a dedicated interview process to ensure we hire people that click with everyone else we hire. The right people skills are soo important. Friendly, open-minded, courteous and helpful people are what we’re looking for. If you’re like that, you’ll have a great time here.