I am a software engineer working with JavaScript here at Movio. I've been working in the industry for just over a year and I joined the Movio Crew six months ago . When I was hired I had little to no exposure to JavaScript and the front-end space, but my personal and professional growth over the last six months has been meteoric, and I believe that Movio's culture of continuous innovation and improvement is the main contributor to my professional development.
At Movio, we have small squads with a diverse range of skill sets, and our move into Squadification has been blogged about previously by our CTO Kalman Bekesi. Due to these small squads we don't like duplicating skill sets, so, as a result, I have been given the responsibility of the entire front-end on the Movio Media product that we work on in my squad. This means that I am the only one who has a deep knowledge and understanding of that specific codebase. Although it could seem that I shoulder this responsibility alone, in fact, I can consult developers in other squads at Movio and raise issues I may be having with the front end guild. Since no one else has an intimate knowledge of the codebase, I cannot pass my responsibility of implementing functionality to anyone else, so this support means that I can ensure I am confident and comfortable with my ability .
This way of working is completely different from my prior work experience. In my previous role at another company, I was part of a team of four front-end developers who were all more experienced than me. This meant that I never quite developed my skills to the level that I could have due to the expertise already available in my team. I just had enough knowledge to complete my daily tasks but with no ability to really grow in my day to day role. I do not doubt that this had a part to play in my overall development during that time. Things changed quickly at Movio because of the responsibility given to each developer, there’s no ignoring any issues or problems I may have on the specific part of the product I’m responsible for so this has meant I’ve had to rise to the challenge, developing the skills needed to tackle issues as they arise. We can lean on others for help when needed, but ultimately we as individuals are accountable for the decisions we make and how they impact the product.
Our teams are strongly encouraged to ingrain ourselves into the tech community, both within the company and in the wider development circles through MeetUps, Code Retreats and Hackathons. Coming from a company where community interaction was non-existent, I had a stagnant and skewed understanding of the front-end space, grossly limited to the technologies I worked on in my day job at the time. This changed at Movio where I was firmly plugged into the local wider development community. I was able to widen my vision to include concepts I had never seen before while learning to comprehend different methodologies and technologies for solve existing and new problems and then apply them into my existing codebase. For example, I recently learned Functional Programming and the limitations of Object Oriented Programming. I’ve since been able to take those lessons and apply them to my existing code base. This pattern repeats itself on an almost a daily basis to the point where even when looking at code I wrote two weeks ago I can see improvements that I could make and include concepts that I had no knowledge of even such a short time ago.
This sort of continuous improvement is core to the dev culture here at Movio. We are encouraged to read and experiment with new technologies daily and I feel like the leadership team are interested in our personal growth as well-rounded individuals instead of only pushing our skills in the areas we work in during day to day jobs. This has hugely influenced my mindset as I am now able to look at and investigate technology I am interested, even if it's not related to what I do. As a result, I now posses a larger pool of skills which I can call on when I’m faced with a complex problem.
My experience with the people in our team has equally contributed to my growth. Employees here make it their mission to help you get a solid foundation from which you can continue to learn. One such occasion was my time learning Elm, a senior developer spent hours teaching me the theory behind the concepts I had learned so that I was able to gain the confidence to head off on my own. This kind of willingness creates an atmosphere of collaboration where I feel as though I am able to fail and ask for support when I need it. This ‘fail safe’ environment is something Kalman has had in his vision for the dev team from day one as he expressed in his ‘6 Attributes of a top tech team’.
The coaching, support, and time given to me to learn and grow has given me the confidence as a developer to take steps I would otherwise have been too scared to take. The people at Movio are passionate, smart and continuously learning making working here informative, interesting and ultimately intensely fun.
About the Author: Wasiq Kashkari
Previously a software engineer at Movio.
