Personal experience: from frontend developer to leader

From coding in seventh grade to the role of team lead. Stepan, frontend developer SimbirSoft, who heads the line in Samara, spoke about his personal experience in the profession.


Note: Interview prepared with Bigvill. The author of the text is Sasha Ponomarev.

Grade 7 coding and work from home

I’ve been developing since school, from the seventh grade – then my friend and I created a group of sites with free content for downloading. We wrote them in standard PHP, HTML and CSS. We studied in books and in a computer science circle, and also asked advice from adult programmers with whom they corresponded over ICQ. In part, all of this was pushed by my brother, who was studying as a computer science teacher.

Then I entered PSUTI and from the first year I started freelancing. And for the full day I entered the third year, when I got into one small Samara company. I worked there for several years, the company closed the front-end department due to a change in the company’s strategy.

After that, I posted the resume on the Headhunter: having serious experience by that time, I could choose from a variety of offers – and chose SimbirSoft. I was offered employment from home – and this was the decisive factor: if I used to go to the office by 8 in the morning and stood in traffic jams, now I could not leave the apartment at all. I was also pleased with the completely white salary without delay and major international projects.

The interview took place on Skype. They asked me some technical questions and sent me a code in which I had to find the shortcomings and suggest options for resolving them. It was on Friday, and already on Monday they informed me that I was suitable. Documents were sent to me, I filled them out and started working.

Mentoring system and chat support

For beginners, we have a streamlined process: be sure to conduct a velcom training (it explains how the company works and who does what), assign it to a mentor specialist, issue a velcombook with a detailed description of what needs to be done, in the form of a checklist.

About mentoring: you are assigned a high-level specialist who accompanies you during the trial period: you can contact him with any request, and he will help. The mentor’s tasks include monitoring and developing a newcomer to the company. Even me, a person with great experience, sometimes had to write to him. Plus, there’s a developer’s chat where more than a hundred people are sitting: ask any question and three will call you and five will write.

Free schedule and career growth

When I got a job in the company, the branch in Samara was just developing, there were about 15 of us, and the office was absent at that time. It was fun to work from home: you wake up, have breakfast – and immediately get involved in the process, without wasting time on fees and getting to the office.
Sometimes it was so interesting for me to code that I didn’t go out for several days at all. There are also minuses: six months later, I started going to the food court to just look at people, because in the apartment you run wild, especially if you live alone.

In general, I consider a hybrid ideal for myself: you work at home before lunch, and then go to the office. I must say that with us it is very well located in the center – convenient to get from anywhere in the city. In terms of schedule there are no restrictions: if I want, I can work for several days only from home, or sit in the office from morning to evening.

Now I am in the position of head of department in Samara and team leader. As a leader, I am responsible for the development of the frontend department in Samara. I have subordinates from both Samara and Astrakhan, Kazan, Ulyanovsk. Interaction between cities in SimbirSoft is the norm, we constantly solve issues on Skype and work with customers from afar. My main task in the role of team lead is to ensure that project releases come out on time, are made efficiently and without bugs. I began to write code less, but have not completely left it yet.

As I already said, at first there was no office in Samara, the idea arose to meet live, and I began to organize offline meetings with colleagues. The branch was growing, and when the company had a need to open an office, I was offered to deal with this difficult task. I was looking for premises, contractors for the necessary work, and on December 18, 2018, SimbirSoft opened an office in Samara. We also organized mitaps Hotfrontend. I actively attended various conferences in the Volga region as a listener and gained experience, after which I myself was a speaker at HotFrontend. As a result, I was offered to manage the Frontend department in Samara.

I own the frontend to the fullest, and of all the various tasks in this area, I pay most attention to what impressions the user will receive. And besides, it is trendy – Frontend is only gaining momentum. Every year, new development frameworks are released, the industry has only fixed Angular, Vue.JS, React and Node.js. as basic, but they are rapidly changing and supplementing, which is reflected in the development. We at SimbirSoft also keep up to date and introduce modern solutions for our customers.

Ideas and parties

In the team, we really have fun. Before isolation, we had parties at the office on Fridays, and now we work remotely and communicate online: bars, meetings, exercises, online championships for various games. We organize various master classes even for the children of employees while their parents are engaged in development.

Developers from all branches usually come together for summer and winter corporate parties, we also hold parties by departments. We also have an internal social network – there we write and find out the latest news, watch broadcasts from corporate events or, for example, have fun and go through funny tests for compatibility with colleagues.

At the same time, we can not only have fun, but also learn new things. For employees, they organize English classes, conferences, internal and external meetings.

If one of our guys wants to increase his salary, he can talk with his supervisor and discuss what needs to be studied and in what time frames (for example, to improve his knowledge of TypeScript).

I love SimbirSoft for its dynamic growth, stability and the ability to realize its potential in a team of experienced colleagues, make interesting projects and solve complex problems.

What Frontend does at SimbirSoft

The story of Stepan was supplemented by Ilya, the head of the direction:

“Now more than 110 specialists work in the Frontend direction, we are conducting 55 active projects on various modern frameworks and libraries, such as Angular, React, Vue and Node.js, as well as creating mobile applications on React Native. We have developers, architects and team leaders in our direction.

What are we doing:

  • typesetting layouts;
  • we create adaptive interfaces;
  • Animating interfaces with animations
  • we implement complex logic in JS;
  • we develop our components, accumulate expertise and best practices;
  • We optimize the front end using progressive web metrics.

In the company, we strengthen our customer teams and develop customer products for
key, we audit projects (both processes and the entire application code),
We are developing individual applications and much more that you can learn about
more details here.

In addition to Frontend, the company has Backend (Java, PHP, C #, C ++, Python, Golang, Bitrix), mobile development (Swift, Java, Kotlin), quality assurance (QA) and test automation (SDET), analytics, design, as well as a team of project managers and team leaders. Among our projects are the development of a large online bank (Angular 6), an educational application (ReactJS), a passenger traffic exchange (ReactJS), a risk monitoring system (Angular 6), a portal for translators (Vue.JS + TypeScript). Working with different industries, we have accumulated impressive expertise in IT solutions for medicine, banks, insurance, retail, automation of logistics and production. This helps build processes and develop integrated software from scratch.

For me personally, SimbirSoft is a rocket with high requirements for speed and quality, internally built processes that are developing along the path of continuous improvement. There is drive, development, and many opportunities for both employees and customers. ”

Thank you for the attention! We hope you find this article useful.

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