We sat down with Java Developer, Rupert to learn more about his role at YellowDog and how he found joining the company during a national lockdown.
What Does Your Role as Java Developer Involve?
As Java Developer, I look after and build all of the back end services, all of the complex plumbing that our Front End Developer, Liv adds her beautiful work to! I’m responsible for how our Platform talks to all of the hyperscalers, as well as the valuable features we add to our offering.
So, essentially my role involves staring at a lot of code all day!
It’s a Collaborative Effort
Fortunately, in between concentrating on lines and lines of code, my role also involves a lot of collaborating with others.
Every two weeks, as a team we set out the features we are going to prioritise, depending on what it is we’re aiming to achieve at the time. Sometimes this results in us all having very separate aspects to work on and sometimes the features overlap. Oftentimes, I find myself working closely with Software Architect, Ben.
When Ben and I are working on the same feature, we are really methodical about how we go about things. We can’t just start hammering away at the keyboard, independently of each other and hope to arrive at something that resembles a coherent, finished product. When the change is very complicated, we do a lot of whiteboarding to plan our actions – which is interesting because it’s all via online tools – and then we move into a design phase, before we start development. Once we have a plan in place, we sit in a Zoom meeting all day as we work to make sure we’re always on the same page. It’s nice that Zoom don’t put a time limit on two people meeting because Ben and I will sit in a meeting for 6 hours at a time!
