ABOUT

So what do you actually do?

I put cool things on our website to improve your experience.

What has your career path been?

To some it up in one word: unconventional!

I have a degree in Psychology and I was a Market Researcher for a couple of years before deciding to make the dive into Software Development and I haven't looked back since.

Although the majority of people in the industry have a mathematical / engineering background, there has been an increase in people joining the industry from a range of backgrounds. If you're reading this and you're interested in joining the tech industry but don't have a tech background, don't let that stop you.

What is the best part of your job?

Seeing something I built on a live website and knowing that people are interacting with it - makes me feel proud of how far I've come!

Why do you do your job?

I did a little bit of coding at university and I enjoyed it in a way that my actual degree didn't fulfil (I have a degree in Psychology). After hesitating for a couple of years, I decided to just go for it and train to code full time.

One piece of advice for someone starting in your role?

Don't overthink, just start! Consistency is the key to success in the tech industry. You will see the payoff in your skills and knowledge because of the small things you do every day.

Check out Hibo’s Twitter below!

DAY IN THE LIFE

9:00 to 9:15 am: I typically start my day by having a quick scan of my emails and making a to-do list of my day. I'm a pen and paper enthusiast so I have my notebook and pen at the ready!

9:15 to 9:45 am: This part of the morning is flexible. A few of us from the engineering, design, product and/or content team may have a shaping session where we discuss features that are in development for the site. We each give our input from our different perspectives on things like the purpose of the feature, any constraints that may make things unfeasible, and how we want to measure its impact.

9:45 to 10:00 am: The engineering team have a morning stand-up where we discuss the progress of the tasks we are currently working through.

10:00 to EOD: Uninterrupted coding time!! It's important for developers to have long periods of time during the day when we work solely on our coding tasks so I'm generally free, meeting wise, until the end of the day.

On a typical day, I'm either crying/stressing about a bug that I can't seem to fix or having fun with a task that is making my life easy. On a really bad day, CSS is making me question whether I'm a good developer (despite what you might think, styling a website is the hardest part of front end web development!!). Jokes aside, it's usually up and down between developing and debugging throughout the day so good communication on slack is important to help when you're stuck on something.

I try to keep good habits like taking regular breaks from the screen to prevent eye strain, trying to stand/walk around more during the day (as developers don't get much opportunity to move around) and keeping a bottle of water handy.

At the end of the day, I write down a list of things I didn't finish up that need to be done for the next day so I don't forget (my memory is pretty bad).