ABOUT

Tell us who you are!

I'm Neef, I'm 27, and I'm a Full-stack Software Developer at ustwo

So what do you actually do?

When it comes to writing code, as a full-stack developer I work on the "front-end" of products, like websites and apps, and also for the "back-end" services that make those products work behind the scenes, like servers and infrastructure. The tools I currently spend the most time with are TypeScript, Jest, AWS, and Terraform.

As well as the technical aspect I spend a lot of time collaborating with my team (product managers, designers, strategists, other developers, etc.) to plan future work and support one another where needed. This might mean pairing up to program together, researching different ways to achieve a certain outcome, or reviewing someone else's code.

What has your career path been?

I always thought I'd be a scientist when I was in school. But when I moved to London to study Physics at university, I quickly realised it wasn't actually for me. My passion faded within the first year and I was left coasting through two more while I tried my hardest to avoid a crisis of self.

My first two jobs after uni weren't quite the epiphanic experiences I wanted at the time, but in hindsight, they each helped set me up for what I do now.

Firstly, I took a short stint as an entry-level bioinformatician (doing analysis on genetic datasets). The area was super interesting and gave me some foundational tech skills, but the work itself wasn't that enjoyable to me.

Immediately after that, I joined a company that ran a handful of shared office spaces, where I did "operations" (everything from sitting at the front desk to managing technical projects). I really loved the breadth of this job, and it introduced me to a lot of start-ups and creatives, which continued to shape my interest in technology and design. After a while in this job, I still didn't have a good sense of exactly what I wanted to be doing, but I knew I was getting closer.

With that in mind, it seemed like an agency might fit the bill, due to the varied and creative work that goes on. I had a short list of one's that seemed interesting, and ustwo was at the top. The games, companies and products that ustwo took the initiative to create itself set the agency apart in my mind.

While doing some research into ustwo I found a blog post by a company that was part of ustwo's new (at the time) "Adventure Floor" for creative startups. In this post was a screenshot of an email from one of ustwo's Founders (Mills), with the email address still in it. Feeling a bit braver than usual, I sent a short email asking for some advice as someone who wanted to break into the industry, and was met with an enthusiastic offer of a meeting.

Slowly I got to know Mills and others in the company, and after a short while I got an offer to join the team as generalist who would help out in Adventure's early days. This went from running a floor of their office to helping set up an investment fund and mentorship scheme.

And at the same time I had a few opportunities to learn design and web development. Over time as my skills as a developer grew, I moved to the studio arm of ustwo to be a full-time software engineer on client projects, and here I am!

What is the best part of your job?

I feel like there's never a day where I don't learn something new. It's as simple as that!

Why do you do your job?

I love collaborating with caring and creative people, I love the satisfaction that comes with solving problems together, and I love seeing something that I've worked on be used by thousands of real people.

One piece of advice for someone starting in your role?

Don't focus too much on your coding ability. How you plan and communicate your work is more important than how you do it, and will set you apart from other junior developers.

Check out Neef’s socials below!

DAY IN THE LIFE

My typical day varies a lot between projects, but currently it goes like this:

My alarm goes off every 5 minutes from 8:15am to 8:45 am. I get out of bed at 8:55am and make a cup of coffee. I put on a jumper and hat before sitting down at my desk to start my first call at 9am.

This is a 15 minute "PR review" meeting for the full-stack team on my project, where we will discuss our pending contributions to the codebase, and give details on what is required before "merging" them (like code review or testing).

After this call, I have 15 minutes to reply to emails and catch up with anything I've missed. Once that's over, we go straight into our project's 15 minute "stand up" meeting, where everybody (in all disciplines) discusses the status of their current task.

Once that's done it's time for breakfast and the rest of the usual morning routine. From here the day can take shape in a handful of different ways, but it's always a mix of at least a few things:

Further team meetings to plan and prioritise future work. This is usually where the most important conversations happen. Team members from all disciplines (tech, design, strategy, etc.) come together to break down our goals into smaller tasks and broadly plan their implementation.

Small sessions with other developers to pair program or discuss approaches. Often I'll be on a call with the developer who is building the front-end component to my back-end work, so we can make sure everything is working as expected and investigate edge cases together.

There is always some heads-down time to get work done on my current task. This is where I'll be writing code, but also doing research, writing documentation and performing tests.

There also may be some miscellaneous company meetings to attend. One example is a meeting for the entire tech team across all projects come together to chat or share learnings, and another could be our "Friday Afternoon Meeting" where we get progress updates from other client projects and internal teams alike.

Hopefully that gives you a good flavour of the kinds of stuff I get up to! It's less coding than most people tend to think, and I like it that way.