Lucy: Behind the Work
Frontend development, collaboration, and coop working
What's your role at The Developer Society and what does a typical day look like for you?
I’m a frontend developer at The Developer Society. Any day for me starts with a large black coffee. Our production team gets together for a standup call where we discuss the day's work, any blockers we’re facing, context we’re missing, basically ensuring that we are aligned on what we need to complete all of our tasks for the day. Then I'll take a look at the pull request list and see if there are any reviews that I can pick up, all developers review each other's work so that we can ensure it’s of a high quality. Then I will get started on my tasks for the day. I could be working on anything from styling html, react components, analytics or javascript functionality.
How did you end up at The Developer Society? What's your origin story?
I worked in art charities for a few years before realising that it wasn’t the right career for me. I had already been teaching myself to code in my spare time so I decided to do a Computer Science conversion course. I knew that I still wanted to work in the not for profit world and this role was one of the first i applied for. I was incredibly lucky to find a dream job on the first go!
What do you do when you're not staring at screens?
I love experiencing all kinds of live performance—music, theatre, dance—you name it. I could be at a grungy hardcore show or a fancy opera and i’d enjoy it just the same!
How is working at a coop different from other places you've worked?
Working in a coop is a completely different experience to any other place I‘ve worked before. It’s incredibly empowering to know that you have the power to make crucial decisions in your own workplace even though you’re not a CEO or a manager. We are able to change and contribute to coop-wide policies in a way that is not possible in a traditional tech company
If you could give one piece of advice to someone starting in your field, what would it be?
Take time to really learn the basics, it will seem really exciting to jump into big projects but knowing the basic concepts will help you out more in the long term.
What's one thing you'd like to learn or try this year?
I spent a lot of the last year working in react and focusing on functionality so I'm looking forward to getting back to some styling work this year and learning about what's new with css!