Quote: (03-04-2014 01:36 PM)TravellerJay Wrote:
Hey Frenchcorporation, I want to hear from you, how the job is going so far and if you do have more info to share with us, thanks
Well...
Ive got a few things to say , so I'll say them in no particular order
Firstly,Ive been at the new company for a little over two months. During the interview, I asked how many other people developed the product.. and from the response I was given the impression there were multiple developers. There were not. There was just one, and he was leaving, hence them hiring me.
So Im currently the lead/sole developer of the web application, & I have 8 months commercial experience. I am dealing with everything thrown at me, but ..my boss took a big risk on hiring me as a sole developer with my level of experience. I mean, I've proved his judgement to be spot on, but still.
The web application is a python/django app, with a mysql database, running on amazon web services.
I wanted a big challenge, & I've definitely been handed one. The learning curve that was flattening out at the last job has suddenly steepened again, and I am pleased about that part of the situation.
As I'm the sole developer, as well as the coding side of things, I'm also handling everything else, from the server configuration (nginx/gunicorn etc), to the maintaining of the database, database backups .. everything basically.
Oh yeah, and all the unit tests for the product are out of date. I identified this as a huge issue on day one, and was essentially told "yeah we know, but we need to push new features". The product has approx 40,000 lines of code, and this in in python, which is a very succinct language.
Huge red flag. Even on my side projects, I have loads of tests.
So broadly speaking, the new technologies ive learnt and am still learning are
*linux server configuration (aws, nginx, gunicorn)
*git source control , was using mercurial at last job, and use mercurial for sid eprojects
* mysql database configuration , was using postgres at last job
Im doing a lot of learning and work outside of my job hours, just to keep on top of things, and to keep learning.
As well as working on python side projects,Ive recently started learning C. This is because Id like to take my finance skills into the financial/quant development sector, and London would be the perfect place for that.
I get recruiters calling me from time to time and I don't even have a LinkedIn or anything like that. From speaking to a few of them and looking at job sites, Im pretty confident I'll be able to make the transition into the financial software development industry, in my next job, or the one after that. Theres still plenty room for improvement (in terms of my income) in the web development area so if its the job after next, I'm not too fussed.
And I should reiterate, I'm putting in a serious amount of work to improve my skill. Im staying late after work for hours until the cleaners kick me out to lock up, I'm turning up early, Im reading everything I can get my hands on (got plenty of pdfs i still need to read through )..& Im not doing this for my boss, Im doing it for me.
And its paying off.