Appetizers

Starting with some basics.

 Fun Starters

Getting to know the human side.

 Main Course

A quick deep dive into the day-to-day job.

Tell us about yourself and your job.

I am a recent graduate from UC Irvine majoring in computer science. I started interning at Insellerate in 2018 after a rigorous interview process, and have been a developer for our web application ever since. Our mortgage CRM helps banks and lenders close more loans by increasing efficiency gains across sales, marketing, operations, and management.

How did you end up in your field? What do you like about it?

I originally was a Biology major, but I took a programming class and I fell in love with coding. Building a program is similar to building a puzzle and you get a huge sense of accomplishment when you finish. Also, I like how you can just write a program for almost any menial technical task so that your computer can do the work for you.

What does a typical morning look like on the job?

My team usually starts the morning with a daily SCRUM meeting, where each of us will go over what we accomplished the day before, what we will be working on today, along with any struggles that are blocking our progress so that we may tackle them together as a team. Then, each developer will continue working on their own projects, primarily coding, to meet established deadlines from the clients.

Cool, then what does a typical afternoon look like?

Developers may have meetings to go over future assignments as well as sprint retrospectives to review the past 2-3 weeks. We use these to analyze where we excelled as well as areas needing improvement. Other than meetings, developers usually will continue to write code for their projects.

What types of projects and meetings are you involved in?

Our work is project-based. The business side of our company will consolidate a list of requests and send it over to the developers. With our project manager, we will review each request and give an estimate as to how many days of effort each will take. Then assignments will be given out based on the developer’s area of expertise.

Who do you collaborate with within meetings and projects?

As a startup company, our development team is very small. We usually only have 1 or 2 subject matter experts for each part of our system, so when someone new is working on an unfamiliar section, they can reach out to the right developer for any assistance. We also go over any obstacles someone is facing in our daily SCRUM meeting.

 Dessert

Now for some juicy insights in the tea room.

What's the most challenging thing about your job?

As a multi-tenanted mortgage CRM, I would say the most challenging thing is keeping all our clients happy. One client may really love a particular functionality of our system, while others may be constantly requesting for changes to be made to it. Also, our user base is growing extremely fast, and adding on new clients can be extremely resource-intensive.

What are some characteristics that can help someone succeed in your role?

Having the motivation and interest in coding would be helpful to get exposed to software engineering, but I think discipline is the most important trait to thrive and be successful. You might be stuck on some coding bug for days that makes you want to bash your keyboard in, or people might be spamming you with a bunch of different requests. This is where having a disciplined plan and sticking to it will help you get through these struggles.

Any advice on how to stand out and get hired for those just starting off?

Technical interviews for software development jobs can be really tough, and students looking for internships/full-time positions will need to practice their coding and algorithms. There are many online resources available for coders to practice and hone their coding skills such as LeetCode and HackerRank. Soft skills such as communication and listening are very important too as most development positions are in a team-based environment.

What's something that surprised you about your job?

As a developer, it was a pleasant surprise to see what a huge impact the projects I was working on had on our clients. In most of the larger companies, you will work on a small part of their system that might not affect the customers at all, but the benefit of working at a small startup is that all work is meaningful.

Any last thoughts, advice, or recommendations for someone who wants to do what you do?

If you don't have any experience in coding or working with software, I would recommend getting your feet wet and trying it out. It is a pretty useful skill to have today, as we are transitioning to a tech-centered society, and you might even find that this is something you are very passionate about.

 Drinks

Chat more over coffee or tea?