I was honestly surprised when I was asked to write this blog post detailing my first month at the company. Not because I hadn’t gotten plenty of prior warning, of course, but more so that I couldn’t believe that a month had already passed since starting at Viva IT.
Fresh out of a university half way across the country, armed with a very fancy piece of paper, I set my sights on job hunting just after the new year of 2021. Considering the current climate, unsurprisingly it wasn’t the easiest process. After a bit, I decided to expand my horizons beyond working locally and started looking across the country for positions that really stood out to me. It was more than a relief to land an interview, let alone a job, at a place that boasted as impressive a record - and employee-friendly values as Viva IT, and it’s been a very busy and equally rewarding onboarding process since.
Outside of Uni, all of the work I’d done in software development over the years had been entirely hobbyist work, done alone or with friends on much smaller projects, so it was honestly a pretty daunting thought to enter into the world of professional software development. Luckily for me, everyone at Viva IT - developers and otherwise - have been nothing but patient, accommodating, and helpful throughout the entire process of getting me acclimated to their processes. What's helped this a lot is the short but frequent meetings (scrums, kick-offs and retros) gave me a good opportunity from the get go to get to know everyone else on the team. On top of all that, the company is looking for team-bonding activities that everyone would enjoy, while being remote-first, which is an effort and idea I super appreciate and am excited for.
One thing I really appreciate about the position is that they have faith in their newer developers, allowing us an opportunity out of the gate to work on systems that are actually used and matter, which isn’t the case from what I’ve heard from the majority of my graduating class. I had two features submitted by my second day and had thoroughly broken a different feature by the end of my second week. In the latter case, it was a huge relief that instead of being blamed, plenty of team members instead offered useful feedback and hopped on video meetings to go over ways I could go about fixing it, as well as reassurances that it happens to everyone.
As for the future, I’ve had a lot of fun diving into the more involved systems that we make over the past week or two, and look forward to being able to dig my teeth a bit more into those systems! I also hit a point this week where I was able to provide valuable input on how a task should be implemented. I’m excited to build more confidence in that area, as well as more familiarity with the systems so that I can provide more input and contribute more to the team.
