Levent, Software Developer

I've been working at CHECK24 in Hamburg since August 2019 for the "Travel Insurance" product as a Full Stack developer. However, I have been focusing a lot on our frontend lately.

This has given me the opportunity to be primarily responsible for the frontend of our product. My last projects have all focused on rewriting old pages in React.

After my apprenticeship, I started as a junior developer. I felt very well taken care of, everyone was friendly from the first day. The support of the entire team (especially in the beginning) is something really special and helped me to quickly adjust.

I was then given the opportunity to implement my first project alongside other colleagues relatively early on. Even though this wasn't the easiest project, we learned a lot for next projects. Over time, I got more familiar with these topics and gradually shifted my focus towards frontend development.

One of the biggest and most important frontend projects I implemented last year: the conversion from KnockoutJs to React in our desktop comparison site. At the same time, we reworked the design in several places (for example, we created a new filter bar). In close cooperation between IT and product management, we created a project plan that accompanied us through the approx. 7 weeks of implementation. We worked along our EPIC roadmap and had daily standup meetings to discuss what everyone was working on, how we were progressing, if we were reaching our milestones or if we needed to reschedule.

I really enjoyed working closely with product management on that project. Seeing the plan being implemented step by step, (in most cases) coming to fruition, and working together to bring the new site, as well as the features, to life. We started with an empty page and in the end we had our new comparison page. While we were at it, we fully implemented this in our frontend target architecture, so new developers have a super convenient way to get started with our code. In addition, it is the most important page for our customers, as they decide there whether to sign up for a tariff or not.

Our greatest strength both within and across teams is communication. We make sure that everyone is kept in the loop. In addition to direct communication in the office, we also use digital tools for this (especially in times of Corona). We regularly update each other on our tickets via our "status" channel. That is super transparent and helps to keep a very good overview in the home office.

In general, we have further improved and digitalized many things during the first lockdown period. We moved our daily standup to a newly created Discord server, where we created voice channels for IT staff, product managers and break-out sessions. We stayed in Discord throughout the day as well, so anyone could turn on their microphone and throw a question into the room at any time.

We also regularly exchange ideas among the developers on technical topics in addition to organisational topics. For example, once a week we have a dev team meeting in which we propose changes to concepts, discuss them and discuss problems. At the start of work, we also often talk about interesting code that someone has recently written and wants to show to the team. That way we make sure that we learn from each other permanently.

My team and all the colleagues I work with. I started here, as I mentioned at the beginning, right after my apprenticeship and I was very happy to find that the learning culture and the interaction with junior developers is very different from what I knew before. When asked "How do I solve problem XY not the fastest, but the best way?", my colleagues always sat down with me and explained concepts, processes and everything else in great detail. Another decisive factor was and is that I always get the time I need to get familiar myself with new topics first, without feeling the pressure of being left alone with a problem. So I then also often tried to step out of my comfort zone and take on new or difficult things.

I was lucky enough to be able to take on many front-end tasks in my team. When I was given my own project, I was very proud. Especially because I put all my effort into it, gave my best, learned a lot of new things and my achievements were seen and recognised. Since then, I have grown steadily with each new project and each new challenge. Of course, I am far from being satisfied and I am looking forward to new challenges at CHECK24 in the future.