Sara, Software developer

Hi, I'm Sara, 32 years old, and I've been a software developer at CHECK24 in Hamburg for a year and a half. I got into the IT industry as a career changer, through the IT bootcamp "neue fische" here in Hamburg. There I learned the basics of HTML, CSS and JavaScript with the framework React. As a final project, I built an app, with which I then also applied at CHECK24. Two months after the bootcamp, I started at CHECK24. So I'm still relatively fresh in software development.

I was excited by the technologies we work with. CHECK24 introduced itself at our bootcamp and mentioned that I could work with PHP as well as Javascript, and thus not "only" in the frontend, but also in the backend. I found that very exciting. When I had my trial day at CHECK24, I got the chance to see how they approach software development and I got my expectations confirmed. Additionally, there was a great vibe in the office. In the beginning, I was able to do a new starter project to get familiar with the new technologies. After that, I was given easier and progressively more difficult tickets and was slowly integrated into the daily work. The onboarding was very valuable, especially for me as a career changer.

As a software developer, I work together with my colleagues on both the frontend and the backend of our comparison. As a junior, I still get support, but there are also many areas I can work on alone. Tasks, such as new features for the site, are described by our product managers in tickets and we developers then work on them. We try not to make the tickets too complex, so on average you spend one to three days working on one ticket. That means everyone usually does several tickets per week.

I'm get up early, so I'm usually one of the first in the office, or at the moment at my desk in the home office. But by 10:30 at the latest, all my colleagues are there for the morning stand-up and we discuss who is currently working on which ticket. After that, I continue working on my tickets. I'm constantly in touch with my colleagues. Even in home office, you don't feel alone at all. Twice a week, we discuss future tickets and estimate their complexity. And every Friday we plan the next sprint, i.e. the next week.

I used to think that developers just stare at the screen all day, typing away silently and lonely.

But that's a misconception of what everyday work is really like. Everything we do is always a team effort. We talk a lot about our code, think together, exchange ideas and look for solutions together. It's always very lively in our office. Fortunately, we've been able to transfer that to our home office time quite well.

Frontend is easier for me than backend, that's why I'm having more fun with it. I can discuss my solutions and defend my code in review. We work with Angular on the frontend, which I just learned and like a lot. We get our code very clearly structured with it and can make our site faster and faster. Also, Angular itself is always evolving and it's exciting to see how Javascript and Angular grow.

The great thing is that my work is very versatile and diverse. I'm constantly working on new exciting projects and it never gets boring.

Right now, my team has restructured our entire comparison track. To do this, we copied our old track and rebuilt it over several weeks. I expected several months of work to implement it all, but we were really fast!

The last thing I did was to work on our automated tests for this new track. This was a completely new topic for me, and found it very exciting. Now we can quickly see again after deployments if anything has broken.

At the moment my IT team consists of 11 developers, plus 3 product managers with whom we also talk every day. Everyone is very nice! I was and still am in need of a lot of help and everyone is immediately willing to answer my questions or explain contexts, so I am really grateful.

Joint team events are very important for us. Before Corona, for example, we went stand-up paddling on the Alster or often had a barbecue on the roof terrace. That's not possible right now, of course, but we always meet up on Friday afternoons for a virtual drink and toast the week and chat a bit.

When I started at CHECK24, I was a complete beginner. Now I'm doing very well and I'm very happy with how much I've learned in the last year.

The codebase is so big and the tech stack so complex that I'm sure I won't get bored anytime soon. I think I will continue to learn a lot and build knowledge in the next year.

Before I did the bootcamp, I would have never seen myself in IT. It just wasn't on my radar that I could be good at it and I had a stereotypical idea of the profession. Working in IT means problem solving, pondering, logic but also creativity and communication. Above all, software development is so multifaceted that there is a place for everyone. I would therefore motivate women to at least take a look at whether programming could possibly be the right thing for them. I was surprised that it was such a good fit.

And for all the women who are already thinking about going into IT: Definitely do it! We need more women in IT.