Spark Shares: Lessons from a Full-Stack Engineer
Tell us about your career journey at Spark Equation.
I first started with Spark Equation 3 years ago as a software engineer. Since then, I have grown into my full-stack software engineer position. As a developer, I not only write code for front-end web applications, but I also write API code that sits in the middle, and server code that sits in the back (back-end), while also connecting and communicating with databases.
How would you describe your competency growth?
I learned to take responsibility and ownership of my tasks. In a small team, it’s important to make sure you’re not taking too much on yourself and overpromising and not delivering. It affects your productivity, the teams, and creates project drawbacks that add additional unplanned tasks. It’s important to recognize the impact made by everyone on the project, respect everyone's effort, and admit to mistakes.
What do you remember about your first project here?
The first project I worked on, which seems like a long time ago now, was a powerful cloud, mobile-based marketplace, and logistics platform that seamlessly connected enterprises with the vast growing freelancer community. The team was building many integration features and a client-facing portal at the time when I jumped in. Each project is different and this one definitely got my thinking cap churning. As an engineer, I think it’s important to quickly adapt your skillset to the project and understand what skills you have already, which need improvement, and what needs to be learned. I remember how helpful the whole team was, even as a newbie, no one questioned my input and everyone was ready to hear my ideas during our planning sessions.
What lesson have you learned and continue to apply in your projects?
The team you work with is one of the keys to success in your project. My team and I are never afraid to ask questions and challenge solutions, we speak up during our planning sessions and frequently have brainstorming talks to work through different solution approaches. When I first started, I was lucky enough to be a part of a great team, which I bonded with right away. The internal support and atmosphere we created affected our success in the long run, in many ways it has contributed to my growth as an engineer.
After 3 years with Spark Equation, what experience has stuck with you?
While working with my team, I’ve understood that there's always room for improvement, the opportunity to acquire new skills, and to never get stuck in one place. We are constantly learning, there's always an influx of new ideas, tools, and the challenges that we are faced with, we solve together while working on different projects and at different stages of product development.
Since I’ve joined Spark Equation, we transferred and grown out of working in one office to diversifying into many offices spread out all over the world. We overcame the pandemic, without losing any project speed, productivity, and continued to improve our work as we were moving to work remotely. We were quick to adapt to the circumstances of Covid and have been full speed ever since. This experience has taught me that even during rough patches I am still able to “be in motion”.
