Life as a developer at ABN AMRO
Interview with Annabelle Tjalma
What is it like to be a developer at ABN AMRO? In this article, we asked our developer Annabelle Tjalma some questions. Curious what it is like to work at ABN AMRO? Read more below.
How did you become a developer?
After studying Biomedical Sciences at the University of Leiden, I applied to the ABN AMRO IT traineeship at Young Colfield. I did this because I knew I wanted to continue learning but I also really wanted to work. A career advisor had proposed IT and after exploring this option (I took free courses on Kahn Academy and Codecademy) all I could think was: Let’s do this! I was excited to learn about IT, programming, and everything that came with it. And if ABN AMRO was going to risk having this newbie with zero IT skills work for them, I was going to take them up on it. I’ve been working as a developer at ABN AMRO for three years now.
Why did you accept your placement at ABN AMRO?
ABN AMRO was going to give me the time and space to learn these technical skills and I would have freedom in choosing where I’d specialize and focus on. Having this freedom, feeling challenged, and having fun is very important to me when it comes to a job. I accepted the placement at ABN AMRO because it ticked all of these boxes.
What were your first months like?
I obviously needed to learn a lot. In the first six months, the learning curve was incredibly steep. I felt like I had to know everything while, in fact, I knew next to nothing. I pressured myself into learning as fast as possible and that gave me a lot of stress. However, with the support of my team, I learned that it is okay to not know everything at once. My team is very experienced but also empathetic. We had open communication and held retros with honest feedback. I couldn’t have wished for a better team to start with!
What do you like the most about your job?
At the top of the list is my team! They make or break your experience at a job. My teammates are a lot of fun and I learn so much from them. Also, I really enjoy working on big projects. These make my job very interesting, challenging, and versatile. I’m currently working on a project where I have to cover all the bases of development: I’m refining user stories (gathering requirements and figuring out a technical implementation), I’m developing, I’m testing and reviewing the results with stakeholders.
What is a challenge you have encountered during your job?
When I started as a trainee, I was very junior. You’re like a sponge taking in knowledge, seizing everything that comes along. Eat, sleep, learn, repeat. At some point, you need to move away from feeling junior and move towards owning the material. I had to learn to position myself as the expert, to grow into my confidence, and to not fall back into “I am a junior” when I doubted myself. The challenge is to rely on yourself in those moments of insecurity.
What would you say is your biggest achievement working at ABN AMRO?
I played a large role in setting up a dashboard for the Market Risk Reporting team. With this dashboard, they are now able to gain insight into the health of their market reference data. The work to achieve this included many meetings to understand the requirements, setting up new ingestion flows for new streams of data, normalizing that data according to business specifications. Next to that, setting up a workflow that queries the data daily and creates a report. I helped set this up from beginning to end and I’m pleased with the end result.
Any tips for working at home?
Firstly, proactively create a workspace for yourself. Designate a space that is purely for work or, if there is no such space available, make it conditional: if the laptop is on the table, it’s work time, and if it’s in the cupboard, it’s downtime. Secondly, don’t be so hard on yourself. When in the office, no one works their full eight hours. Going for that walk or having that cup of tea, staring out the window, and enjoying the sun on your face is so, so, so important.
Did you like the interview with Annabelle? If you have any questions or would like to contact her click here.
Work at ABN AMRO
Join us! It would mean working on meaningful, interesting projects. Projects that have an impact on millions of our clients. We offer an environment where you will be challenged on a daily basis! Have a look at our available Information Technology job vacancies and apply!
