My first six months at AppLearn

We’ve all asked the same questions when joining a new business. How will it actually feel to work in the team? What is the company culture really like?

When I joined AppLearn, I was no different. And though no two people are the same, this blog will cover my thoughts on my first six months at AppLearn and how I’ve found the whole experience.

But before we dive into my observations, its best to give a bit of context on my my skillset and background.

I’ve worked in tech in different types of industries, but spent the past 10 years in the financial industry. I joined AppLearn as a lead software engineer, having been in a similar position at my previous place of work, with a specialty mainly around back-end services and databases.

I decided to move on simply because it was time for a change, and (SPOILER ALERT) what a change it has been!

AppLearn understand ‘ the perfect skillset’ doesn’t exist.

My friend referred me into AppLearn, and sent me the job spec. I think a job spec tells you so much about a company and their actual understanding of a role’s value or versatility.

Fortunately, I found AppLearn’s job spec quite refreshing. It didn’t mention “required” or “key skills”. It was really open in the wording without being vague. It invited you to see if you would like to use the technologies and work on the ‘day-to-day’ tasks rather than the other way around.

It also showed a level of adaptability and willingness to onboard a developer to learn new tech. It recognized a developer with stuff to learn could still bring in new skills that could be useful to the team. This has definitely been demonstrated too, and I’ll expand on this later.

Onboarding isn’t an afterthought

Again, most of us will have had bad first days. You start somewhere and it’s a scramble to find a desk or set your computer up, let alone explain the product and code base to you.

But when I started at AppLearn it was all set up for me to succeed. I even had two weeks of meetings booked in to meet different departments and people in my team. I had intros booked in with the product owner and architect to understand the product in more detail. They even considered how I was going to bridge my skill gaps.

Upskilling is encouraged and supported

As I mentioned earlier, when I joined AppLearn my skillset was mostly in .NET, backend services and databases. AppLearn’s tech stack is very different to what I was used to, so there was a lot to skill up on!

This was definitely recognized and considered, both up front and throughout my time here. I’ve been given the time and support to learn the languages and tech used, and while there is still a way to go I feel I’m getting there and am contributing to features being developed.

Don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of hard work on my part to upskill too. I didn’t have months just to sit and read up on stuff, but I was able to learn effectively due to pairing with the amazing devs here and working on appropriate projects.

What you work on is relevant and important

Like many devs, I’m the type of person who is motivated by knowing the work I’m doing is going to make a difference.

Well, as a product business, all the work that the dev teams do at AppLearn absolutely has a tangible impact on the growth and success of the business. The projects we work on are carefully considered and the whole team are well aware of how this will benefit the business and our customers.

Products and features are iterated upon, and considered for every story that is picked up. There are no monolith practices here. AppLearn are always keen to deliver features early, get early feedback and build from there, rather than wait for the never ending perfect vision.

You get to work on a wide variety of tech

Every dev will have their strong points, whether that be front end or back end. But as a member of the engineering team at AppLearn, you get your hands on the full stack.

Fear of time to learn — whether that be simply learning a new area of the product or skilling up on new tech — is not a factor for AppLearn. They recognize that the knowledge needs to be spread, and that investing in the right tools for the job will reap rewards later.

They’re a great group to work with

This may not be news to anyone, but the attitudes and culture within a team are really important. Personally I think this is just as, if not more important than the dev skills you have. I think AppLearn recognize that in order to make a quality product and grow, we can only do this as a team.

As a result, no one is siloed off to work on a specific area for their entire future. I work very closely with other devs, our QA, architect and product owner on every feature. Collaboration, knowledge sharing and helping out where you can happens on a daily basis. You need to have a good attitude to make it happen and that’s where the great bunch here come into their own.

But it doesn’t just stop at the engineering dept. Whilst I mostly work within this team on a day-to-day basis, there is importance on building relationships with people across the business. AppLearn do a lot to help build a culture where this happens. We often have events where we get to meet and catch up with people from other departments, whether that be a team lunch or a monthly quiz in our mixed “house teams” as an example.

Code quality always beats quantity

I have found that AppLearn focus on the long game and ensure they have a great product. Due to this, they place huge importance on code quality. Its maintainability, robustness and sustainability.

We have a number of procedures to ensure this. Our architect will get involved to ensure that what we build fits in with where we want to go and confirm we are making use of the best infrastructure, tools and patterns. Our planning meetings then help us understand the obstacles we might face and refine that solution further, then we have Pull Request approvals to ensure the code is at its best.

Great communication from the top down

During my time here, communication of how we are doing, where we want to go and how we are going to get there have been excellent. In particular, we have a monthly “all hands” meeting where the heads of each department gives an update on how they have done in the past month, and what they’ve go coming up.

This is great for me, as I’m the type of person who is really motivated by understanding how I can make a difference in the business. It’s great to see that the heads and directors see this as important too and always take the time to do it.

The updates don’t just happen for the sake of it. It’s a genuine signal that we are growing the company together, and that everyone needs to understand how we are making it happen together.

Amazing core values

This section should probably have been at the top, as the AMAZE core values are genuinely so important to AppLearn. I have to say it’s refreshing that these values are demonstrated throughout the business and are spoken about so much. So, at this point you’re probably wondering what AMAZE stands for:

A — Always Learning

M — Make it Happen

A — All for All

Z — Zealous Approach

E — Ego at the Door

To get the most out of working at AppLearn, you probably want to be on board with these values (which, luckily, I am).

I didn’t put this section at the top because I’m hoping that the points I’ve written about above illustrate how these values have found their way into the everyday of working within AppLearn’s engineering team.

What’s Next

AppLearn recently acquired YesElf, which also provides a DAP product. This has been huge for us, and the next year is going to involve a lot of change but as we merge our teams and our products together.

For me, my objective over the next few months will be understanding the YesElf product and code base so we can effectively merge the two products together, getting to know our new team members (from YesElf) and cracking on with the merge.

It’s definitely exciting times ahead!