In Conversation With Enrico Graziani
Enrico Graziani is a Software Engineer in our Order Management team. We recently sat down to discuss his experience working at Cazoo…
Q. What was your role before you joined Cazoo?
A. I was a Software Engineer mostly for a back end team at the BBC. We would do some UI but the portal that we worked on was only used by a few dozen people. I was having fun doing that for a while but I decided to leave because I wanted to find something more challenging.
I really wanted to find a role where I could either work purely on the front end, or at least mainly on the front end. Cazoo managed to find the right balance for me in this sense.
Q. Why did you want to do front end work?
A. My experience up to this point had basically all been back end.
At the same time, I wanted to increase my experience of building products that are used by customers. At Cazoo, I feel like I’ve learned tonnes in this area, even though I’m not working on one of the customer-facing teams. I love the way that Cazoo is so focused on the customer and listens to them.
I like the amount that I’ve been learning at Cazoo, it’s been amazing. In 10–20 years time I’d love to be in a position where I could go off and build my own product. I feel like I’m covering all the parts of product management and product thinking that I wanted to cover.
Q. When you were job hunting, why did you feel that Cazoo was right for you?
A. I remember we had a discussion and spoke about the attitude of being a Software Craftsman in the business. I was super impressed by how this culture was embraced by Cazoo.
I was looking to create a good product that adds value and resolves problems for customers. At Cazoo this is important. People are passionate about technology and creating a product that’s meaningful for customers.
The product makes sense, and now that we’re heading into Europe it’s going to be huge.
Typescript was another huge reason. I was working with JavaScript and Java at the BBC. TypeScript is somewhere in the middle, and it’s been a good experience using it.
Q. What would you say is the most enjoyable piece of work that you’ve done?
A. I was recently working on a payment service and had some fun with it. It was a new service and there was a chance for me to go places where no one had been before. I’d only recently joined the team and everything up to that point had been learning from others. This was a new thing for us. It was tabula rasa, a blank slate, so everyone had to learn.
I felt excited to dive into the third-party documentation for discovering new features, lead conversations and development, and autonomously push the team forward.
Q. Was it challenging to deliver this payment service?
A. The challenging bit of the payment project was the deadline, but in a sense, it was nice to have. We had to deliver it in a sprint, and it was a major win for us to deliver that project on time.
There were around a dozen people in the team and we had to be really dynamic. We’d be pairing, and someone else would be reading the documentation and we’d be moving from one (virtual) room to another. It was really fluid and fast-moving. It was a good feeling when we delivered it.
Q. What’s your favourite thing about working at Cazoo?
A. It’s the people around me. There’s a lot of good talent and all of them have the right mindset. They’re passionate about what they’re doing.
In Order Management we pair all the time. We really don’t want to take a ticket by ourselves. I think that is really nice.
Also, the practices like Software Craftsmanship, TDD and DDD. I was coding for some time before I changed careers. I started doing small bits of code in Excel and Python. Eventually, I started to learn about good coding practices like TDD, SOLID and DDD, which has massively evolved the way that I code.
Ultimately, this led to me landing a job at Cazoo, where there’s a lot of passion for quality and pragmatism. The team really cares about good engineering practices.
Q. What advice would you give someone who was thinking of applying to Cazoo?
A. If they want to apply for Cazoo they have to be passionate about what they’re doing. If they are passionate about what they’re doing, then this will be the perfect environment for them to thrive.
