Ownership, learning, and growth — My journey as a software developer at FinBox
Republished from finbox.in. Originally by Devashish Mulye.
The first place you work at is incredibly formative. Your first job could be a ‘rocketship’ that propels you forward for the rest of your career. Picking the first company you work at is nerve-wracking as you try to manage personal goals, professional growth, learning, and the overall experience.
Having worked at FinBox for 4 years now, I realise in retrospect — while everyone looks for a rocketship, I got to build one.
I joined FinBox in June 2017 as a software developer, and as a fresher. I was the first employee to join the team. I entered the world of FinTech with FinBox. We were starting our journey of building cutting-edge technologies and tools that are now redefining B2B lending and digital financial services for the biggest and the best.
In September 2017, I pushed my first big release into production. Soon enough, it was getting 10,000 users per day. I could see the logs of 10k new users a day on one of the first pieces of code I had written in my professional life. It was both exhilarating and slightly unbelievable to see the kind of impact that something I created had made in the real world.
Over the course of the next year, I worked on various web-apps and data pipelines (which were ingesting more than 1 TB of data daily) alongside a 5-member team. Since that first code shipment, the journey has been nothing short of an adventure with the best mix of growth, personal development and a culture that rewards consistency without ever leaving one’s mental health and wellbeing behind.
Here is what I have enjoyed about being a developer at FinBox:
Ownership that makes you a leader
Developers at FinBox own not just the code, but also the product. It’s like being your own Tech Lead and also Product Manager. I had the opportunity to solve complex problems and take meaningful calls in the projects I was driving.
I also enjoyed the freedom to experiment with various solutions when it was required and propose novel solutions to problems that didn’t really have a standard answer on stackoverflow.* This afforded me an opportunity to learn and also the excitement of exploring.
Learning and horizontal scaling
I started working on web development (Django), then moved to the AWS infrastructure, learned DevOps, Data pipelining, workflow orchestration. I also later contributed to our front-end codebase.
Many of my teammates joined as JavaScript developers, and then went on to deploy Rust, Golang, Python modules in production.
I deeply appreciate this freedom and opportunity to expand my skill set. This broad skill set helps in making product decisions.
Tech-first culture
I understood the importance of sophisticated tech while solving problems of scale, complex state management, costs, regulations — and that too rapidly. I learned about best practices, finding the best solutions, and understanding trade-offs.
This is baked into the software development culture. This also develops a rigor that pushes you to do better.
It has been a thrill to work at FinBox, alongside really talented people. Working closely with the business, product and founding team has been an enriching experience for me.
*I realised I should’ve contributed to StackOverflow more often :)
Learn more about how FinBox is revolutionizing Embedded Finance: https://www.finbox.in/
