Meet Bhavin Padhiar
Meet one of our very own developers Bhavin Padhiar, a Software Engineer here at Gumtree and one of the team’s longest serving members. Bhav is a Thinker and loves to analyse problems. You often find him hunting for Chocolate or obliterating the others with his prowess in pool (his name appears the most frequently on the Seven Ball Club Board). He always has a smile on his face and is happy to help or have a chat. Read on to find out more about Bhav
How do you maintain a healthy work life balance?
I really enjoy what I do of course, but I think it’s important to have things going on outside of the office to help with the balance. I’m quite competitive. There is a few things outside of work that I do — like Wing Chun. Sometimes when I go home from work with a stressed mind I think doing something like that for an hour or two really helps. Your mind just becomes so much more open, and relaxed. Any form of physical exercise is good for you. Other times in the office it’s just playing pool, getting away for 15 minutes — then when you come back to your desk and automatically start attacking problems with a different perspective. It works better for me after seven-balling someone. Being around good people in the office definitely helps keep the work part ‘healthy’. People you can have a laugh with — that really helps. When you find yourself in a really tight spot or a stressful situation, if you can be with someone who can still tell a joke to or have a laugh with, it’s really really useful. Gumtree has a nice office environment and it’s in a beautiful location.
When you entered the world of development can you remember the first person who impressed you?
He was actually my mentor. I was kind of a graduate developer at my first job and there was this guy who wasn’t actually there the first day I joined. Everyone was going on about him, “When he’s back he’s gonna look after you.” I was kind of curious about who this guy was. We were working on one of the core components, pretty similar to our platform team here, which has an interest in all the other teams. The team itself was small but it was very important in what it did. There was this guy who, yeah he was young, he didn’t have a degree or anything but he was really good at what he was doing and he was always trying to stick to best practices, trying to do things right, and trying to learn stuff as well. I looked up to him thinking this guy is really good. “This guy was really cool, this guy knows his stuff and what he’s doing”
I definitely had that person in my career too, it is nice to see people are still learning even though you hold them in high regard.
You don’t stop learning, sometimes you get to a point where it is you who is driving things and making things happen rather than taking things from other people. We are still friends on Facebook and I see what he does now — You can tell that certain people are going to achieve a lot in their career.
Who gave you your first shot and why did they trust you?
I think I’m quite lucky, I did a Masters, my degree was four years straight. The project I did in my final year was actually… Uber, but it used the web, it used GPS simulations so you could see where taxis were. Phones weren’t that spectacular back then. I had documented UML diagrams with some Class diagrams. I went to my first interview and the guy said, “This is the CV I’ve been waiting for”- so I kind of had a good feeling about my chances then. Obviously then I had to do the technical test which I didn’t too well in, but it was designed for more senior people. Then he threw it away and was like, “Don’t worry about it”, and then I thought, “Perhaps maybe I got it”. HR interviewed me afterwards, they had lost my CV and couldn’t get in touch with me, and were like, “I’m glad you called, because I wanted to tell you that you got the job!”
First programming language?
Visual basic.
Do you miss it?
No
Can you remember the first time being impressed by a computer
I’ve always been into gaming, I think it was an Amiga 400, and I was really impressed by some of the games it had. One was Marble Madness, where you had to navigate a marble around a maze. The computer would take a floppy disk and you had to swap disks for each level. Later on, I was interested in simulations and understanding game physics engines. I like to understand the physical world, engineering — how things work. This translated into understanding how things work with computers. At school and college, I found when other people were stuck, I was finding it easy. You have to have an interest in it of course, but it was kind of natural.
But when I was younger, I wanted to be a snooker player like every other school kid who fancied themselves becoming a pro. Now I’m happy getting the odd break of more than 25! Thinking I could have been a racing driver now! A few of the guys here I have become good friends with. We like to head down to the track every so often. It’s amazing how fierce it becomes when you put the visor down!
Do you have a favourite programming book
I’m not very good with development books, I’m more visual, I like watching videos of tutorials and I like trying things out on my own. There where some books I liked, especially when I was at uni, for example Java for Dummies or something like that. Really silly diagrams and cheesy one line comments which actually stuck in my head.
If you could learn any language instantly what would it be?
Part of me would still would still like to learn C, — they make for good developers! There is Scala, I know a bit of, and I’m always learning. Outside development, Mandarin or maybe Japanese as I’ve always wanted to go Japan. [Pause] Maybe understanding Binary ;)
Biggest mistake while at work ?
[pause]
Is that pause because you have broken so little?
There has probably been a handful of stuff that had to be rolled back, but it has always been well contained. I try to be careful.
You sound like you are very competent
Yeah it’s how it goes, quality comes as standard. There are times when it is acceptable to make mistakes. But I try not to. I think it’s quite ok if you are trying something new and it’s almost like a step into the unknown. In such situations there is always leeway for such things to happen.
What was the Gumtree site like when you started?
It’s just looked old and dated, with pale yellow pages. You couldn’t even search by postcodes before! A lot has changed since then, there have been technical changes and there’s been a lot of work with the redesign and new features being rolled out.
If you could add a new feature to the site tomorrow …
One thing I think which would be useful, would be the ability to create personal groups in the site. Anyone could make a location or a group and have it private or public. Sometimes it’s nicer if you have something to share with people you have something in common with. If he’s my mate, I would rather give my item to them …
What’s a key learning you’ve come across over the course of your career?
Very, very early on in my working career, I quite directly blamed someone for breaking stuff. I mean they did actually break code, but I didn’t express it in a subtle way. No one likes hearing people blaming others in public. I wasn’t very mature in the working environment then. I mean, I hate making mistakes myself, but I’m quite tolerant of others now. There are hundreds of reasons why we all screw up. Everyone’s way of working is different, we’re all in it together. It’s infinitely better to help people than to point the finger at them.
There are a lot of talented, passionate people out there. Always be accepting to learn from them, whether they’re senior to you in experience or just starting out their careers. There’s just too much to learn all by yourself!
Finally really try and understand why you do what you do. What motivates you. Working at Gumtree has made this quite apparent for me. For sure, I enjoy the day to day stuff that comes with being a software engineer, but it’s also about what you are doing for people who use your product. You want to do cool stuff for people and make people feel really good about it.
