We sat down with our Technical Director Duncan Watson for a brief insight into the day to day world of being a Java developer
How does a typical day start?
Get into the office, have a chat with the team and check through a few emails. Then it’s onto our morning standup call — that’s basically where we talk with the wider project team about what we did the day before and what we are going to do today. We also chat through any issues or blockers with the scrum master.
Following that call we sometimes have separate meetings with subteams to discuss anything that came up on the standup that we may need to address in more detail.
Then we get to coding! Typically this will be interspersed with meetings to discuss system architecture, software design, data modelling and specific areas of the application that we might be working on.
What are you excited about working on currently?
Strangely enough, security! We are currently working with one of our clients to implement a new single sign-on solution into the application architecture.
It’s new technology for the client and it’s also new for us so we are taking on the challenge together.
An additional challenge with this piece of work is the fact that we are implementing this with teams working across the UK and other 3rd party suppliers so it’s a real team effort. But the whole team doesn’t sit in the same building! We use collaborative platforms to make sure the communication is flowing and our daily standups help to keep everything on track.
What can you expect to be working on in the future?
We are always open to trialling new languages other than Java. Currently we are continually improving our skills in Scala and Javascript. So for anyone new to the team there are definitely opportunities outside of pure Java coding.
On top of that, as a team Hive IT have been working on some Internet of Things (IoT) related projects. The Java team have written an API for this and you can read more about this over on the HIVE IoT blog. This has been great professional development for all of us, not just the Java team. The projects are all about helping our natural environment which is something we all care about.
What kind of support can you expect from the team at Hive IT?
Fundamentally, you never feel like you are on our own, we are constantly helping each other, it’s how we do our best work.
How would you describe working for Hive IT compared to other companies?
You get a lot more freedom, and that gives you more opportunity to use your initiative. We are constantly testing each other and helping each other improve.
What’s more, the work we are doing in the IoT space is what we consider to be actual innovation. Rather than just talk about innovating, we are putting things into practice.
Finally, we all like spending time together outside of the office so whether you are into your biking, climbing, exploring local pubs (and we have explored a few!) or just fancy joining in on one of our team building days then there is plenty to get involved with.
