Deep Dive Into Software Engineering with Nugraha Yuda

Along with the digital era that evolved significantly, the software engineering profession is one of the high-demand jobs. This job continues to evolve along with technological developments and the customer’s online behavior.

Software engineering is becoming more and more complex by the day. One must have responsibility for planning, monitoring, and maintaining software. At the same time, software development teams are under pressure to streamline the development phase and stay under budget.

All of this effort is to make sure that the end users feel seamless, while in reality, the process is chaotic. Technology has enriched our lives, but we take it for granted.

Take a look at your phone right now, how many travels, shopping, m-banking, online transportation, and lifestyle apps do you have? And how easy right now you can do things without putting in so much effort. All you have to do is just do clicks through your apps. And voila! You can make it happen as soon as possible.

The technology that we use today is here because of software engineers’ contribution. They are required to have various qualifications, both technical and non-technical in creating good software. They have to understand the programming languages ​​used in making a product. Meanwhile, non-technical skills include the ability to analyze, multitask, and effective communication skills. They need to adapt to limitless technological advancements and dynamic needs in nowadays society.

In this chapter, we sat with Nugraha Yuda Perdana, Engineering Manager of Pegipegi. He shared many interesting insights from his personal experience and his view about the future of the engineering field.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Hi Yuda, it’s good to have a chit-chat with you. But first, can you introduce yourself and your previous work experiences first to our Medium readers?

Yes, of course. Hi, my name is Nugraha Yuda Perdana. You can call me Yuda. I am a husband, a father, and also an engineer.

I have worked in Pegipegi as an Engineering Manager in the Transportation Tribe for almost two years. My team handles all engineering for transportation products such as Flight, Train, and Bus.

Before my journey to Pegipegi, I was in a software consulting agency that got me involved in many industries. First, I worked in the sending money industry. We handle regulations for countries around the world to enable legal money transfers.

Then I moved to a retail business and was involved in building their mobile web application for their end customers. I also had the opportunity to run an experiment to introduce innovation in the retail business and to initiate their idea with our technology.

I also have experience in the F&B business with a large market in the United States of America (USA). They are creating innovative apps to serve their customers around the country with many features that make the customers comfortable using the apps.

Speaking about your position as Engineering Manager, what kind of things do you oversee on a daily basis?

First of all, in terms of the Engineering “People” Manager, it makes me unable to separate the people, process, and deliverables in engineering terms.

Three of these are the foundation for me that will reflect my outlook daily.

We are human and need to be treated properly as humans. Because we have basic needs, we need fulfillment, acknowledgment, happiness, and healthy social interaction.

In my opinion, the happiness of the people is the baseline measurement for productivity. The more happy people are in their work environment, the more productivity they can achieve. And engagement is the one that will create understanding for each other to enable convenient collaboration.

That’s why, before the process and deliverables, I need to ensure self-fulfillment and team engagement both exist. And we are not alone. We are working closely with the Product Team, Designer Team, and other tribes.

I oversee that collaboration is running just like we expected. We need to maintain our counterparts and collaborate with respect -as we refer to Pegipegi 5 Essentials- sharing our empathy, constructive feedback, and focus on efficient collaboration.

I believe the right process never betrays the results. So, if we want to achieve good deliverables and quality products, we need to ensure the process is right. From the general and high-level workflow to the smallest unit, we need to build better and better ways to improve our process, including always learning and developing our new technology. Because we have to be open to new ideas and drive innovation in building the product.

In the end, I also monitor our productivity and the quality of deliverables. With the process and tools that we have, we aim to continuously improve to deliver more deliverables in the future. With all the fundamentals I oversee above, I believe we will achieve or at least come close to our goals as a company, team, or even individually.

Can you describe how many people report to you, and what they do?

For now, there are two technical leaders, two senior software engineers, eight software engineers, three software quality assurance, and six from TRIP (Tech Rookie Internship Program) members.

We have a common goal to succeed in all the transportation deliverables that impact Pegipegi’s company-wide business also for Indonesian people’s need to travel.

For the breakdown, the technical leader is responsible for the project run in each sprint. Currently, we have a two weeks sprint cadence with our scrum implementation. And also the technical lead is responsible for preparing the high-level architecture and task breakdown.

We usually do technical discussions and break down the task to the execution level. Currently, we have three domain separations in transport engineering. And my technical lead helped me as my right arm to the people in their team.

And then, senior software engineers play half the role of technical leaders. They do help technical lead to assess technical requirements and break down tasks to execution level. The execution part is handled by all software engineers’ staff. With guidance from their technical leaders and seniors, they do their part to finish the task committed in each sprint.

And don’t forget the TRIP members’ contribution. They are our future, we invest in them to learn and develop them to face the real situation in real software engineering development so they can learn and see the industry expectations and be prepared wherever they will start their career in the future.

Oftentimes, engineers are faced with ‘technical debt’. How would you suggest avoiding this type of challenge?

I think technical debt is a common issue in the software engineering universe. Technology is evolving every day. I believe when you read this article, some individuals or groups are developing new technology, especially in software engineering. So we need to keep moving forward and leave obsolete and irrelevant tech as a debt.

Just like in real life, people take debt for their reasons. Some people take debt for their basic needs such as food or other premier needs. On the other hand, some people take debt to leverage their businesses.

Personally, I’m dividing the tech debt into two groups. First is the debt that we can pay later and no need to worry about that at least for the near future. Of course, we need to pay the debt one day. We need to plan and manage it so we can do another priority that is more beneficial to the business.

Second, the debt is close to the due date. This is urgent and matters to us to take the strategy to handle this kind of debt immediately to avoid the consequence of the debt that potentially slows down or even holds up the business. In this situation, this is a fixed price for us to stop unnecessary development and focus on paying the debt.

What’s the challenge or the difference for being an engineer in travel tech compared to other industries so far and how do you manage the challenge?

The biggest challenge for being an engineer in travel tech is the pandemic situation. It’s hard for every business, especially travel industries, as the front liner is impacted.

And at that time, I need to move to the new team. Fortunately, I found a great team that was able to share the burden with them. They show their resilience and loyalty even in hard times. In this context, I believe what we have been through makes us stronger than before.

The key point to managing that challenge in this situation is trusting ourselves and the team. I trust my superior and my team that we can handle it together no matter how hard it is.

From your perspective and experiences, how do you see the engineering field evolving in the future?

In my perspective, software engineering will still be popular in the future.

Quoting Steve Jobs “Everybody should learn how to code, it teaches you how to think” is relevant. If we want to be competitive, we need to seriously think about this in our entry-level education. Because the world is changing.

Believe it or not, in the box office movie we already have the big picture of the future and all of it depends on the computer, even the most advanced artificial intelligence needs an engineer to write its code.

Why did you choose Pegipegi as part of your career journey?

Pegipegi is different.

Even in my 5 years in this company, I still believe Pegipegi is my place of growth. We have a good working environment, nice people, and good facilities, and we build a culture with our own core values, Pegipegi 5 Essentials.

As I told you previously, before I was working at Pegipegi, I worked in digital products for a client in the USA.

I was thinking: I need more pride in my work. I want my work acknowledged by my family and friends. I want to see my product shown on the billboard on my way home, on television, and so on.

Literally, I am tired of serving people that I don’t even know in the USA. So, I choose Pegipegi because I believe the travel industry is one of the sustainable industries.

And I am proud of it.

What is your advice for someone who wants to pursue a career in Engineering?

We are entering a global limitless competition. If you are aware, we can do work everywhere as long as we are connected to the internet. This is something new lately. Something that 20 years back sounds impossible.

Employers can hire people from around the world. And so we can get the big opportunity to work in every field we want.

But, the competition is very real.

In the engineering field, we need to always catch up with new technologies. Never stop learning. And perhaps, improving our learning ability. That is the very beginning skill that engineers must have. Learning and figuring out the problem with high curiosity. Because our work is solving the problem every day.

And on the other side, if you want to pursue or continue your career journey, you can choose Pegipegi. This is not just a place to work. We mean it when we say grow together. You will have a full opportunity to grow further without worrying you are unrecognized.

Yes, you can find another company bigger than Pegipegi. But, I don’t guarantee you can find people like us in the Pegipegi. Especially for the fresh graduate, Pegipegi is a very ideal place to start your career. Prove it by yourself. You can start from an internship or an entry-level position.

Software engineering is your thing? Do you want to make impact to make travel more accessible? You probably want to check our career page.