So it Begins: Backend Developer — Onboarding Story
A story about new challenges, onboarding, learning curves, and anxiety: I am a Backend Developer at Mercadona Tech. I believe I am a person who thrives on new challenges and loves learning new things, so even though that beginnings are always hard, I was up for the challenge of joining a Product company at this scale represented.
Introduction
Hello! My name is Adri, and I am a Backend Developer at Mercadona Tech. My story at Mercadona Tech started not too long ago, having joined in December 2021, and like most good stories, it begins on a Thursday.
I joined Mercadona Tech in December 2021 with just a bag full of dreams, my slightly 1+ years experience in a consulting company, and just the right amount of Impostor Syndrome. I remember these first days as being quite intense, but the warm welcome I got from everyone on the team quickly helped with the anxiety. Soon enough, I felt welcomed by everyone and ready for the challenges that I was presented with early on. On my second day, I was already posting a PR, and by my third day, I had already deployed my code to a production service. Let me try and give you a quick peek into what you can expect as a new joiner of the team.
Onboarding
As a newcomer, you are expected to assist in introductory meetings with the different teams or verticals, as we call them. These intros come in handy in giving you an overall understanding of what each team is about and how they contribute to delivering these lechugas to the final customer. Usually, some of the things you will be presented with, or that will be mentioned during these intros may not be 100% clear for you, but that is fine. Presenters are already aware and usually check in to see if any further explanation is needed. Even if all the information is too much for you at first, there is no need to worry; in time, all these concepts will be like your bread and butter.
In addition to the verticals, you will also be learning about other more specific teams, such as QA (Quality Assistance), Data, or CX (Customer Experience). These will also give you a quick overview of how these teams work and are a good starting point to be introduced to the methodologies used.
The Alqueria Vertical Team
I was first introduced to the Alquería team, a team specifically designed to work as an onboarding tool for new engineers, so they are trained in team practices, work culture, and the overall processes present in a day-to-day engineer’s work at the company. We work in a small team composed of some recent joiners and some seniors to assist with the tasks, being part of a whole Product team experience from start to end. This means that we need to be able to understand the problems we are presented with within the bounds of the projects that we will be working on and take an active part in designing a valid solution and bringing it to life. Nevertheless, fret not, since, as I mentioned before, this is only a training team, and, if you end up here, you will have at your disposal a myriad of coworkers that will be more than happy to give a hand and suggest approaches that you may not be familiar with.
Workshops and Katas
As part of the training program, the rest of the team likes to assist in creating workshops and katas related to the methodologies used in Mercadona Tech, which are open to everyone in the company and take place on Mondays. This offers both newcomers and seniors an area to discuss ideas and learn from each other, which contributes to a more cohesive and understanding work environment.
Pair and mob programming
On my first day at the company, I was already invited to a mob programming session with my Alqueria peers, in which I took an active part in building a new feature they were working on at the time. Before I realized it, I was already learning all about TDD and Extreme Programming and putting it to the test in a real case scenario.
Even if you are confident in your skills as a solo coder, it is a big part of the culture to work in pairs, or at times, with even more engineers simultaneously working on the same problem. I will not delve very deep into how or why this is done in Mercadona Tech, but having two sets of eyes looking into the same problem and thinking of a shared solution, often results in well-structured, more optimized, and overall better code.
Suppose you were like me and joined without any previous experience on Product teams. In that case, these programming sessions will help you develop some soft skills that you may have been looking over while defaulting to collaboration. Due to the social nature of these sessions, you will develop empathy, teamwork, and other skills that your coworkers will bring to the table. It will also help you understand team practices and get your features out to production faster, giving you a fantastic sense of shared accomplishment.
Colmena Experience
Once you’re finished with the intros to the verticals and have gotten more context as to how the logistic process for Mercadona Online works, you will be invited to take part in a day at your closest colmena. Here, you will see these processes take place, giving you a better understanding of how our internal processes contribute to increasing overall productivity from the moment an order is initially packaged up to its delivery. You will also meet with the team from Customer Experience, learning how incidents with customer orders are handled internally. This visit should help tie all the loose ends and doubts you may still have regarding the logistic process.
Conclusion
As an Alqueria graduate looking back to my first months in Mercadona, I can see how these first months have positively impacted my performance in a Product environment and have helped shape me into a better engineer. I have been able to understand and take part in the strong Product culture present in the company and pass it along to my fellow, recently joined coworkers.
If you want to know more and are curious about our current job openings, please check our LinkedIn page.
