All Eyes on Christian
Christian Höpfner is a Team Lead Software Engineer at Project A. In this interview we talk amongst other topics about the hot trends in Frontend Engineering and the one crucial skill that is often underrated.
Why did you become a Frontend Engineer?
Frontend engineering is particularly interesting to me because it’s an interdisciplinary domain. Despite its origin in pushing pixels according to Photoshop files it nowadays is fully-fledged engineering, combining challenging development with a very strong visual component. Also having touchpoints with many different fields, such as product management, marketing or business intelligence, is something I really appreciate.
Why did you join Project A?
Before joining Project A, I had been working for a rather small digital agency in Berlin. While enjoying the type of work a lot, the sheer size of the team also limited the type and size of projects. Having all those incredibly smart colleagues around at Project A, I really enjoy being able to work on complex, large-scale projects.
How does the work in the Frontend Team at Project A look like?
One of the main benefits of working at Project A is that there is no such thing as “the work”. The rich variety of projects allows getting insights into very different tech stacks, team- and company setups.
What are the current trends in Frontend Engineering?
From my perspective 2018 has been a year of consolidation and evolution of the frontend ecosystem. After years of fast-paced revolutions, it is good to see that this (still) young domain starts to mature more and more. Next to this GraphQL has certainly been one of the most talked-about topics. In 2019 I would expect to see a lot more adoption and emerging best practices around this.
What was the most exciting project at Project A so far?
I was working on a large scale e-commerce system experiencing the complexity that comes along with implementing the concept of microservices. Being able to get first-hand experience with those kinds of challenges has been really valuable.
What is your favorite Project A value?
Fix Now, Don’t Complain Later — I appreciate this value as it puts emphasis on finding solutions to problems, rather than purely focussing on them. At Project A everyone has the freedom but also is expected to drive change.
What does it take to join the Frontend Team at Project A?
While it is, of course, important to have (ideally excellent) technical knowledge, experience, and skills, it is crucial to be strong in communication. The creation of great products requires a lot of collaboration with different departments, teams, and team members. So communication is key for development speed, quality and in my opinion also greatly contributes to the joy of work.
Thank you for this interview, Christian!
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