It’s been 6 months already?!
Could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you and your role at Street Group?
Hey! I’m Ed and I’m one of the software engineers here at Street Group.
The role, in broad strokes, is to just build cool stuff for the property industry. Day to day, I help track down various species of bugs, develop new features or try and improve already existing functionality. More recently most of my time has been dedicated to helping develop our data migration platform — Bridge.
Outside of work my time could probably be divided into 3 major parts — tech, games and food. I love tinkering with new technologies and trying to learn something new. When I’m not doing that, I tend to watch other people play computer games competitively (yay esports!). Then whatever’s left is dedicated to exploring food.
How did onboarding into a team differ during a pandemic?
Onboarding during a pandemic felt really odd, primarily because there wasn’t this big shock of being in a new environment, there was no new chair to get used to, no learning the ropes of a new coffee machine.
Before I started, I was thinking it’d just be logging into a new Slack and then getting stuck in working on some tickets, but it was completely different. I spent a substantial amount of time getting to know the wider team and learning about the business. I also wasn’t just left to my own devices and was assigned a partner to pair up with for my first few weeks.
Due to the nature of the business, a lot of the times you really need an understanding of how the system you’re working on is going to be used by the client. Fortunately, everyone’s been super helpful and always willing to chip in with answers, helping out as much as they can.
What’s been your proudest achievement so far at Street Group?
I’d say building Bridge (a tool that allows our clients to migrate data from their current CRM into Street) is my proudest achievement here so far. We’ve managed to build a really robust and fast data migration platform in a fairly short amount of time. The clients were really happy with it and personally it was really fulfilling to work on from a technical perspective.
What has been your biggest challenge over the past 6 months?
I think I’ve faced quite a few big challenges while working on Bridge, both technical and non-technical.
Technically, the biggest and the most enjoyable challenge has probably been duplicate people detection as there are loads of intricate details to take care of, such as detecting typos, nicknames, names that are potentially mixed up, etc. We also tackled the majority of this challenge through pair-programming, which I’ve really enjoyed!
The biggest non-technical challenge has been communication! Because Bridge is a rather independent and highly focused project, we’ve had to closely communicate with the commercial team in order for us to extract vital information from the clients and for them to manage client expectations accordingly. The challenge here was in ensuring that we understood exactly what the client wanted and we clearly communicated what we can and cannot do and most importantly when can we do it.
How would you describe the culture at Street Group and how does it differ from your previous jobs?
The first thing that really stood out to me is how friendly and supportive everyone is to each other. The work that we’re doing is really challenging and what we’re trying to achieve with Street is no small feat, but being surrounded by people who cheer each other on and acknowledge and celebrate each other’s achievements helps to smash through all the challenges.
Another thing that I really like is that Street embraces a culture of transparency. Nothing’s ever hidden behind a secret door and the founders always answer any questions head on and are very open to hearing everyone out. It’s something that makes you feel included and just as important as anyone else in the company.
It’s a culture that’s definitely fostered a lot of personal and professional growth during the last 6 months and I’m looking forward to what the next 6 will bring!
