“Hello World!” Introducing Taxdoo Engineering
Well hello and good day from all of us at Taxdoo Engineering!
As it’s our first outing on Medium, we thought we’d take the opportunity to introduce ourselves and introduce you to the world of Taxdoo Engineering.
Our headquarters in Hamburg is home to over 100 employees across 24 nationalities and all of our in-house engineers.
Dedicated to building products that deliver an outstanding customer experience in tax compliance automation, our Engineering team’s work revolves around making compliance as easy as ABC.
So what exactly do we do at Taxdoo?
In 2015, a lightbulb idea sparked Taxdoo into being.
Three entrepreneurial PhD students, Matthias, Roger and Christian, combined forces and came up with an idea that would simplify the complex VAT compliance process.
The solution was a software product designed to automate compliance in combination with the knowledge of tax aficionados for selling goods online - (read more on the history of Taxdoo and our recent five year anniversary here).
Combining VAT compliance with automation software meant that Taxdoo could bridge the gap between the breakneck speed of e-commerce and the structured world of tax compliance to provide a solution that simplified VAT compliance for online-trade within Europe.
Since then, Taxdoo has rapidly become a market leader as the holistic solution for automated tax compliance for online retailers and their tax advisors.
#VATisLove?!
At Taxdoo, we really do believe that #VATisLove; as engineers, we pride ourselves on our unique combination of tech expertise and deep knowledge of tax compliance. We use this to develop Taxdoo products that delight our customers by offering a service that simplifies an essential yet typically time-consuming task for traders.
And yes, your inkling is correct, it is a spin-off of that Haddaway song.
What’s in the Taxdoo toolkit?
Our tech stack comprises React, Node, Java, Go, GraphQL, AWS, Docker, Typescript; this paired with a broad ecosystem of engineering talent and a regular cadence of code reviews and training opportunities, we ensure that all engineers feel challenged and supported to build the best possible products and services for our customers.
Who are the people behind the product?
Hamburg is home to our team of in-house engineers; spanning 9 nationalities, our team comprises colleagues from around the world.
Introducing some familiar faces from Taxdoo below, we hope you stop by and say ‘hello’ in the comments and feel free to follow us on Twitter for all updates on our work, open roles and Taxdoo life.
Andrew is a Fullstack Developer and Tech Lead.
What made you decide to pursue a career in tech?
When I first graduated from university, I started working as a teacher. In South Korea, I worked as an elementary school teacher and then in Hamburg, I worked as a preschool teacher. After a few years of teaching, I decided it just wasn’t for me. It takes so much passion to be a great teacher and we spend too much of our lives working to not enjoy it. So I spent some time thinking about what I liked and thought was interesting. I always had an interest in tech, but had never really considered it.
Programming seemed like something only for genius students of math and science, which I never was. However, I found some free online resources that taught web development and I immediately knew it was what I wanted to do. It took quite a lot of hard work to get good enough to land that first job, but it was definitely worth it.
What has been your greatest career achievement so far?
For me it was the first time a colleague told me that they saw me as a mentor. I have worked with so many brilliant engineers that I looked up to as mentors, so if I’m half as good of a mentor to someone as they were to me, I’ll be satisfied.
What is the greatest piece of advice you were given in your career?
This is quite tough, but there is one piece of advice that has stuck with me though and that is ‘you’re not your code’.
Tech can really be filled with a lot of internal and external criticism, on a team that reviews every merge-request it means you could be criticised nearly everyday on the code that you write.
It’s difficult sometimes to not take this personally, especially when you are first starting your career as a developer. We all want to provide good work, so when you submit work that you feel is your best, but another developer has many review change requests it has a tendency to bring you down. It’s really important to detach your intelligence as a developer from the code you write. It’s important to see a code review not as a negative criticism of your work, but as a way to improve yourself.
What’s even more important is that those reviewing code are also friendly and patient when writing reviews. Negative energy is extremely dangerous and can quickly pollute the team’s ecosystem. We spend almost as much time with our colleagues as we do with our friends and family so it’s important to be committed to working and being successful, whilst being empathetic and supportive towards your colleagues.
As a self-taught developer, what were the most helpful resources you used to master your craft?
There are a lot of brilliant online resources; FreeCodeCamp was great for learning about frontend development. I also built a portfolio of my own projects and used resources from podcasts, completed some of Wes Bos’ courses, attended tech meet-ups and read blogs which helped me to learn the skills needed to land my first developer position.
Raghda is a Fullstack Developer and Tech Lead.
What made you decide to pursue a career in tech?
My mum is my main inspiration; I grew up seeing my mum working as a web developer and that gave me a lot of passion for joining the field. When I first chose my major as computer science at university, I found it a bit challenging but as soon as I dived deeper into the courses, I enjoyed them and became more motivated to code and develop my own projects.
You’re originally from Egypt; what do you like about life in Hamburg?
At the beginning it felt strange being in a foreign country but as soon as I settled here, I enjoyed being exposed to a different culture, following the rules and getting the chance to enjoy nature.
What brought you to Taxdoo?
I heard about Taxdoo from a friend of mine, so I looked into what Taxdoo does in more detail. It’s an exciting time to be on board and I was excited by the opportunity to be part of a team where we can share ideas and spread knowledge.
What are you most excited about for 2021 at Taxdoo?
Getting to learn a lot, technically and non-technically, and of course our new office in Hamburg.
Ahmed is a Full Stack Developer.
What made you decide to pursue a career in tech? Why did you pursue a tech career?
When I finished high school, I wanted to join the family business. An older friend, who I knew very well, suggested that I pursue a Computer Science degree. During my studies at the University of Algiers, I decided that I liked writing code so I stuck with it.
How would you describe Taxdoo Engineering culture?
Rich; it’s a rich culture because we have a variety of people. This is not just to do with cultural backgrounds but also personalities and this shapes the way that people think. People think differently from one another; you notice this when people review your code or make suggestions. It’s not just based on experience but also mentality. Having this array of different perspectives means that it makes for a much richer product. The way that I write code compared to everyone else is different, so having a variety of perspectives and opinions makes you take a step back, review your own work and understand how to write a better solution.
What have been the highlights and biggest learnings of your career so far?
One of the biggest highlights was definitely changing countries; I moved to Germany in 2018 and at the time, most tech startups in Algeria followed the MVC (model-view-control) model. It seemed to be that there was one way of thinking, solving problems, one language to use (PHP). Comparatively, the tech scene in Germany is far more advanced. The biggest change for me is having to drop most of my macro knowledge and yet keep the micro-knowledge, for example, knowledge on stateless APIs and how a frontend interacts with it.
It’s been very rewarding and I am gaining so much experience the more that I work. I recognise that I can think faster now. I have become more comfortable writing code in TypeScript since joining Taxdoo and I am now faster at solving issues. It was also my first time using AWS as a service provider.
It is awesome that we have colleagues who are obsessed with security. Naturally, as a tax automation software service, compliance and security is taken very seriously and having this level of regulation actually makes it a more interesting learning environment. It also helps that we receive weekly in-house security training from a peer presentation. This means that we challenge ourselves to stay up to date with security knowledge.
At Taxdoo, our culture is learning-orientated, productivity-focussed and informal. We support an environment that is collaborative and encourage team members to share ideas and actively share knowledge with each other.
Of course, if you like dogs or Mario Kart, this is also a plus!
Like the sound of our team? We are hiring! Check out our Engineering roles here or follow us on Twitter for the latest updates and news from our team.
