My Trendyol Journey From Talent Program to Part of the Development Team

Hello,

I have been working as a developer at Trendyol Tech since June 2022 and I would like to share my Trendyol journey, from beginning of Trendyol Talent program to the present.

Firstly, I applied to the Talent program, which lasted for 2 months. After a case study, HR and technical interviews, I was accepted. At the end of the progress, I joined Welcome Event in Istanbul where I met my team leader and many new people and got to experience the Trendyol culture. I was excited about the process and gathered information about it.

The first week of the Talent process was spent on meetings, introductions, and onboarding. I was given a project, which I didn’t realize at first but later understood that it would be challenging. With this project, I gained my first experience in web development. The project was a basic wallet project, similar to the wallet used in Trendyol, where many people could add money and use it. The most important contribution of the project to me was that I received weekly tasks because I had never worked so systematically before. Additionally, when I met with my team, they shared best practices about how my project could progress better.

Although everything was going well, I was hesitant to ask questions because I wasn’t familiar with remote working culture. At this point, I have to thank my buddy and team leader for helping me overcome this prejudice.

During the development process of the project, I learned a new technology every week, and I constantly met with my leader and buddy to ask questions or discuss how to improve the project. After a month, we moved on to the presentations that everyone in the Talent program did. I also presented my project in front of my peers and people working at Trendyol. Someone asked me about the “Optimistic Lock” I used in my project, and I think I will never forget what it is for the rest of my life. 😃

After the presentations, the second stage of the Talent program began with receiving tasks from the teams. At this point, cultural adaptation had gained a lot of momentum for me because I was observing experienced team members, learning about workflow processes, and also getting the opportunity to work together. To show you another perspective I asked my friend Semih, who was on another team, about this process:

After the first month, I had done my little project. So, it was time to feel like I belong on the team. My first task was so small but still, I was excited. I completed it in 2 days and my teammate was encouraging me for new ones. I was diving into deep understanding of the codebase of my team’s projects. Sometimes it was hard to understand because I have never worked on a lot of connected projects before. I asked a lot of question to my buddy and other teammates during second month. I had invitations for one-to-one meetings from teammates for motivation and to work better. These meetings were so motivational for me. End of the second month, I completed two sprints with the team, and I felt more adapted to the team.

After the Talent program, I joined the Social Ads team as a full-time developer. This team was different from the team where I went through the Talent program. My first week was spent on onboarding, but I did not have any problems with adaptation.

So far, what I have described mostly covers the intern process, but now I had moved on to professional working life. To be frank, I had some fears, but the team was very friendly, and they helped me overcome my fears. During this process, like in the Talent program, I acquired many habits. For example, I got used to the culture of regular meetings and adapted to the Agile working style. Furthermore, the team attached great importance to feedback, and although I was initially hesitant, I saw how important it was and participated as well. I also saw how productive it was when two people focused on a single task simultaneously while writing code, and we progressed with pair programming with the team. This way, we found errors faster and were able to learn from each other.

One of the greatest benefits of working with experienced engineers in a large company like Trendyol is having the opportunity to improve the quality of our code. Through code review, I not only improve my own coding skills, but also have the chance to observe how others write code.

Once, I made a mistake that caused the live code to stop working. This was the first time it happened to me and I panicked. However, my team members helped me to fix the problem and I learned that I shouldn’t be afraid of these situations. I think that such situations help us mature and improve.

For me, the Trendyol experience is a journey of continuous learning and growth, where I have fun with my team members and we work on great projects together. I wanted to share my exciting journey with you and I’m still excited about what’s to come.

Thank you for being a part of my journey.