Starting at Vodafone Series: Babatunde Haastrup
Intro — who am I?
Hey guys đź‘‹, Babatunde Haastrup here, I am a Software engineer at Vodafone. I am a first class alumni from Coventry University where I studied a computer science related course with a sandwich year in-between and then moved onto my first role where I was primarily a front end developer. I joined Vodafone in October and I work on the basket and the login service. My team is comprised of 7 front end developers and 8 in the back end. I have had a passion for programming since my teenage years and also had keen interest in computer building (built my first pc when I was 14).
How was it working remotely?
Working remotely for me has been smooth as I worked remote in my previous role. It has also helped me achieve a better work/life balance through being able to exercise in the morning before work starts to help me feel energised for the day as well as spending more time with my family. With Vodafone UK I got my mac, laptop among other gadgets delivered early (about 2 weeks before my start date). It’s been a fun experience for me getting onboarded. I received the onboarding messages from Vodafone throughout my first 3 months. I found them helpful and useful in understanding ways of working at Vodafone as well as business processes and getting through with HR. I also did onboarding courses on Vodafone’s internal training tool, Vodafone Academy, it helped me understand other parts of the business and professionalism in the workplace which I found very informative.
Getting engaged with the team
Getting engaged with the team has been done mostly remotely. I have had pairing sessions with most developers and the BA (Business Analyst) in the team. I have also had the chance to meet some members of the team face to face via a couple of the web engineering meet-ups (both the general meet-ups with other team members and the ones we have arranged within the team). Pairing with other members on tasks has also been a good way for me to interact with other members of the team, be it working with the tester to help her test a user story they are trying to test, asking questions and having meetings with the Business analyst’s/Product-owners to get clarifications on User stories’ or pairing up with other developers to tackle different user stories.
What work have I been doing
I have been working on optimisation stories to test different layouts of the basket application to see which could add value to the business, we do this in Vodafone using feature flags and cookies to change the way the user interface looks and feels. I have also been working on implementing new functionality for the basket for new projects coming up. Accessibility is another part of basket which I have had the opportunity in shaping with regards to helping align our heading tags to have semantic structure and be accessible. As well as these I have enjoyed understanding MobX (hadn’t used this state management framework before as I was coming from Redux) and the component structure of basket.
What have I found challenging?
I think first getting used to the new repo and understanding component structure as well getting used to mobx was initially a challenge for me as it was new repository and new framework. Also, on occasions I would have to go back to the product owners and business analysts with questions to ensure I had the right level of detail to complete my tasks. Understanding the payload received as well was a learning curve.
As basket takes in voucher codes, sometimes I had trouble getting valid codes to test new functionality with. Tracking down the correct team to provide me with these codes did become quite a lengthy process. Understanding the use of external modules from other repositories (mainly our internal shared libraries) and making sure they are fit for purpose has also been a learning curve for me (as I have never worked with multiple repositories in such a manner). As well as understanding the tools like Lerna used to bootstrap them together.
What’s next
I really want to continue gaining a better understanding of the basket application. Also, I’d like to increase my knowledge of our shared libraries. I want to look at gaining more knowledge in DevOps, so I can better understand our CI/CD pipelines as well as increase my unit and cypress testing knowledge.
Starting off I felt some anxiety about the role but I can say so far so good, it’s been amazing, I have felt very welcomed both by my team and Vodafone UK as a whole and I look forward to a great time ahead with them.
