Starting at Vodafone Series: Mat Frankum
Welcome to our first of 4 articles in our Starting at Vodafone Series, where we meet new joiners to our Digital Engineering team. In this series, we will explore what it was like to join Vodafone, what sort of work you end up doing and also some of the challenges you face.
I’m Mat 👋, I started at Vodafone in October as a Frontend Software Engineer for one of the teams that delivers the enterprise business websites.
Like most people at the moment my onboarding was remote, and it was scarily easy. There were plenty of communications leading up to the first day, and throughout the first few weeks, detailing everything I needed to know. As a remote worker I also had to set up my own laptop. Developers get a MacBook Pro 💻 and there is a dedicated Mac IT support team who I am yet to witness being stumped by an issue.
Once “in the door” the team I have been placed in have been so welcoming and mob/paired programming sessions have been invaluable. We have regular sessions where everyone gets a chance to “drive” through screen sharing on either Slack or Teams ☎️. This not only gives noobs like me the chance to get to know the code base but also a chance to get to know my fellow developers. We also have weekly “game time” where we get together and play an online game. As its not work related it’s another way of breaking down those barriers that working remotely can throw up.
There are obviously challenges when starting any new job but two years away from using agile processes, and being the sole frontend developer, adds another dimension when starting at a huge multinational company for instance, a new codebase, new coding standards, new hierarchies, acronyms (so many acronyms). In all honesty getting back into the swing of agile wasn’t a huge problem but with the increase in meetings, getting re-used to context switching between a meeting and coding was tricky. This is one of the downsides of the agile workflow, but Vodafone have implemented time when meetings are heavily discouraged that ensures, at the very least, this time can be dedicated to writing code.
With such a large company and lots of small teams working across the same applications the codebase is complex to say the least. Individual code repos have lots of set up and configuration for all the environments required to securely develop, test, and use the applications — ensuring the various parts “talk” to each other. The hardest part of my time so far has been learning this part of my job. Thankfully, there is no pressure to learn and get on top of everything straightaway. I am supported at every step, free to ask questions, and although I am not there yet, I know that there are people and processes in place to ensure I will be. One way is that every couple of weeks there are knowledge sharing sessions where developers can demo proof of concepts they are working on or take us through code examples. This can be how their team solved a particular brief or issue that arose.
The last few months have flown past. As well as the previously mentioned mob and pair programming I have been contributing to the various libraries that are used across the teams and are run similarly to open-source projects, just with a bit more corporate oversight. One of the biggest changes has been learning TypeScript. I can’t say I am a fully paid-up advocate of it, but I have always been aware of the advantages it offers. Being given the time to learn with support from peers has made it a positive experience.
All of this support while being remote requires good communication so as you would expect the Slack channels can have hundreds of people on. Posting to a large audience is somewhat daunting. I don’t think I will ever get used to it, but I am sure that fear is unwarranted as the culture is all about helping out and being supportive. With so many channels and people I thought that the “noise” from Slack would be overwhelming but it’s surprisingly less busy than I expected. We are encouraged to set up Slack in a way that works best for us as individuals so I can easily let it just do its thing in the background without distraction and there is no expectation that I have to respond immediately to any notifications.
Despite the easy ways of communicating remotely there is also the opportunity to work together in real life. A few weeks after I started, we organised a team day in the office at the Newbury campus. It was really nice to meet people adding an extra dimension to the “talking heads” and Slack avatars I’d been working with up until then. Vodafone make working from home a breeze and I don’t miss commuting to work and enjoy the flexibility of home working. Meeting face to face therefore takes on a more pertinent meaning and gives focus to what we aim to achieve when we do meet up, so it is something we hope to repeat.
Just after I started the developer roles were re-named to Software Engineer. I must admit I still feel like a developer as I’ve always felt engineer has an extra level of knowledge and expertise. Over the next year I hope I can earn the title of engineer and I think the team and company I am in will help me get there.
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