Starting at Vodafone Series: Seb Green
Welcome to the second 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. This week Seb tells us about his experience so far.
I’m Seb and I’m a Junior Software Engineer who works on the front end. I’ve been at Vodafone since November and work in Enterprise who are responsible for the Vodafone Business Portal.
I’ve always been interested in coding and all things technology, but before and during the pandemic I was a manager at a popular cinema chain. This meant I had little experience working in front of a computer, and zero experience working from home. Being bored whilst on furlough is what drove me to take programming more seriously, and I began taking online courses which led to attending an intensive 12-week online bootcamp. I went straight on to a project coming out of the course, but what I really wanted was some commercial experience where I could put my skills to use and expand my knowledge in a fast paced and innovative environment.
My experience doing the bootcamp online and Vodafone’s onboarding process made the transition to working from home easy. I was used to lots of video calling and pair-programming so it all felt quite natural. In the weeks leading up to my start date I was sent various information and forms to fill out, received my equipment and then I was ready to go. The majority of my first couple weeks were spent watching onboarding videos, completing training and learning about Vodafone as a company in general, and what it was like to work for them. I’m really enjoying working from home as I’m able to exercise before work instead of commuting, and it means I’m energised for the day and ready to be productive. It also means I get to spend a lot more time with my dogs.
Compared to friends in similar situations who had got jobs at start-ups, I was really surprised at how specific my area of responsibility was going to be. Whereas my friends are working across multiple apps/websites, my team and I concentrate on the functionality of the same one or two pages. It was really eye opening to see how much work went in to the running and constant improvement of just a section of a website. So far I’ve done some refactoring — including converting files to TypeScript — along with splitting up of packages, writing tests and fixing various bugs. I’ve also taken part in plenty of code reviews, and it’s helped me become more familiar with the repos that my team and I work on.
I think the most challenging thing for me hasn’t necessarily been to do with coding itself. I had never used Azure DevOps and hadn’t ever experienced Agile working so at first both the technical and non-technical aspects of my jobs seemed unfamiliar. After watching a few videos, Agile seemed a bit less abstract and now I can see the merits of it, especially the daily stand-up meetings. Obviously, the main purpose is to discuss work progress but it’s also nice to have a little social interaction with the rest of the team, which is something I miss since working from home.
Moving forward, I want to continue to contribute effectively to my team and build the foundations for my career progression at the company. One of the reasons I wanted to work for Vodafone was the opportunity they offer to learn and expand your knowledge through so many different channels. I’ve taken part in various workshops they’ve put on, including a couple TypeScript specific sessions led by my line manager, and they were extremely useful.
I feel that I definitely made the right decision joining the company, and I’m excited to see what the year brings at what seems to be a really exciting time at Vodafone.
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