What's your job about?
Re-Leased offers a property management website where property managers (and landlords) can easily keep track of the history of a property, as well as do/store the accounting info related to it. To date, my role title is Graduate Software Developer, and I am part of the team that deals with the accounting areas of the website - invoices, payments, and reports.
Here, we have in mind that improvements on the platform should get done through small and frequent releases. And the team has a roadmap to follow that gets broken down into small assignments. It can be new features, bugs, or unit tests. Moreover, I do have time to try tackling the problem on my own or ask for help from my teammates.
The application is impressive and has a lot of content, so we often deal with legacy code. I find it very useful as I gain a lot of knowledge on how to approach different scenarios, technologies, and the several amazing things we can possibly get built.
What's your background?
I am from Brazil, born and raised in Sao Paulo. My parents and sister are still there and don't have any plans to move. On the other hand, I always knew I wanted to see more of the world. After school, I decided to study Tourism - because I wanted to travel more, and indeed, it helped me a lot to achieve this goal.
Through it, I got an exchange opportunity to work at Walt Disney Company in hospitality; taught English for a couple of years; traveled to some countries while I was a travel agent; expanded my people skills; and gained heaps of planning skills. Then the opportunity to move to New Zealand showed up when I was 23, and I couldn't miss it. What a place to live!
However, it is not easy to move to a new country. Life took me on a different path; I became an accountant by experience, and years later, I decided to become a programmer. You might be asking, why? My partner is one, and I was always intrigued by how his daily tasks would never be the same - it sounded fun and challenging. That's when I enrolled to be part of the Dev Academy program to learn the skills of a software developer. It was scary at the start as I left my job to be a full-time student again, but the experience opened my mind, and I fell in love with the practice. I still put some hours into doing side projects to build small games to show to my family.
The Bootcamp was hosted by Re-Leased, thus, I could come to their office daily. The friendly vibe, great organisational plans, and mentorship showed me that that was a team that I wanted to be part of. That's when I showed interest in joining them to my mentor, and they were also keen to have me around. I have been working here for three months now.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Definitively yes! If you are passionate about learning new things and put effort into developing problem-solving skills, you can do it. Keep in mind that it is also about working with people, so for you to be successful in your journey, make sure you also learn people skills. The technology might be overwhelming sometimes but seek the help of your teammates. And remember to keep the mindset: keep calm, break the problem into small pieces sections, and tackle each one of them at a time.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
I love the sense of belonging when showing the new features. It is rewarding to see the other teams celebrating a new tool that will make their lives easier.
I also enjoy the vibe at the office. People are friendly and are always willing to help. We celebrate things, which I think is a great tool to keep me motivated, inspired, and helps to relieve my stress.
What are the limitations of your job?
Some days, I arrive home super tired mentally as I have spent hours trying to find a solution to a problem - and it has not yet finished. In these cases, it is essential to disconnect through exercise or family time; so you feel refreshed to carry on the work the next day. Keep in mind that patience is a must in this industry, and you may spend days working in a specific area of the application. But I try to make the process as fun as possible: use funny names to test the app, ask for help, try different approaches, and run the application.
3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...
Make connections, ask questions, and make connections.