Hello again! Welcome to my second and last Pinhead blog. As I stated in my earlier blog, I was only with Rover for 2 weeks, but in that amount of time I learned an immense amount. Since rover works in 2 week sprints, I got to see the beginning and end of the sprint which gave me a great idea of what its like to be a developer at Rover. This week was not as busy as last week, but I was more comfortable so I was able to gain more knowledge from the developers in the area that I was working.
Monday
First thing Monday I had a meeting with Jean. He gave me more stuff I could do for the rest of the week as well as well as catch up on the previous week as he is super busy with meetings. Jean also told me that he was going to be working remotely for the rest of the weekend so I would be more on my own. I was actually super excited for this because I got a better idea of what it is like being on my own in this type of field. After that meeting I went straight into stand up. As I explained in my blog from last week, standup is where the team goes over what was done the previous day, and what they are going to be working on going forward. This standup was very interesting because I had not been there the previous Friday so I was able to catch up with what people had worked on. After stand up, I went straight to Data Dojo. Data Dojo is where a bunch of developers from the data science team meet up and help other people who are not necessarily in a data science field with problems that they . may have. gSince I didn’t have a project that I was workin on at the time, I just went to learn more about the field. Someone showed me a lot of data that had to do with the company and it was super interesting. Did you know that the most common dog name has 5 characters? For lunch I went to the Amazon Go store, which was super cool. For people who do not know what that is, it is a test that Amazon is doing for cashier-less shopping. You walk in, scan your phone, grab what you want, and then walk out without having to interact with anyone. Plus, the food is super good! After lunch I spent the rest of the day pier programming with multiple people in the office to continue to learn about what they do.
Tuesday
Tuesday started off with standup like every day does. Tuesday was more mellow than the other days as I didn’t really have anything planned besides “Taco Tuesday”. I spent the entire morning pier programming with Lonnon, Peter, Claudia, Alex and Staci. Then it was time for Taco Tuesday. On most Tuesdays, there is a catered lunch and it isn’t always tacos. Last week it got canceled because of another meeting, but this week there was tamales. This event is super popular for obvious reasons, so I got to meet a lot of people working in other fields and on other teams that were not just the Malamutes. I spent the rest of the day pier programming with various developers around the office.
Wednesday
Wednesday was by far my most busy day yet. It started with standup like every day does. I spent the morning until lunch working with people in the office. At lunch I went to the “Backend Lunch and Learn” where we watched a video and discussed backend stuff and best coding practices. I then went to Data Dojo again and got to learn more about that field. After that I spent around an hour pier programming with Peter. Then it was time for every employees favorite event, Beer and Tech. Beer and Tech lasts around an hour and during that hour people will present stuff that they have worked on, or new additions to the codebase. For example, Peter had a presentation of a way there were going to manage how sitters on the website would come up in search results, and how that implementation would happen over the next few years and how it is a benefit over what they are using currently. I learned a lot about other fields and made some friends with people that I had not previously met. After Beer and Tech I had plans to go to a meet up based around the programming language Python. I went with Julia, who is a technical recruiter at Rover. There were a few hundred people at this meet up and everyone was so friendly. This lasted around 2 and a half hours and during that time there were presentations, free food, and lot of time to talk to people. There were people who worked at Amazon, Starbucks, Dropbox, Google, you name it. It was super interesting and I would have loved to gone to more of them but I was limited on time. After the meet up, I spent some time talking to other people and then went home.
Thursday
Thursday started with standup again. I spent the entire morning, lunch, and most of the afternoon pier programming with a variety of developers, some of who were not in my team. I got to spend a lot of time with Lonnon and Peter, and they showed me some more advanced topics in the field. Peter better explained his Beer and Tech presentation and I always learn a lot when I spend time with Lonnon. Then I had estimation. I explained estimation in more detail my blog last week, but I will give another general overview. Everyone goes over “tickets” and decides how many points they should be worth based on the difficulty of them and the amount of time that people think they will take. Then, these tickets are added to sprints up to around 75 and that is what the team will try to get done over the next 2 week sprint. I then spent the next hour pier programming and went home.
Friday
Friday was my last day at Rover so it was very bitter-sweet. I spent the entire day just pier programming with developers and making sure that I got to spend time with everyone in the office. Since it was Friday, a lot of people work from home and remotely so I spent most of the day with Peter since he was one of the few people there. This was interesting because for the previous weeks I had been only spending an hour or 2 with people and then moving on to see what other people were working on, but since Peter was the only one in the office I got to see what his full work day was like. I left at around 5 and said by to the people at the office, but I wish I could have said by to the other developers there who had taught me so much and who I had gotten to spend a lot of time with like Lonnon, Alex, Staci, Esma, Allen, Ian and others.
Overall, I am so grateful for this incredible experience that I was able to have thanks to Pinhead. It has solidified my idea of becoming a developer and has given me a better idea of the path that I want to take to get there. I would like to end this Blog by thanking everyone who helped me get this incredible opportunity that I would not have been able to have without everyone’s help. Thank you!
The exterior of the office that I am working at.
A better view of the area that I was working in. (Peter and Claudia are in this photo)
Alex and Fondue
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