We would like to take a moment and shine the light on our female engineering colleagues, in a series of short interviews. We hope that this will inspire more women to join the tech world and make a difference! This week we are introducing #{name}
name = Leoni
Leoni joined door2door in March 2017 and her original position was Assistant to the CEO. It was here that she was first introduced to software development. In January 2020 she joined a coding bootcamp at Le Wagon in Berlin and in April she returned as a Junior Software Developer for the Bookings Team and is now on her way to becoming a Fullstack Developer in the Driver and Dispatch team.
When did you first start writing code?
Leoni: If you exclude several attempts here and there, I seriously started learning how to code in November 2019.
What was the first language you started in?
Leoni: I started with a mix of Ruby (vanilla & Rails), HTML, CSS and some Javascript basics.
Do you have a preference between frontend or backend development?
Leoni: I find both equally interesting, actually! I really love the instant feedback you get from frontend but also like everything you can do with the backend.
What was your biggest struggle when starting out?
Leoni: My biggest struggle was to not compare myself to others. Sometimes there were a few concepts that just wouldn’t get into my head. It was hard for me to not get disappointed about the progress my peers seemed to be having. What really helped me was to start comparing myself with myself and all the progress I have done. I also created a list to write down my biggest achievements and learnings. It’s really satisfying to revisit the list and see how it gets longer and longer.
It was hard for me to not get disappointed about the progress my peers seemed to be having. What really helped me was to start comparing myself with myself and all the progress I have done.
Do you have any learning tips?
Leoni: What has worked well for me is to have focus times, think of the pomodoro technique. Another thing that has helped me is to have my own “documentation” of things that I found helpful or bugs that I have encountered and what I did to solve them. I don’t always go back to read it but documenting things like that helps me solidify the knowledge.
What made you want to become a developer?
Leoni: The idea of being able to build software that can be easy to use by as many people as possible. I also really like the flexibility it provides – you can basically work from anywhere!
What do you like most about being a developer?
Leoni: That I can learn something new every day. There are so many programming languages, resources and projects out there that even if you spent every second of your life on them, there would still be new things to learn. It’s constantly evolving!
What would you advise aspiring developers?
Leoni: Just start! There are many free resources available that can help you practice and learn!
Do you have any pet projects? If yes, which one?
Leoni: I am working together with a friend on a project called Dateros, which is a data-based project following the political situation in Peru.
What do you enjoy doing apart from programming?
Leoni: Many, many things, but to narrow it down I really love doing pottery and drawing!
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Thank you Leoni for this very encouraging and insightful interview! If you enjoyed this chat and want to join us, check out our job postings and see you in the next episode!
