Five Minutes With Lead Developer, Andy

Having introduced you to our co-founder, Calvin, we’re now going to work our way through some of the key members of the Webantic team. Our Lead Front End Developer has made huge progress since he joined us, so it only seemed natural to start with Andy.

Read on to learn about Andy’s role at Webantic, what he loves about it, and his biggest challenges and achievements so far…

Tell me about your role at Webantic.

As the Lead Front End Developer, I’m responsible for setting and maintaining the standards for every project. Working alongside Carl, our Lead Back End Developer, I take the high-level requirements and break them down into manageable chunks of work for our front end team.

Backlogging is important, because every job is different. A single screen could be a small task, or it could involve lots of different functions that take time to develop. Breaking these down helps us to quote and schedule more effectively, while planning out tasks so that there are no hold-ups in development.

When a project gets underway, I make sure that all the work is consistent and that everyone is on the same page. This also involves mentoring our junior developers, dealing with any challenges they have and helping them gain experience.

What’s your background?

I wouldn’t consider myself a natural programmer – I started quite late. My interest in coding stemmed from Minecraft when I was younger. At that time you could write your own plug-ins, which soon became a hobby. On the back of this, I decided to study Computer Science at university, where I began working on more and more projects in my spare time to gain experience.

During university, I luckily managed to get a part-time job at Webantic, and started taking on low-priority projects that eased me into the working world and built up my skill-base. Gradually, these projects got bigger and bigger, and when I graduated I was offered a full-time role.

How has your role evolved since you joined the company?

Working in a team is a huge learning curve as a developer; you have to get out of the mindset of working your own way, and think about how easy your work will be for others to understand and pick up. However, I managed to get to grips with this pretty well, and quickly found myself working on a wide range of projects.

This experience meant that I was soon able to take on new projects and decide how the different elements functioned and fit together. As a result, I was made Lead Developer a few months ago, which has given me a lot more responsibility within the team.

What has been your biggest achievement so far?

Taking on a management role was a huge step for me. I wouldn’t consider myself a natural leader, so it’s been a great opportunity to challenge myself with the responsibility of making and enforcing decisions.

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome?

It’s always challenging working with older projects that you’re not familiar with. Some of our clients have been with Webantic for years, with projects that were started long before I joined the team.

Getting your head into these projects is difficult, as at the time they were written the company was quite small; documentation wasn’t as thorough, because only a few people needed to understand it.

Since I’ve joined the team and Webantic has grown, practices and documentation have become key to our operations. Working on these older developments reinforces their importance, so we don’t have the same problems when dealing with current projects in the future.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

I love the amount of variety in our work. When something new unlike anything we’ve tackled before comes in, it’s like opening presents at Christmas and not knowing what you’re going to get. The challenge of solving new problems and writing fresh code really excites me – I get a chance to set the bar.

When you’re not developing, what do you do to unwind?

I’m really into music, and produce a lot in my spare time. I have a guitar, and the rest is digital… it’s sort of electronic indie, or ‘indie-tronic’ as a mate has described it.