februari 28, 2020
'A day in the life of…’ is a blog, video, picture or a page out of the journal of a co-worker at Valtech. This time we introduce Peter van Gennip, Front-end UI Developer. He will take us through a day in the life of a Front-end UI Developer. Peter is working at our office in Eindhoven.
7:30 Valtech Mondays are not that bad
New week, new Monday! When I arrive at the Valtech Eindhoven office, the lights are off and it’s very quiet. That’s because my colleague Rick has a day off. Normally Rick always handpicks a Spotify playlist and puts on some funky tunes to start the day. Today is my lucky day: I will be the master of the playlist and our Sonos Play 5.
I immediately notice that sound screens have been installed at our desks. I work in a large open-space office with 40+ colleagues. That’s great, but it can be a little chaotic. Everyone has a company headset and most of us also have a noise canceling headset (team SONY vs team BOSE), but the sound screens are supposed to control the chaos. I am curious what effect they will have! First things first: connect my laptop, turn it on and grab a drink from our canteen.
On Monday morning, I mainly check my mail and go through the meetings that have been scheduled. I was off on Friday, so a lot has happened in the meantime. My mailbox is currently full of emails from Jira with updates about one of my current projects, invitations to meetings, a newsletter from A11Y-weekly and updates from Workplace. Workplace is the online global Valtech-community where a lot of information is shared: from inspirational talks to cat images. 🐱
9:30 Get up, stand-up
It is time for my first stand-up today. This daily meeting is for the team of one of our projects. We’re checking the current status, share what we are doing today and whether we have encountered or expect problems.
After the daily, we have a weekly stand-up. The weekly is a meeting that we plan every Monday with a large group of colleagues. Here, we discuss the week, our "mood" and we can share something if we want to. This weekend Ajax played against PSV (1 - 0) and as a supporter of the latter... I get the full low. Which is great, because there will be a time that I can get back at them - and I like to do that. 😈My colleague Evianne shares an interesting piece about Sitecore personalization during this weekly, something I didn’t know yet.
10:30 Entering the Walhalla
I have a meeting with my front-end colleague Lars. He recently switched from backend to the Walhalla for developers, front-end! Soon we will start a project with Angular and a new storefront, Spartacus. Right now, we are doing the necessary preparations. After that, it is development time. Yes! That is what I love doing the most. For this project I’m developing the component library in Vue, amongst other things. We use these individual packages in our main front-end repo to build our components. Today the completion of the navigation and the footer is on the agenda.
Headphones - ✔️
Spotify check - ✔️
Hardstyle playlist ✔️
“Gaan met die banaan!”*
*Off we go!
12:00 Time for everything but work
At 12 o'clock sharp we eat lunch in our canteen. Featuring the snack of today: a carrot lentil soup. A bit strange, but tasty! During lunch we talk about everything, but especially not about work. Unfortunately, the topic is once again Ajax – PSV. Oh well, I take it like a man. After lunch it is either a walk outside or a game of PES on the PlayStation. I can hear you think: “No FIFA?!”. FIFA is great if you are a good schoolboy. Real men play PES. But not today; we are having a walk outside because the weather is great.
12:30 Back at it
We gained some energy during the walk, now it’s time to get back to work. I was working on transitions in Vue.JS. Recently I bookmarked an interesting Medium article with a new technique I can use. I’ll go over it before I get back to work, but first I walk to my colleague Rocco. He has a question about how we can make the navigation more accessible. As a team, we come up with the perfect solution.
15:45 Team Captain to the rescue
The last fifteen minutes of my working day I want to discuss something with my Team Captain. The TC arranges everything for the - you guessed it - team. In this case, I will supervise an intern that is starting next week. Contract, laptop, credentials, everything is arranged - except for a workplace. Together with the Team Captain, we created a spot in the blink of an eye!
16:00 Front-end time!
‘Front-end time’ is a running gag at our office. Several front-end colleagues finish their work around this time. I commit, comment and push my latest changes, update Jira, book my hours and pack my bag. See you tomorrow!
Would you love to be in charge of the Sonos Play 5 when Rick has a day off? Or are you done playing FIFA and ready for something bigger? And do you get excited from working with our UI Developers? We’re still looking for Front-end Developers in Eindhoven.
