Meet some of our newest Computerlovers

During your first week at Code, the words "Brew round" are probably the ones you will hear the most.

It's a bit of a tradition that's remained true since we hired our first Computerlover well over 20 years ago.

Brew rounds have worked a bit differently during the past year though ‚ normally you would spend all day walking around the office, sitting with everyone in the business and learning a little bit about what they do over a nice warm cuppa. 

But whilst we are all still working remotely, brew rounds are held virtually in dedicated Whereby rooms for each of our teams.

Nevertheless, we've welcomed lots of fresh faces recently, so we asked our newest Computerlovers a few questions to learn a bit more about them, what makes them tick and their paths to Code. 

Over to you Anna, Emma and Ryan.

Anna, Delivery Manager

What have been the highlights so far?

Everyone being really welcoming and lovely has been great but the stand-out has to be the way Code works as a business. It's super refreshing to work with clients so closely and in real partnerships.

There's a lot of respect between everyone as a result and it gets the best out of people and products.

You joined Code in the midst of a pandemic. What was that like?

Surprisingly good! I was a little apprehensive as you would expect but with lots of team catch-ups and regular communication I forget that I haven't actually met people properly yet. That being said, I am looking forward to being in the office (and pub) together.

Everyone at Code gets Friday afternoons to make a positive change to either themselves or the world around them. What sort of things have you been doing or would like to do in the future?

So far during Make Change Friday time I've been learning more about all things product‚ from looking at effective agile product management techniques to what makes good UX design. In the future, I hope to use my time to learn more personally but also to help others and potentially mentor younger students thinking about a similar career path.

What would you say to someone deciding on a career in product delivery?

If you enjoy working with a team around you and motivating them to drive continuous communication and improvements then you'll really enjoy product delivery.

Emma, UX Designer

How did you get into design?

I've always been creative and knew I wanted to follow a creative career path, but I had no idea what to specialise in. I chose to study Creative Multimedia at university, as it was a multidisciplinary degree which allowed me to experiment with everything from coding to filmmaking.

I was then lucky enough to complete a 3 month placement with the BBC UX&D team at MediaCity. I found it so interesting and it made me realise how important it is to conduct the appropriate research, and gain feedback via testing when making design decisions.

Knowing that I could make design decisions, backed up by data and research in order to create a better user experience, made me never look back!

What have been the highlights of your first few months?

My first few weeks absolutely flew by, there was a lot to take in, and I was quite nervous about meeting everyone for the first time from behind my computer screen.

A highlight for me was the brew rounds - it was such a great way to get to know everybody within each team, and we had a good laugh listening to everybody's 'one interesting fact about me'.

What would you say to someone deciding on a career in design?

Something that I wish somebody had said to me before I joined Code would be, "Don't worry about being skilled in every single area of design".

A lot of us are generalists, with more experienced designers than going on to specialise in one area further down the line.

The most important thing you can do is to work for a company who will help you learn and progress as you go, rather than being stuck somewhere where you do the same things every day.

Everyone at Code gets Friday afternoons to make a positive change to either themselves or the world around them. What sort of things have you been doing or would like to do in the future?

Even though I've only been at Code for 2 months now, I've almost completed a HCD (human-centred design) online course with a few others from the design team.

We get together on Friday afternoons for a few hours, and work together on completing each module of the course. So far, I have conducted user interviews (for the first time), come up with 'how might we's?', spent a lot of time brainstorming and focussing on the end user's needs, and finally storyboarding some solutions.

Ryan, Front End Engineer

How did you get into engineering?

I first started coding with music visualisers way back in the wild-west internet-years in the early 2000's.

At first, it was just experimenting with a drag-and-drop interface to add effects and objects, then I discovered that there were little code editors for the components and if I played around with them I could make completely new things happen.

The discovery that I could create things using these compact little instructions was like magic.

Eighteen years or so later and things have changed a lot - the toolchains, projects, impact and responsibility are all vastly different, but the basic magic of writing compact little instructions to build things is still the core of the excitement for me.

What's been your most interesting bit of client work so far?

I've mostly spent my first three months working on a new software platform for one of our partners. It was really tricky co-ordinating the relationship with the engineering team at Code and the external partner team but ultimately we've found a way to make it work.

Everyone's proud of the work we've managed to do on it, and aside from some minor running-around-with-my-hair-on-fire, it's been really satisfying to watch the project come together.

Just now we've managed to reach MVP stage and have secured approval from the partner to build the next phase of development to a saleable product.

Everyone at Code gets Friday afternoons to make a positive change to either themselves or the world around them. What sort of things have you been doing or would like to do in the future?

The make-change time really makes sense to me as an investment; we all do our best growth and creative work when we have the freedom to experiment. To set time aside for that as a company speaks to the commitment of Code towards improvement.

Right now I'm focused on digging deeply into accessibility and UX work, to better understand how different people use the things we build and how to effectively connect people with technology in an inclusive way. This means a lot of deep digging into the fundamentals of the front-end discipline, building better components from the ground-up and fostering empathy with a wider variety of people.

If not that I might work on one of my side projects that have a focus on psychology and personal wellbeing - like this quiz to help you understand your personal values better. I'm also currently working on a highly customisable in-depth mood and habit tracking app.

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Want to help us build brilliant digital products? We've got a variety of career opportunities across engineering, design and analytics at the moment. Have a look what's available here.