By Rosana Ruiz
We all look for a rewarding job, although we have different definitions of what that means. For me, the most rewarding job I’ve been in so far is the one I’m in right now and I’d like to share why I feel this way when working with this great team.
At Lean Mind, empathy and mutual care is one of the fundamental values, which facilitates a healthy coexistence with the team and with the clients. We care about developing and improving nonviolent communication (NVC), helping to hear the different points of view and needs of each person, whatever their role is.
The NVC is a way of communicating that is not easy and fast to learn, especially because it requires unlearning many values and ideas that are normal in our society. I, personally, have a lot to learn in this aspect, but I am enjoying learning tremendously, despite constantly making mistakes 😅
To cover any need, be it our or a client’s, we do our best to understand the details well before applying a solution. There is no devotion to any specific technology or tool just because we feel comfortable with it, but we are open to studying all available resources and applying the solution that best suits the situation.
I have seen many sites where the “cookie mold” or “the solution that someone likes” was used too much and I have suffered a lot seeing how the applied solutions were totally far away from the real need of the client.
One of the things that impressed me the most when I started working here was the patience and time that Carlos Ble devotes both to the code and to the mastery of the principles and patterns that allow the software to be both flexible and robust. Using good practices such as TDD, making code review sessions both in person and in videoconference, as well as other ideas included in Extreme Programming, we get the code to have a longer life, be maintainable and knowledge to be distributed throughout the team.
Treating the code as if it were a mountain of playdough, where each new feature is a new hack, without a structure of automated tests ensuring that the previous features continue correctly working after each change, is a strategy that, at the beginning of a project, gives a perception of efficiency and speed but after a few months it stops giving good results and cause a lot of stress both in the people who implement the software, and in the users, and there comes a point where it is necessary to have an extra team that is fully dedicated to fix bugs.
This profession requires spending time to continue learning and improving, both to assess and offer different solutions and to adapt to the industry. We have 5 hours a week to dedicate them to training in the area or tool that most interests or gives us, we have facilities to attend technical events, access to training sources such as Clean Coders or Pluralsight, or any book that gives us value to us or the team. We also have support with a great teacher to improve our level of English. This is a win-win for everyone; employees, company and customers.
It’s okay that those of us who devote ourselves to developing software, dedicate part of our free time to study and update but it should not be a constant since, like any person, we need to dedicate time to other passions outside of work. It is important that we are aware that learning takes time and effort and is valued.
Getting the team to the best of itself and be motivated is not achieved accidentally, behind there is an effort dedicated to active learning, to discuss methodologies and ideas, and of course, reflection and adaptation exercises.
To all my colleagues Thank you! 🎊🙌 🎊
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