Employee Spotlight: Allison, Software Engineer
In this episode of the Direct Farm Podcast, we're excited to host Allison. One of Barn2Door's very own Software Engineers. Listen as she shares how he came to join the team and and how he was able to grow with Barn2Door.
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Sebastian: 0:26
Welcome back to the Direct Farm Podcast everybody. My name is Sebastian. I am on the marketing team and today we have Allison here from the engineering team. Allison, could you go ahead and introduce yourself for everybody that's listening?
Allison: 0:38
Yeah. My name is Alison I'm a software engineer on the application team. So I work on the features that our farmers and their buyers use.
Sebastian: 0:47
Why did you apply to Barn2Door?
Allison: 0:49
Yeah, so when I was looking for a new opportunity I was really looking for something a little bit different, a little bit more of a challenge than where I was at, at the time. And I found Barn2Door and the description immediately jumped out to me. Just the mission specifically and just even how excited it sounded like in the application description about you know, what we're doing for our farmers and what they're doing for sustainability and the food system and the planet. It really stood out to me. So yeah, I gave it a shot and ended up here.
Sebastian: 1:20
So where were you at before you came here?
Allison: 1:22
I was at a bigger company that did, sort of e-discovery work. Software for lawyers basically. Something that I definitely would not have used just as like a casual, you know, in my personal life.
Sebastian: 1:34
You'd never got to see like what the end-users were going to be using it for. I guess you kind of had to know what it was for, but you'd never got to actually use it or you would never need to.
Allison: 1:42
Yeah, no, exactly. Like I knew what it did, but to be honest, like I would never know as a user, how to actually use it. You know, it's like a bunch of lawyers. I didn't really know what it means. Like, you know, you have your requirements that they set for you, but you don't really know exactly how they're going to use it. So very different to develop for it, yeah.
Sebastian: 1:59
How long were you there for?
Allison: 2:00
I was there for probably about three years, maybe a little bit less. Yeah, it was time to move on, do something different, felt a little bit stuck in a rut. And this was just, yeah, it worked out great.
Sebastian: 2:12
How would you kind of describe your day-to-day responsibilities at Barn2Door?
Allison: 2:15
Yeah, so, I mean every day starts with a standup meeting, which is pretty typical of an engineering job. You know, you just check in, say what you worked on the day before and what you're planning on working on today. And you might have a few discussions at that time or throughout the day about, you know, what you're working on. But for the most part, you just get a lot of time to sit down and code, which is you know, something I really love, like you really get to be in the zone and you get to make a lot of decisions yourself. You might have to like, double check with somebody that this is good, but you really, you get a ton of responsibility to just go in and like code the way you think it should be. And yeah, just go for it.
Sebastian: 2:50
Right. And then I guess, how does the feedback work? Do they just say, nah, this is not good. Start over.
Allison: 2:54
I mean, hopefully you've asked, ask some questions before you get to that point, yeah you definitely, you do get a lot of feedback throughout the way. And I mean, the way that, you know, developing software it's usually done is you, you know, develop a little bit of chunks and then you send it up for what's called a code review. And then you have some peer reviewing on that and they, they look at the code, how it works. Like, does that make sense? Are there any like bugs that might be introduced, but they also can take that opportunity to take a look at what it's doing and ask the question. Like, is that the right way to do it? Is that something that would be good for our farmers to do it that way? There's always a lot of edge cases like that. So, you definitely get feedback that way too.
Sebastian: 3:33
How would you guys discover what you guys, need to work on? As far as, problems you need to fix solutions you need to develop?
Allison: 3:40
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, a lot of it has to do with something that's really specific to farmers like the seasonality of like their yearly cycle. So just like for an example, in the spring time for like the produce farmers, um CSAs are really important. Getting people signed up for, you know, summer vegetables and subscriptions. And so knowing that, the product team, they took a look like this past winter and we're like, okay, so what needs aren't being met for subscriptions? And, you know, came up with this list of things like this would be really great if we could implement this before spring time, so that farmers get the chance to use it right away. You know, like constant conversation with the farmers and like what are their needs?
Sebastian: 4:18
What's different about working at Barn2Door versus anywhere else?
Allison: 4:21
Oh, yeah. I mean, almost everything is different, honestly. I think probably like a big thing that stands out is really how genuinely people care about the product and about, you know, our farmers and about their buyers. You feel closer to the product as it's something that makes sense to you and like, it makes you care about it more than, you know, like software that you're never going to use in your personal life. I have a personal Barn2Door account and I bought stuff off there just cause it's great. And I, I like using it and that's something that never would have happened in my last job.
Sebastian: 4:54
What's it like, being part of a rapidly growing engineering team?
Allison: 4:57
Well it's a lot of fun. It's definitely exciting to see the team grow and just like how much more we can get done, you know, in a month. We have feature releases every two weeks and most of those feature releases are releasing something pretty big, just because there's so many people, even if they take two months to work on it. Yeah, so that's really been cool just to see like how much output there is as the team grows.
Sebastian: 5:17
Why do you like working at Barn2Door?
Allison: 5:19
I really like personally the challenge and the responsibility that you get, like, I feel like responsibility sounds like a scary thing. I've really enjoyed just being able to make a lot of decisions, like I was saying earlier and being able to just be in the zone and push features out.
Sebastian: 5:33
Yeah. It is really, freeing you know, when you get a lot of autonomy to do your own thing, but obviously you're not doing it without any rails.
Allison: 5:40
Yeah no, there are like guidelines, but you know, like every feature that you build, there's going to be a gazillion ways that you can design it and some are going to be better than others, and some are going to address edge cases better than others. So, we write up, what's called a design doc where we kind of go over like the architecture or like design of how we want to code it, and you get to talk about that with like your peers and discuss the pros and cons, which is always fun, but you always have a say though even if, you know, your team lead is like, well, I think it would make more sense to do it that way. If you really put the effort into knowing how it works and you want to push a little bit and say, no, I really think it would work better this way. Like you totally can do that.
Sebastian: 6:19
How would you describe what the company culture is like here at Barn2Door?
Allison: 6:23
It's a lot of energy, I would say. Definitely a lot of just like company bonding events. You know, there's like a cornhole tournament scheduled there's you know, certain challenges, like a step challenge coming up, there's trivia four days a week and you can win prizes at the big meetings on Thursdays. A lot going on, and always encouragement to do things outside of company time, you know? All sorts of things. Like they really encourage being together as a team and getting to know each other, which I think does make you even better coworkers. Cause you really know each other's strengths and how to communicate better and all that.
Sebastian: 6:56
What is a working at a startup like?
Allison: 6:58
Definitely fast paced. Fast paced, lots of responsibility. I think at a more established company, you might feel like your contribution doesn't matter as much just because there's so much that's already existed and so many other people, but, um yeah, that's something I really like about being at a startup. Like, it really feels close, like dear to my heart. I want it to succeed, you know?
Sebastian: 7:19
Is there anything you'd like to say to a potential candidate, someone that's like looking to apply on Barn2Door, or maybe they've already dropped the application in, and they're maybe looking for words of advice from a fellow software engineer.
Allison: 7:30
That's a good question. I think I would probably say that this is really the right position for you. If you're really feeling stuck in whatever you're doing and you really want to do something that the mission really speaks to you. And you're ready to put a lot of work into it. Yeah, I think this is a really good place to do that and to really grow. You know, as someone in early career, I just feel like this is a really great place to do that if that's where you are in your career and life.
Sebastian: 7:58
Well, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast, Allison. Really appreciate your time and yeah we'll be signing off.