DEV Community: EmilyCook321

6 Ways to Look After your Mental Health as a Developer

EmilyCook321 — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 08:20:39 +0000

Working in tech is awesome, especially as a software developer.
The opportunity to build amazing products, being paid to learn and working with very smart colleagues are just some of the reasons why this profession is so rewarding.

However, software engineering isn’t always a walk in the park. Tight deadlines, adjusting to remote work, fixing major outages and generally, the velocity of the tech industry are some factors that can cause you stress as a developer. Therefore, it’s important to look after yourself and create simple, daily rituals that support a healthy working routine.

Ahead of World Mental Health Day on October the 10th, we asked our software engineers on how they take care of their mental wellbeing.

Here’s what they said:

1. Fresh air 🍃
Our interim VP of Engineering swears by fresh air and regular doses of sunshine; living in Hamburg means that biking to work or going for a lunchtime stroll around the Alster is easy to integrate into your daily routine.

2. Meditation 🧘‍♀️ 🧘‍♂️
Some of us have trouble not thinking about things, so meditation can help you put things into perspective and arrive in the current moment rather than being swept away by thought.

3.The Pomodoro Technique 🍅
This technique focuses on working in 25 minute sessions throughout the day.
This can be helpful for focussing efficiently and it encourages you to take regular breaks so that you avoid sitting for hours and hours without moving, drinking water or looking away from your computer screen.

4. Connect with colleagues 🙋‍♀️ 🙋‍♂️
At Taxdoo, we encourage everyone to set up or attend ‘Donuts’ (informal online meetings), regardless of department.
Catching up with a colleague over a random Donut or setting up a Developer Donut is a great way to get to know your colleagues and helps you to feel connected and part of a team.

5. Take a break 🌳🚶🚶‍♀️🌳
Coding is awesome and the feeling of completing a task is great, however rest is also important. Why not use your lunch break to talk a walk around the block? You might be surprised at how refreshed you feel.

6. Find a job you love 💙
We all spend a lot of time at work, so it is important to feel comfortable and motivated by your tasks, colleagues and environment.

If you’re wondering what it’s like to work at Taxdoo, we can confirm that we’re hiring! For more details, check our jobs page or follow us on Twitter for more updates.

How do you look after your mental health as a developer?

7 Tips our Developers recommend to Newbie Devs

EmilyCook321 — Thu, 15 Jul 2021 08:14:50 +0000

Today is World Youth Skills Day so we want to celebrate young people’s access to training and career opportunities by providing some inspiration for anyone interested in working in tech.

We asked our developers, product managers and even our CEO about the resources that sparked their interest in tech and helped to hone their skills; here are their recommendations.

Practise this ⏰
If you have 30 minutes a day, try completing a few exercises on FreeCodeCamp. This is a great way to learn to code in bitesize amounts of time.

Try this 💡
A good starting point are the Hello World courses on Codecademy, which helps with learning tooling set-up and understanding how things work in that language. You can also test your knowledge by modifying the code and adding other statements.

Get stuck into this 💻
A slightly more advanced course for learning frontend development is ToDoMVC, which also has a lot of other examples for each tech stack.

Build this 👾
Learning by doing is the best method which this C# Unity Game 3D course from gamedev.tv definitely will help you to do so.

Read this 📚
Clean Code is the classic book written by Uncle Bob, otherwise known as Robert Cecil Martin, who epitomizes the concept of clean code. From a product perspective, check out Lean Product Playbook.

Watch this 📺
Silicon Valley (HBO); our co-founder, Matthias Allmendinger, recommends this series as it sparked the entrepreneurial spirit that brought Taxdoo to life.

Eat this 🍱
Sushi. Ok, just kidding. Although our developers do love a good Bento box, feel free to pick your favourite brain food for learning to code. Happy hacking doesn’t happen on an empty stomach!

We hope this list was helpful! It is, of course, by no means complete- what else would you recommend for budding developers?

We’re growing at Taxdoo! Follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn for the latest news and job posts from us.

Please note: none of these posts are paid endorsements and are solely recommendations from individual colleagues at Taxdoo.

"Hello World!" Introducing Taxdoo Engineering

EmilyCook321 — Thu, 27 May 2021 15:35:47 +0000

Hello and good day from all of us at Taxdoo Engineering!

As it's our first outing here, we thought we'd take the opportunity to introduce ourselves and introduce you to the world of Taxdoo Engineering.

Our headquarters in Hamburg is home to over 100 employees across 24 nationalities and all of our in-house engineers.
Dedicated to building products that deliver an outstanding customer experience in tax compliance automation, our Engineering team's work revolves around making compliance as easy as ABC.

So what exactly do we do at Taxdoo?

In 2015, a lightbulb idea sparked Taxdoo into being.
Three entrepreneurial PhD students, named Matthias, Roger and Christian, combined forces and came up with an idea that would simplify the complex VAT compliance process.
The solution was a software product designed to automate compliance in combination with the knowledge of tax aficionados for selling goods online (read more on the history of Taxdoo and our recent five year anniversary here).

Combining VAT compliance with automation software meant that Taxdoo could bridge the gap between the breakneck speed of e-commerce and the structured world of tax compliance to provide a solution that simplified VAT compliance for online-trade within Europe.

Since then, Taxdoo has rapidly become a market leader, offering a holistic solution for automated tax compliance for online retailers and their tax advisors.

#VATisLove?!
At Taxdoo, we really do believe that #VATisLove; as engineers, we pride ourselves on our unique combination of tech expertise and deep knowledge of tax compliance. We use this to develop Taxdoo products that delight our customers by offering a service that simplifies an essential yet typically time-consuming task for traders.
And yes, your inkling is correct, it is a spin-off of that Haddaway song.

What's in the Taxdoo toolkit?

Our tech stack comprises React, Node, Java, Go, GraphQL, AWS, Docker, Typescript; paired with a broad ecosystem of engineering talent and a regular cadence of code reviews and training opportunities, we ensure that all engineers feel challenged and supported to build the best possible products and services for our customers.

Who are the people behind the product?
Hamburg is home to our team of in-house engineers; spanning 9 nationalities, our team comprises colleagues from around the world.
Introducing some familiar faces from Taxdoo below, we hope you stop by and say 'hello' in the comments and feel free to follow us on Twitter for updates on our work, open roles and life at Taxdoo.

Andrew is a Fullstack Developer and Tech Lead.

Andrew has been a Taxdude since 2019.

What made you decide to pursue a career in tech?
I always had an interest in tech, but had never really considered it. Programming seemed like something only for genius students of math and science, which I never was. However, I found some free online resources that taught web development and I immediately knew it was what I wanted to do. It took quite a lot of hard work to get good enough to land that first job, but it was definitely worth it.

As a self-taught developer, what were the most helpful resources you used to master your craft?
There are a lot of brilliant online resources; FreeCodeCamp was great for learning about frontend development. I also built a portfolio of my own projects and used resources from podcasts, completed some of Wes Bos' courses, attended tech meet-ups and read blogs which helped me to learn the skills needed to land my first developer position.

Raghda is a Fullstack Developer and Tech Lead.

Raghda joined Taxdoo in January 2021.What made you decide to pursue a career in tech?
My mum is my main inspiration; I grew up seeing my mum working as a web developer and that gave me a lot of passion for joining the field. When I first chose my major as computer science at university, I found it a bit challenging but as soon as I dived deeper into the courses, I enjoyed them and became more motivated to code and develop my own projects.

You're originally from Egypt; what do you like about life in Hamburg?
At the beginning it felt strange being in a foreign country but as soon as I settled here, I enjoyed being exposed to a different culture, following the rules and getting the chance to enjoy nature, especially now that I appreciate that Hamburg is a quieter city to live in than Berlin.

What are you most excited about for 2021 at Taxdoo?
Getting to learn a lot, technically and non-technically, and of course our new office in Hamburg.

Ahmed is a Full Stack Developer

Ahmed joined Taxdoo in November 2020.

How would you describe Taxdoo Engineering culture?
Rich; it's a rich culture because we have a variety of people. This is not just to do with cultural backgrounds but also personalities and this shapes the way that people think. People think differently from one another; you notice this when people review your code or make suggestions. It's not just based on experience but also mentality. Having this array of different perspectives means that it makes for a much richer product. The way that I write code compared to everyone else is different, so having a variety of perspectives and opinions makes you take a step back, review your own work and understand how to write a better solution.

What have been the highlights and biggest learnings of your career so far?
One of the biggest highlights was definitely changing countries; it's been very rewarding and I am gaining so much experience the more that I work. I recognise that I can think faster now. I have become more comfortable writing code in TypeScript since joining Taxdoo and I am now faster at solving issues. It was also my first time using AWS as a service provider.

Like the sound of our team? We are hiring! Check out our Engineering roles here or follow us on Twitter for the latest updates and news from our team.
The full version of this article was posted on our Medium site.