William about his first month as a developer

The first steps are the hardest. Obviously. But when you switch jobs right in the middle of a global pandemic, that switch becomes even more challenging. But it’s exactly what William van Aert did. He recently began his career at ABF as a .NET developer. In this blog he’ll share his experiences.

“My first month at ABF was not the most standard. Picture this: on your first day you enter an almost empty building, only to pick up a laptop and two computer monitors. And then you return home again. Fortunately, some of my new colleagues greeted me warmly… And I received a nice welcoming gift”.

An empty office

The training process is one of the main building blocks of a pleasant start at a new employer. Personal, intensive guidance helps you quickly find your way within an organisation. So that you feel at home faster. Additionally, we at ABF work according to agile practices. This method involves a lot of personal contact. And frequent multidisciplinary collaboration. An empty office is therefore far from ideal. Fortunately, technology offers a solution. Employees at ABF are in close contact with each other via various software tools.

Technology offers a solution

William: “After I set up my equipment, I received a welcoming email from Michael (Lead Developer). Almost immediately an introduction to the rest of the development team followed, via Teams. Fortunately, I already knew most of them, and it really felt like coming home. The training itself was also different from what I’m used to. We had many Teams sessions, something I actually did quite enjoy. In situations like these it is a good thing to use technology and take advantage of its possibilities. For example, you can view someone’s screen directly, and take control if needed. Normally you would only watch over someone’s shoulder. Also, I recorded some of those sessions to review the explanations given at a later moment.”

“I actually quite enjoyed the training via Teams”

Development work must continue

Quite handy, this form of digital training. As even with minimal occupancy the development work must continue. As a developer at ABF you work with a number of tools. We can reveal a few of those: C#, ASP.NET MVC, Kubernetes, NServiceBus, Azure Devops and SQL. These and others are used to turn the wants and wishes of colleagues of various departments into viable and solid solutions.

In biweekly sprints the development team aims to solve various tickets. In consultation with the Product owners of the departments Sales and Marketing, the items in the backlog are prioritised. During the sprint review the most important items for the next sprint are then planned. The range of tasks is very diverse: from adding new functionalities to bug hunting… and everything in between. And one you’re familiar with the existing code, you’ll start thinking about how it can be improved.

“I solved my first issue in my first week”

In short: you will have to process a lot of information in your first month. Despite the extraordinary situation William can certainly look back on a successful initial period: “Considering the situation, I think I made a great start! I solved my first issue in my first week, and I’ve met many of my new colleagues. Now I’ve finished my first month and I can’t wait to meet everyone in the office in person!”.

Becoming part of our team?

We’re looking for developers. You’re more than welcome. See our vacancies for more information.