Some time ago, we received feedback from many of our engineers in our business unit about how to develop at a certain skill level without addressing the next higher level. When we looked at our engineering career framework, we realized that it couldn’t provide a valid answer to that question. So we gathered ideas from our peers and created a guide that includes ideas for horizontal growth for our Associate, Regular, Senior, and Tech Lead skill levels. This is the start of a series of app posts describing how our colleagues can grow at their respective levels. Let’s start with André …

Hi everyone, my name is André Associate.

I am currently in my first year at Staffbase as an Associate Frontend Engineer. I recently finished my studies in Computer Science. During my studies I did some React programming and also set up my own blog where I write about all my learnings.

Four months ago I started here at Staffbase - super excited for my first real job. I am part of team LWS together with 4 other developers. They have been very friendly so far and have given me a lot of time and space to get to know everything.

During my onboarding phase, I noticed some missing documentation, which I mentioned to my role buddy. Together with the team, we filled in the missing pieces. That was a really good start to getting familiar with our documentation structures.

Currently, I mainly work with Rachel Regular - one of our regular developers. I work on both frontend and backend tickets. She really helps me learn the domains of our team.

Since the last sprint, I also work more often on tickets alone, but always seek consultation with my teammates to make sure I’m on the right track. I really enjoy those sessions as I mostly still learn something new.

I’m still a bit undecided if I want to continue to focus on the frontend parts while also getting more and more familiar with the backend.

Recently, I was able to present some new solution ideas to my team in one of our refinement sessions and was happy to receive very positive feedback.

Next month, my supervisor and I will discuss my progress - we agreed to improve my test writing skills. Since we recently had a test workshop in the team, I’m pretty confident about this.

I’m still struggling a bit with the development processes we’re doing as a team - but I’ve already reached out to our agile coach for a session on agile development. I’m looking forward to that.

That being said, I’m happy to be on this path as an Associate Engineer, and I’m excited for the next steps in my journey.

In case this is your current role or the role to come for you, how do you approach it? Feedback is heavily welcome.

Best, André Associate