Posted by Rainer Kraft on Aug 21, 2015
My first three months at MyBuilder
Well, I recently finished my first three months at MyBuilder, and according to tradition, I was asked to write a blog post about my experience.
I had been contracting for some years and was pondering a return into permanent employment. When my last contract ended I had some down time and plenty of time to think things over. As much as I love the freedom of contracting I did miss being part of a company proper; where my input would shape my own future in it.
One day I noticed MyBuilder’s job advert for a Senior PHP Developer on LinkedIn and came to their recruitment site. I liked the way they described themselves and what they expected from an applicant. I also discovered this tech blog and was impressed by the variety and quality of posts. In short I started to have a good feeling about all this and applied.
An answer and invite to a first interview came fast. When I turned up at MyBuilder’s office I saw a fantastic kitchen, stereo, bikes hanging from rack, a couple of guitars, amp and a coffee table in the distinctive shape of a Fender headstock. The whole recruitment process was thorough: two interviews and a challenging code test — but solely because of the guitars and bikes during all this I realised that my gut feeling was spot on. I was very pleased when MyBuilder offered me the job, and excited to start.
I have been a PHP developer for quite a while but my experience in working in software development teams has been limited. I had mainly worked in digital agencies before: short-lived projects with tight deadlines and budgets - with little opportunity to spend time on new technologies. Get it out and move on. Working on a product is quite the opposite, at MyBuilder time and care is put into making sure we’re using the right technology for the task at hand.
I thought my knowledge of Symfony 2 was not too bad but now realise that it was barely more than rudimentary. So it was (and still is) a tough climb on the old learning curve, but everyone at MyBuilder has been extremely supportive and have made me feel welcome and valued from the start. In the tech team we have a great CTO, Gavin, and Lead Developer, Sten, who are very generous with their time and advice and, frankly, have the patience of a saint or two.
Looking back now I realise that I have learned more about code (and DDD and Symfony and Jenkins and testing and, and, and) in my first three months here than I did in the last 3 years as a contractor. There’s still loads to take in and learn, but I also realised that this is exactly what I needed.
Looking forward to the next three months years…