How has the flexible work environment at SciLeads helped you?
When I started at SciLeads I received a lovely welcome package with some swag, like a notebook, a cute little battery pack, and most importantly, a cosy SciLeads jumper! I also received my laptop that was all set up and ready for me to begin customising my development environment on day one. SciLeads provides a generous work-from-home allowance, which I used to buy screens, a monitor stand, and a decent webcam. I remember sitting in my little office on those first few days, thinking how amazing it is to be set up so quickly and painlessly with so many friendly people just a Slack message away!
What does a typical day look like as a Senior Software Engineer at SciLeads?
Here is my day, skipping past the chaos of the morning to the point where the last of the kids leaves the house on their way to school! I grab a coffee and finally let out a sigh of relief as I sit down in front of my four-monitor screen setup. I get the vpn connected (cause I know I will forget), I open slack, probably a browser, vs code and vs studio… and I’m all set, I scan through any missed slack messages and get to the slack-bot/channel that asks me “what did you do since yesterday?” – I grab my cool orange SciLeads notebook to jog my memory, and fill in a few bullet points… “What will I do today?”… some serious coding… “Any blockers?”… like hardly ever!… Then there is a random question to just keep things fun 🙂 – done. No more admin, headphones go on, and I get stuck into code. No more meetings! No more admin! Amazing!
What skills have you gained or strengthened since starting as a Senior Software Engineer?
The wonderful thing about SciLeads is that there is a wide range of technologies, and although I was familiar with most, the world of AWS and Elastic Search was pretty new to me! So during my time here, I have certainly learnt a lot in these two areas from the guys, and also from just having access to a company-paid-for AI (Gemini & Github Copilot come to mind) – which we are all learning to work with and finding new ways to be more productive!
What has been your favourite aspect of your role as a Senior Software Engineer and your experience working at SciLeads so far?
Probably the flexible work hours, and the amazing people who are just a message away! Down-to-earth folk (I mean, one guy lives on a farm, so very down to earth!) 😛 – Oh, and one very cool thing is that once a year everyone gets together for a “Summit” event… amazing hotel… free food, free drinks… You get to see Belfast, what’s not to like! 🙂 But being able to do what I love (coding) without a whole lot of meetings, processes, policies, and red tape that you often get in really big companies is amazing… it still has that really big startup feel!