I’ve completed my first month in my new role in the City and recently met up with an ex-colleague over coffee and she asked me what its been like.
All the people are nice, most very welcoming and most have established the company from day one, all having worked with each other before. There are about 10 in the company (its a year old). So everyone seems to know everything and while this is great, I immediately realised that I wasn’t there for all of it - the design and architecture plans, the whys why nots– all that stuff is void for me. But here I am, I’ve arrived, albeit somewhat late and there is lots to figure out now…
I think that’s the best way I can describe it.
The other day, the director asked me in the kitchen – Did I get a fright, and the answer quite simply is no. I’m just trying to learn 1-years worth of work, decision-making, technology in 1 month. That's all. I didn;t say that but that's really what I think I meant at the time.
I’ve worked in Application Virtualization, which is pretty cool stuff, I’ve worked designing algorithms that crack open applications and extract DNA for analysis. I’ve written C code, C# code, Java code, Python code, Javascript, Typescript, I’ve thrown around pretty much every type of programming ball that I needed to. I’m not even talking about my youth (assembler, Pascal, C++ etc..) And boy has that been fun. So what’s with the new opportunity? Speaking frankly its one word. Finance.
Finance is something I’ve never been in, I’ve been in companies that have many banks and financial institutions as customers but its a sector I’ve never directly been been in - but hey, If its got to do with throwing coding balls around – I can do that. That's what I love doing.
So from a technical standpoint, I’m right where I’d like to be, I’m in a place where I’ve always aimed at being in, I’ve always been involved in software engineering pretty much all my life.
Recently before starting in this company, totally unrelated but seems on par with why I’m here now, is that I developed my own personal financial services API, complete with a website which would talk to it and record financial investments that I’d input into it. Many aspects of the solutions I’m familiar with. Previously, I’d started getting pretty interesting in investing, shares and stuff like that having bought into a few collective investments and various company shares - this is why I needed something to keep track of all my financial decisions; And well, this is what this Financial company is aiming towards, a unified API that people can use to store and input there financial information and decisions etc… Obviously there is a lot more to their API than mine and they’ve thought about this a lot longer than I have. Its quite a mature set of ideas. But its ideas that I don't know about completely yet.
But, and there always is a but – as I mentioned, this is nothing compared to knowing absolutely nothing about the story and design decisions that make up their company, technology and design. Sure, it looks similar to what I’ve done but I’m a layman in this domain, I’m not a trader or a financial exec or have been in the past – I’m a coder, a software craftsman, I day-dream about modelling thoughts with technology, not securities or instruments(which by the way I only very recently have come to understand). But having said that, I’m in good company – almost everyone in the room has been coding financial systems for years and years and years. While I was working on virtualizing applications across networks, and streaming pixels across the internet or analysing binary files for specific patterns – these guys were doing financial stuff.
Joining the party late means you’ve not got used to everyone or everything yet, and everyone is looking at you. The music’s playing but you’re not dancing.
So back to my coffee. I told her something like this, “er, well its very interesting and the people are quite smart and well its just a big change for me.”. What I didn’t mention to her was that it was actually quite hard turning up to a party late. And that really has been the hard part of this whole experience.
Sometimes I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to expectations. I think this derives from my childhood where I often found myself not feeling ‘ready’ yet – I had a bar, that when I reach it,was when I was satisfied that I’m comfortable to go, that's when I’m ready but often I had to ‘go’ before I could reach that bar. That's frustrating. So I’ve become accustomed to being comfortable with being uncomfortable…
So most of the time I ready myself on-the-fly while doing whatever I was supposed to be ready for. It a good skill now that I come to think of it. I guess you could say I’ve had practise at hitting the ground running many times. I expect myself to manage and I always figure it out, grit my teeth and get on with it(bloody nose or otherwise). I’m a pretty robust worker, I strive for excellence in everything I do and this where my bar comes from I think and this was is the biggest hurdle for me since having joined : I want to know everything now. Its such a frustrating position to be in and its quite difficult to be satisfied. I’m still not satisfied.
Its important for me to write down some achievements because otherwise, I think I’ve not had any and that gets me down a bit. So lets begin.
- Submitted my first code on day 1 using their development setups and processes.
- Started reading through Excel-Add(c#) in code and learnt how it worked (from the customer’s point of view)
- Added code changes to the plugin and http client (implementing some tasks in the backlog)
- Followed the server code up and down the stack trying to self-document it for myself – the path form incoming API request, from user to database(well not quite the database yet) but the layer that interfaces with it.
- Started learning a bit about functional programming having seen language.Ext Either<> and Option<> code.
- Started learning about the basic entities that make up the API and learning a bit how the queries are deal with on the server.
- Implemented basic Entity on the API and started becoming familiar with the programming patterns and design – but from a code ‘out’ perspective.
- Authenticated with Okta and then with the API from a new Excel Proof of concept add-in written in Java that they had me look at.
- Can list all portfolios is a scope in the POC add-in.
- Started to implement some new functions in the normal excel add-in(c#).
Here is the POC excel-plugin I wrote: Reflections on Excel JavaScript Add-in
I’ve been on two runs with some of the guys in the company here and here
I can speak to most people but I’ve yet to become comfortable with any of them. I’ve watched the engineers get tipsy on a Friday night at after work drinks, have a merry time - and I laughed which was very entertaining.
Some other notable achievements are that I don't think I’m not judged at the way I dress or the beer that I drink(or don’t drink).
It does annoy me that I’m not yet proficient at many aspects yet but I think this isn’t all bad. I’ve been really quite this month, some might say, I’ve been almost too quite. Indeed someone thought that I’d gotten a fright at having just joined the company and seen the landscape. That’s not it.
I think its because I’ve been trying to reach my bar, I’m always trying to reach my bar…
You've got to Bounce: To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive