All shapes of career at Packhelp - an interview with Zuzanna Józefowicz, Staff Engineer

Martyna Prus, our Senior Employer Branding Specialist talks with Zuza Józefowicz about her career in engineering, fitting in the startup nature, and being a fairy godmother to our sales team. Make sure to read it if you want to get a glimpse of how it is when you decide to grow professionally with Packhelp.

M: Hi Zuza, thanks for your time. Tell me, what are you doing professionally?

Z: I'm a Fullstack Developer, and a Team Leader for one of the dev teams at Packhelp called "Customer Sales Experience", with the side gig of being a Staff Engineer focused mostly on our Ruby on Rails server.

In less of a corporate-speak way of putting things, I run a small team of devs focused on developing new features and maintaining parts of the system, which affect our sales team the most. We're trying to make their daily life more comfortable. Aside from that, I help lead the entirety of our Ruby on Rails server in the direction of maintainability, scalability and all other nice things.

Both are pretty fun, I have to say. The first part is like being a fairy godmother, appearing in front of our salespeople and offering them shining new solutions to their problems. The second is, well, a big responsibility, but also an opportunity to boss everyone around, even if they're technically my superiors, which is always fun ??.

M: What made you choose a career in technology and become a developer? How did you learn programming?

Z: I'm one of the rare examples, I think, of programmers who aren't all that passion-driven. I've always been good at schoolwork generally, without any one subject particularly being my top one - I did like mathematics a lot, but I liked English (as a foreign language) a whole bunch, too, as well as Polish (this one's native to me ??), Physics and several others.

I started some basic programming lessons during high school, but my town didn't really offer many possibilities in that regard, so when I picked my University major, I did so mostly blindly, relying on the tales of how fun programming is when done professionally, and, yes, how well it pays.

At first, I regretted my choice a lot. I realised that I was far behind everyone else. That's most likely because, in the true spirit of "go big or go home", I decided to go to the hardest possible Computer Science course in Poland. Later though, once I got a bit of a grip on the subject, I discovered that it could indeed be super fun. I also discovered that if I studied programming properly when I was younger, it would have been my favourite subject growing up.

M: Why and when have you decided to join Packhelp? How has your role changed since you started?

Z: When I started my first job, I was still at Uni and couldn't work full time, so my selection of workplaces was limited. This, among other things, first pushed me towards startups. And once you go startups, well...

Packhelp is my third proper job (not including internships). I joined it based on the recommendations of my developer friends, as a cool place to work, with high work ethics and dynamic growth. I joined it as a Senior Fullstack Developer with Ruby on Rails and React.JS as my leading technologies.

In Packhelp, I switched from focusing on the frontend aspect to mainly being involved with the backend. I also ran a few teams, even being one of the Heads of the Development Team at some point. I think that's the benefit of working in such a dynamic environment. We constantly adapt both our product and our processes to try and find the sweet spot, where both our jobs and the customer's experience are at their highest. Of course, there are downsides, too, especially noticeable for those who prefer calm and stable day-to-day work. Still, I've come to like it, using programming and the product we work on as the unchanging bedrock which keeps me grounded even through the most extreme changes of approach. It also helps that the developers turned out to be as cool as advertised, so I'm confident I'll get along just fine no matter which team I am part of.

M: Could you tell us a bit more about the technology team at Packhelp - people, projects, way of working and so on.?

Z: Packhelp's system is, first and foremost, a web application, or, more precisely, a set of web applications, some client-facing, some designed for our employees and collaborators. The technology team is here to maintain them, patch the bugs and iron out the wrinkles, and push the product in new directions, fitting the startup nature of the company. We create new apps, rebuild existing ones, add significant new features, connect with outside tools etc. We often take a big part in working out these solutions, working alongside product managers and designers.

M: What software and tools do you use at work?

Z: In Packhelp, we are mostly Mac users. Right now, I'm enjoying the speed of the M1 machine, and although setting it up wasn't very pleasant, I must say it's well worth it.

Other than that, I'm partial to VS Code for my code editor. We use Github pretty heavily, including its job-related features, and the usual set of apps, Fullstory, Sentry, Slack, Zoom, Clubhouse/Shortcut, for managing tasks, Notion for docs. We also have some inner tools, like Launchbox, a fun little platform developed by our team which helps manage deployments to different environments, among other things.

M: Describe your typical day at work. What do you like about it? What don't you like about it?

Z: At Packhelp, we can have flexible working hours, but I like to make mine consistently 8-16. I always start my days by doing code reviews for my colleagues. We have this rule that a PR can wait a maximum of one workday for a review, so I set up this space to ensure that on my end.

After that, well, it depends on the day. Most days, I just check which tasks are planned for the sprint and work on them. Sometimes I need to do some deep-diving, estimating or planning, instead. I can have some meetings, I also get called on to help solve some issues or provide some guidance, but I'm happy to say that despite being a team leader, I do get plenty of time to program!

M: What are some of the things you've learnt while working at Packhelp?

Z: Adapting to changes! I already mentioned we do grow very fast, and this requires a particular set of skills a lot of us don't have but have to gain over time.

Other than that, Packhelp's system is big and complex, and this often requires sophisticated solutions. Performance and safety are always our concerns, and you get to learn a lot about them.

For a personal example, I didn't know much about CQRS before joining this company, but by being part of the team implementing it, I now feel very comfortable with the idea.

Sadly, one of the bigger things you get to learn is working with legacy code, lack of documentation, and some less-than-optimal solutions, as Packhelp's origins - small startup, developed by a tiny team - left us some problems we still didn't entirely correct. We are working on it, though!

M: If you think of your work at Packhelp, what would you say are the things a developer might find interesting?

Z: We're on the brink of making our architecture more scalable and future-proof, so we have some fun initiatives ahead, like splitting some of our apps into micro-services or moving to different hosting solutions.

Other than that, we also have some fantastic solutions, like our 3D editor or ML-driven instant quoting mechanisms.

As I already mentioned before, in Packhelp, we also encourage devs' involvement in design. Rarely does it happen that we have to work on a solution we don't believe in, and when it does, we are always told why. Usually, it's something regulations-related!

M: How could we encourage more women to get into a career in tech?

Z: That's a tough one. As I mentioned already, it's easier and less intimidating to have some experience with programming _before_ you pick it as your career path. To do that, we should encourage young girls to participate in things like hackathons or development training courses, or improve the general level of programming education at schools, but we should take up with our government, I guess! Things like letting all the girls try proper programming before making this choice will surely help a great deal.

For more mature ladies, initiatives like Rails Girls are fantastic, as they provide a safe environment to learn and offer support for those only starting out. Moreover, directly mentioning "Girls" drives home the point that programming *is* for women, and they should give it a try.

I would also love more attention given to historical figures such as Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper - women scientists don't begin and end with madam Curie, after all!

M: What advice would you give to aspiring developers on becoming a ruby on rails developer?

Z: The basics are important, but you don't really have to start there. Start with whatever is fun for you, let your experience lead you to what you're missing, and then seek out to fill the gaps.

If you do decide to take the "proper" way and start with university, don't get discouraged when things get complicated - it's like physics at high school, you won't need to remember all the intricacies of how thermodynamics work in your adult life, but what you do remember will sure help you dress for the winter.

As for RoR in specific, I wouldn't actually know! I started with Python and switched to Rails when my employers needed me to. I liked it, so I stayed a Ruby-dev!

M: How do you stay up-to-date with current technologies/solutions?

Z: I follow newsletters and such, read blogs, the usual.

A lot of the news I get from work, people always share interesting news stories, send links to them on Slack, or bring them up during our guild meetings.

M: What other passions and interests do you have besides being a developer?

Z: I'm a big fan of figure skating! Both watching and practicing, though I must admit I usually find watching more fun! It's during binge-watching figure skating competitions, in many-hours-long sessions stretching long into the night, that I developed my other hobby of knitting. It helps me stay awake and gives my ever-active hands something to do, and I get a scarf out of it! A win-win in my book.

I also love fantasy stories, especially books by authors like Robert Jordan, Ursula K. Le Guin or Brandon Sanderson.

I'm a mother to two cats, British Shorthairs called Aureliusz and Kaladin.

M: Last question. If you were not a developer, who would you become?

Z: Well, my mum would be thrilled if I decided to follow in her footsteps and become a dentist, so I would definitely at least consider that! Other than this, hmm, maybe a mathematician?

Zuza Józefowicz is a Graduate of Computer Science at University of Warsaw, now an almost three-year employee of Packhelp, where she holds the position of Staff Engineer. She specializes in Ruby on Rails development, but is also comfortable working with other technologies such as React.JS or Python. She enjoys figure skating and is a mother to two cats.