5 years at Delivery Hero

Today marks my 5 year anniversary at Delivery Hero. It is halfway through my 10 years of experience as a software engineer. I would like to reflect on my journey and share it with you.

How I got there

I wrote about this in my older post. But let me summarise it in English, as that post is in Russian.

It all started in the spring of 2018, when I decided to move to Europe. I was a frontend developer and applied to several companies, but I didn't have any luck. I applied directly through company websites, got a lot of rejections, and didn't hear back from most of the companies. Fortunately, one of the recruitment agencies contacted me and told me about the web frontend software engineer position at Delivery Hero. I was interested, and agreed to apply. I had 3 interviews(the last one with the CTO), and got an offer after 3 weeks. I accepted and began my journey.

First year

Moving to a completely new country, starting to work in a big tech company, using React in production for the first time, speaking English every day, 6 months probation, getting visas, moving my family to Berlin and learning German too. It was a lot at first. But I loved the challenge and it was all really interesting to me. Usually onboardings happen either on the first day of the month or in the middle of the month. I joined on the 4th of October, so I missed most of the company-wide onboarding and was ready to hit the ground running from day one. And I did, somehow I got hardware, all the necessary access to tools, and was able to fix some minor CSS issues I found while browsing the repo, all on my first day. The next day, the product manager in my team invited me over to his desk, grabbed a marker and A2 paper, and drew a huge and crazy diagram of how things worked in my department. I was so focused on not getting fired, coming in early, staying late, learning as much as I could, taking on more responsibility and just being useful overall.

It was overwhelming, but it was also very exciting, and I made it through.

Second year

The year the global pandemic started and we all started working from home. At the same time, I was assigned to a new team, made up of people from my previous team. Again, a lot to take in, everything is changing so fast. This is also the year I got the title of Senior Software Engineer. And I got it after 1 year and 3 months in the company. I hadn't really expected it, or even really understood what the responsibilities of a Senior Engineer were, I just assumed that technical excellence was the main thing. By the second year I was more confident that I was worthy of working in the company and also confident in my skills, I started to share the knowledge I had gained and the hard work of the first year started to pay off. I was now a senior software engineer. Starting to work in a new team was very challenging, a green field area and the need to prove that the product you were building was worth further investment from the company.

Thanks to my team, we did. We are still working on the product today.

Third year

In the third year, the pandemic, the hard work of the previous years, and the thought that I had already spent two years in the same company made me think more about my future. I wanted to slow things down, talked to my manager and stopped taking on more responsibilities. Plus, our team had a new frontend developer, so I was able to delegate tasks and have more spare time on my hands. I had the opportunity to reflect on where I am right now and where I want to go in the future. I wanted a new perspective and started conducting interviews. My main objective was to learn about how other companies operate, how they interview candidates, and what their salaries are. And of course, I wanted to improve my own interviewing skills, since I have seen so many people fail miserably during interviews for Delivery Hero positions. I came to understand that almost all companies are more or less the same in terms of how they work, the challenges they face, and their processes.

I still go to interviews from time to time, just to keep my interviewing skills sharp and to see if anything has changed in the industry.

Fourth year

By the fourth year, hyper-growth was still in full swing. My original group of 10 people had grown into an entire tribe of about 10 times that number. I came back from a slow year, taking on more responsibility, being active and trying to help everyone and anyone. I started to lead the frontend chapter in our tribe. In the middle of the year I was promoted again, which I didn't expect. I was taking on some of the responsibilities of a Staff Engineer and was expecting it to happen after a year or maybe two. I guess I was lucky because the company was still expanding. I had tenure and was performing some of the duties of a staff engineer.

To this day, I think I am more like a senior engineer with a few extra responsibilities.

Fifth year

In my fifth year, Delivery Hero has had a few rounds of redundancies. Times are turbulent and nobody knows what the future holds. Now there's even more work, and we don't have the privilege of hiring more people to handle the workload. Challenging times call for more creativity and doing more with less. Even though I now have the title of Staff Engineer, I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing most of the time. But that's been my constant state; I'm kind of used to it now. I am still trying to help everyone, but I am also trying to focus more on myself. I am trying to learn how to be a better leader, mentor and engineer.

Five years ago I thought software engineering was just about writing code, and now I know it is not. It is about people, process and code. I am still learning how to be better at all of those things.

... year?

I don't know what the future holds, but I'm very grateful for all the opportunities I've had at Delivery Hero. I look forward to the next ... years.