Do you want to go for a full stack engineer job or want to be a programmer in a company, and want to know the life of another fellow engineer, or want to feel how it will be like for you?
In this short blog, I am going to talk about what I do on a daily basis as a full stack engineer at a startup. I will highlight some important skills that you will need while working as a programmer.
Let’s dive right in!
What Will You Learn?
Full Stack Engineer Task List
As a full stack engineer at a startup there are some tasks that I have to perform on a daily basis. I must do some list of tasks to be relevant in my job and to contribute value to my company.
There is a list of tasks that I must do –
- Building features – Frontend and Backend
- Debugging existing code
- Testing applications
- Learning new technologies
They are not in the order of importance. All of them are important!
How do I perform each task on a daily basis?
Let’s discuss each of them one by one. Let’s start with building.
Building features
Building software is the first thing they hired me for. They wanted me to build their software.
As it is a software hosted on web, I need to work on both – frontend and backend.
Both parts need to be built simultaneously to make sure the software is able to provide data and interface.
While backend is more focused on scalability and reusability, the frontend has heavy logics implemented. As the software needs to work in automation, we need to make things as much dynamic as possible.
Which takes a lot more than what I am usually aware of by working in my college projects!
Building new features require knowledge of existing code and writing scalable code for further improvement in future.
But as a human, I make mistakes in code, so I regularly debug them as well.
Debugging
As a software engineer, it is my job to debug the already existing code base to make sure everything works as intended.
As we code, it is always easy to make mistakes, and I have seen no matter how good you think you have done it. Later, when requirements change you will see bugs in those same codes that you were proud of.
So, instead of perfection I try to keep the requirements in mind and build the things. Later, that needs to be more dynamic, then we have to change it again.
It could be different for other companies, but in my company the requirements change a bit for every new client. As a new company we need to cope with the changes and proceed to deliver more better customer-centric solution.
As a full stack engineer, I must test the application keeping multiple situations and use-cases in mind, otherwise the whole application may crash!
Testing
Testing is the last and most important thing that we must do. Testing takes much longer than building the stuff itself!
In testing I find some bugs in the code, through testing the application with different scenarios I try to make the feature more robust and secure against possible errors.
Testing involves understanding the requirements, breaking it into small pieces and testing each small part. This is also known as unit testing.
Although there are many different tests, we usually do unit testing a lot.
As a full stack engineer, it is my responsibility to make sure the application works the way it was built for.
Sometimes I have to learn new design patterns so that they become more optimized and scalable on a longer run.
Learning
As I do my job, I also work on side projects. Right now, I am learning langchain, react etc. which are used in my job.
As I learn, I know new ways of doing the same thing with more optimized and secure code.
I also work on projects that are not totally related to my work but help me strengthen my basics, e.g. right now I am working on a web server using C, which might seem totally useless… But helps me grow as an engineer and a problem solver.
As a full stack engineer, it is not my job to learn one programming language and just be good at it, but to be someone who can take any problem with the ability to choose the right tool in hand and solve it.
Conclusion
I talked about some of things that I have to do on a daily basis as a full stack engineer. There are many other things that I have to do, but I have pointed out the main technical aspects of my job.
Though there is one thing that I always keep in mind, to deliver the things expected of me, I communicate with my manager, ask questions if confused and ask my teammates for help if stuck at anywhere.
This is important as I accept that I don’t know everything – and something that I think is right, might not be the best solution, which could be pointed out by my teammates or manager. Communication is important!
Liked this blog? You can read my next blog here which talks about how to improve at workplace.
Want to get updates directly from me? Connect with me on LinkedIn (26) Arup Jana | LinkedIn.
