Working at Carpages!

May 2, 2015 - By

For just over a year now I’ve been working as a front-end developer at Carpages.ca. With the new job came several other life upgrades. Bring on the bullet list! 

  • I left my previous job as the Lead Front End Developer of an agency, and immediately felt like a junior! I underestimated how much I had to learn, but it’s been a blast!
    • Key front-end learning in: OOCSS, Twig, command line, Git, advanced scss, Grunt, Bower, naming conventions, and Atlassian tools (JIRA, Stash, Bamboo, Confluence)
  • Carpages IT is doing stuff as advanced as anything I hear of anywhere. When I read the front-end workflow from companies like GitHub, Trello, or others I’m impressed that we’re actually able to keep up in modern workflows and tools (small teams can be very spry!)
  • In my first few months I struggled to leave work on time – after over 4 years of long hours and stressful deadlines it’s as though I was wired to stay late, even needlessly out of habit.
  • Likewise, my weekends felt like frequent vacations. The key difference it seems in product development vs agency is how easy it can be to leave work behind.
    • Being able to make weekend plans in advance still feels like a super power.
  • Key decision makers let all voices be heard. Ideas are listened to and tried, and the voices of subject matter experts online are respected and considered.
  • As we control the end-product, we control the deadline; so informed decisions based on actual work and quality do control this primarily, as opposed to a marketing deadline. This is the slayer of most stress, but the biggest potential pitfall to keep an eye on.
  • Having a predictable and consistent work life balance has allowed me to take on a lot more outside of work. A couple noteworthy items include more volunteering in my church’s web ministry, and being able to take part in a short term missions trip.
  • My role has slowly and naturally been evolving, often times my workload looks more like a product manager than more familiar designer/developer territory. Through the leadership at work I’m being shown I have skills I didn’t know about!
  • I love commuting! The drive had scared me into staying put longer than it should have.
  • COFFEE. The bitter brew is a bit of a team hobby that I couldn’t enjoy before. Big changes in stress and bean make this treat possible for me now!

Carpages has been an amazing experience, one that is benefitting me and my family greatly. After a post like this it would be wrong to not share a link to the jobs posting site 😉

jobs.carpages.ca

 

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This post was written by ArleyM