How did you land at your current company?

I work for a financial technology company that enables international money transfers—which is what helped me pay back my student loans while living abroad. To repay student loans, payments must be made via a bank transfer from an American bank account. After college, I moved to Germany, then Australia, and now I’m in the U.K. Throughout these moves, I’ve always needed a way to send money back to the U.S., and this company was always there to make it possible.

I came across a job posting for this company on LinkedIn, and noticed that someone I knew from a previous organization was working there. I was able to chat with her, and our conversation made me feel confident that it was the right fit for me.

In Australia, I had worked at design agencies, building websites for various companies. It was really cool, engaging, and fast-paced work, but the clients were mostly local. Because my current company enables international money transfers, it’s naturally a company with a global mindset. Having previously worked for a global organization, I had missed that international perspective. It was nice to find an opportunity that would get me back to that world.

Can you talk about what you do? What are the differences between agency and in-house web development?

I like codes and I like people, so I like using my understanding of computers to create products that people use and interact with. Some programmers will focus on the mechanics of the machine, but I’ve always been attracted to the parts of code that humans get to see.

In my role, I work on the front-end—the part of the website you see in your browser. This is separate from the back-end code that runs when you start a new transfer. That code handles tasks like talking with banks, deducting money, and managing account balances.

My focus is on ensuring a seamless user experience: how fast does the page load, and how intuitive is it to find and click the button that takes you to the next step in your process? I write HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and bits of other languages. I work with designers and product owners to figure out what makes the most sense for users. I sit in the middle of a variety of personalities, but I make sure I stay focused on the people who will ultimately be using the product.

Before this, I worked at agencies for a while. We would get a brief from a company saying, "Our website hasn’t been updated in 10 years, what should we do?" I worked at agencies who were particular about their design approach, and we would say to the customer, “We’re going to make sure you’ve thought about the people who are coming to your business and what they want.”

Design agencies can be stressful environments. In my current in-house role, we build a product and a system that creates ongoing revenue. We maintain it and add features to make sure people stay interested, but we create a thing that makes ongoing money.

When you work at an agency, revenue is directly tied to the hours you spend working on a project. When you’re not working on a project that someone is paying money for, your business isn’t making money, which can lead to a frantic atmosphere. You have to always have projects coming in and going out or the business could fall apart, which can create an unhealthy sense of urgency.

Switching to an in-house role offers space to think bigger and more long-term. When a company hires an agency to do a piece of work, they want to make sure their money is well-spent, so the focus is on delivering the outcomes of the current project and stopping there because the company isn’t paying for anything else.

In my current in-house position, my team and I have a bit more time and space to play with ideas, experiments, and iterations because we own the product for the long term.

How do you gain a deeper understanding of user needs?

Our designers conduct user testing, so I have trust in their process. When we’re developing a new product or layout, they'll create mockups in a design tool and then take them to a few actual users for feedback. Sometimes, that’s all you really need to do—you don't always need to talk to an exhaustive number of people to get the feedback you need. Getting that external validation is the most important aspect.

Another advantage of working in an in-house role is that I have more product data available to me. At a design agency, we might have been able to see existing website analytics, but that was it. Once we delivered a project, we were done with it, so we didn’t get to see the effects of our work.

In my current role, because we own the product long-term, I can monitor how users interact with it over time. I can see what changes users respond to and what they don’t, and then analyze why that might be. When you see that data changing over time, you’re able to revisit your assumptions, and you can use it to justify making a different decision or going in a new direction. This approach combines the power of data to identify important spaces you hadn’t considered with direct user feedback.

How did you get into web development?

I've always liked computers. I’ve liked the black-and-white nature of either the thing works or it doesn’t, which can sometimes be infuriating when you think it’s supposed to work, but it’s not working. But, at least you have that clear feedback.

At the same time, I like people and creating experiences for them. I like watching people interact with something I've built specifically for them.

I got into web development because of the short feedback loop between me making something and having it appear.

My career path actually started with Neopets, the website where you took care of a virtual pet. One feature on Neopets allowed users to create and customize shops to sell items. You could insert some HTML code into a box, which is where I began experimenting. I learned how to copy and paste snippets of code from other sites to add backgrounds, mouse-over effects, and images.

I then upgraded to customizing MySpace profiles. It was there that I really got into creating visual experiences for others.

How did you learn coding languages and technology?

I began with Neopets, teaching myself by copying and pasting code and following tutorials. When I advanced from customizing profiles to actually making websites, it was still just me in high school on my own, Googling how to do things.

I’ve always excelled and learned the most when I had a problem I needed to solve. For example, when I had to share meeting minutes with my Boy Scout group, I created a website for it. I also built my high school’s website to improve how information was distributed to students and parents. People needed a thing to exist, and I needed to learn how to make code solve this problem for them.

I got a degree in informatics, a newer program at my university within the school of library science. It focused on how people use information. There were some web development courses, but the program focused more on design research and information ethics.

There’s a notion that the classes I took in university weren’t marketable skills, but I felt lucky that everything I learned was very applicable. There was an academic element to it, and my professors were the ones researching how our relationship with technology is evolving. They explored questions like: How do we think about the world differently with all these new ways to get information? How does that change the way we structure our lives? I gained concrete benefits that I’ve been able to apply in a business setting.

After finishing my degree, I worked at an international organization for a few years, which was a mix of things including web development, fixing printers, setting up email marketing, and setting up the five-year vision for the IT organization. Each of these tasks was very useful, especially the latter, as it taught me how to think long-term, make a plan, and organize people effectively.

When I finished that, I transitioned to a full-time web development role. I’d say all of my hard skills were self-taught.

There’s a suite of tools built on top of JavaScript, like React, Vue, and Angular, that make front-end development easier and faster. Initially, I struggled to grasp these tools when learning them theoretically. But once I understood the core concepts and could relate them to solving real problems, everything connected. Similar to my desire to build websites to solve a problem, I was able to connect a problem I wanted to solve with this method, everything clicked into place, and it all made sense. I was flying through ideas that were previously difficult.

What do you like the least about front-end web development?

I spend most of my energy on a specific part of building the product, but that doesn’t mean I’m incapable of doing other parts of the work, like back-end development, database management, or the more nitty-gritty number-crunching aspects of the code. When things get busy, I’ll pitch in and help with areas I’m less confident in, because that’s just part of the job.

This reflects how I generally approach problems. I tend to get hyper-focused on the small details, which can sometimes get in the way of making a thing that’s good enough for the moment. It’s difficult for me to say a task is finished when I know there are still unresolved problems.

There will always be problems—software is never perfect, and accepting that can be a struggle for me. However, I’ve grown in happiness as a developer when I learned to accept that it’s my job to figure out why the thing doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. Sometimes that’s really challenging. When you’re growing as a developer, there’s a line between trying solving the problem independently and knowing when it’s time to ask for help.

What do your next steps look like?

The important thing for me is to stay connected to the people whose problems I’m solving, no matter the role I’m in. I think I could excel in leading a team. I want to make a bigger impact on whatever I'm trying to do. I recognize that, as an individual, I can only have so much of an impact, but I can do a lot more by being a force multiplier for others. When you can unblock people and support them to work together towards one single big idea, you can have a much bigger impact.

What career advice would you give to others?

For the budding software developer, it’s important to accept that errors are a part of the job.

Take time to pay attention to yourself. What makes you happy in your job? This might include tasks or hard skills, but also learn to listen to yourself about the type of team dynamics you like to work within. Do you prefer working alone or collaborating with others? How much do you like having a clear goal, versus more open-ended exploration?

Learn to be introspective about those aspects. You won’t trip and fall into the perfect job—you need to know what you're looking for so you can go out and find it.