Women in IT: Magda, the developer in the Rangers team
At Metapack, 30% of all employees are women, who hold various positions.One of such experts is Magda, who in the Rangers team codes, improves our product and does her best to meet the expectations of our customers. What does her job look like?
You have been working at Metapack for two years as a Software Engineer. What exactly is your team responsible for and what is your role in it?
In short, we are responsible for keeping our customers and respond to their needs. If, for example, a courier wants something else on a label or file with package data, we change it.
When it comes to the team, we have several developers and each of us has similar responsibilities – we just do what needs to be done at the moment, and these are very different things. From customer changes to product or code improvements. There is always a lot to do.
Who do you work with most closely?
With London. The product we’re responsible for is Delivery Manager. In Zielona Góra, we are the only team that maintains this product. We are responsible for the courier part, and London for the so-called ‘core’ used by retailers around the world. Daily cooperation, exchange of experiences and sharing knowledge are an essential part of our day, because we are working on the same product, but on different parts of it.
What are your biggest challenges? What is the most difficult and what is exciting about your job?
Certainly, new things are exciting – new possibilities, functionalities or improvements that we can introduce. There is always a thrill of excitement. However, the challenge is when something does not work and you need to fix it quickly. Time pressure is huge, because in production, each second costs thousands of dollars or pounds.
So this is a stressful job?
I can’t say yes because I’m never stressed at work. On the other hand, I wouldn’t call this work stress-free either, because what I do in the code can have a huge impact on what happens in production. One line of my code can make some packages get stuck somewhere.
What distinguishes Metapack from the point of view of a specialist, an expert who would like to work and develop here?
This is my first job in IT, so I don’t have a benchmark when it comes to tools elsewhere, but here the tools are definitely there and they allow us to do whatever we want to do. We are not limited by the lack of any program or specific tool. It is also convenient that if something is missing or a new solution appears that will improve our work, there’s no problem to implement it in our daily work.
When it comes to aspects other than technologies, I definitely feel taken care of here as an employee. I know that my employer cares about me and my knowledge. I am not afraid that I will do something wrong and I will be fired immediately, we focus on open communication with the leader.
Are you already thinking about getting promoted and further development within Metapack?
I don’t think about it yet, because I’m very happy with what I’m doing now. Even though I have been working here for two years, I still have a lot to learn. Every day you can find some new thing that you haven’t heard about yet. It takes a long time to understand 100% of our product. For now, I am focusing on this – to get to know this product and learn it on a regular basis.
How did you react to working remotely? Are you one of those who prefer pyjamas and work from home or do you miss the office?
I am definately a domestic animal, I like to wear sweatpants (laughs). It suits me that I can get up, walk away from the computer, pet my cats, but there is also no contact with people. I think it would be ideal to work from home four days a week, and come to the office for one day, do the necessary meetings and talks. I think such a hybrid would be the best, because contact is also important.
How do you cope with remote work? Did the projects suffer, or maybe they sped up?
From what we hear, we are more agile in remote work, we do things faster. There are also no problems due to the lack of communication, because this communication is between us all the time. We have daily meetings, we see each other every day, we hear each other every day, we have communicators, where we can talk, exchange comments and observations. If someone has a bug, there will always be someone there to help.
I think it works well for us, we coped with it. Certainly it took some getting used to at the beginning, but we established some procedures over time and now it’s good.
