I’m a JavaScript developer, working as a software engineer at Tanda, based in Brisbane. I started during the Winter Internship (Winternship), and was offered a job towards the end of my 4 week internship.

During my time there, I worked on the new time clock, which we’ve now got released both for Android and iOS. My part of the work was on backend services. Reliability and stability were my main concern. This was a unique take for me, previously working for Digital8, a digital agency (a great bunch of people, too, if you need some solid web devs).

There is a huge difference between working for a digital agency and working on a product. When working at an agency, you’re part of someone else’s team. You’re outsourced to work, usually solo, on someone else’s product, almost certainly from an office without the rest of your “team”. It’s great experience, and an amazing learning opportunity, but I’m an undergraduate BEng. I’m a leader by nature, and work much better as part of a team, especially when the calibre of the team was as high as I had during the winternship.

I enjoy the process of going through the product, gathering data about usage and anylysing it to find ways to make our customer happier. I enjoy the opportunity to iterate over time, and continually improve. I also, and most importantly, enjoy working closely together in a team with other people in the same office, also working toward the same end goal.

Even if we’re often working on different things, the end goal is the same. We’re all working on the same product, and continually iterating, analysing and discussing the same things. Being able to talk over concepts with the guy next to me, and not have to fill him in on the entire project before he can validate (or, invalidate) my idea.

I’ll leave it at - Agency work is great. You get to work on a lot of different stuff, with a lot of different people. You get to learn the ins and outs of client relations, and how to handle conflict resolution. But product is a much, much better fit for me. It’s certainly not for everyone. A great majority of people love agency work, and even freelancing.

But, for me - Product is where it’s at, and I couldn’t be happier with the product I’m working on, or the team I’m working on it with.