10 in 5. Åsa Palholmen, Developer

Some people still think developers are loners that sit in a dark corner, coding away in solitude, however that is not how we do things here at Humblebee. Communication is key for all our product teams, especially if you want to grow and improve, just like our very own Åsa who went from HIVE student to being a full-time bee!

1. Hi Åsa! How are you?
   Good! I have been a bit stressed since we had a big deadline 3 weeks ago, we managed to finish the project in time so now I am calmer.
2. Oh that's good well done! So what do you do at Humblebee?
   I work as a developer and have worked in a big project for a client the past 2 years helping them with their client portal.
3. Can you tell us exactly what a Developer at Humblebee does?
   We are all in different projects, but we also collaborate with other developers, UX designers, Product designers, so we discuss solutions with the whole team, how to solve the development of the system in the best way.
4. How come you ended up working with Development?
   It was a strange journey! My dad has worked as a programmer for a long time. My little brother and my partner are also programmers, so I am surrounded by them! But I was heading towards becoming a teacher, stuff happened, and I realised that it was the wrong path. I saw Avatar and decided that I wanted to be a 3D-Artist and became that. I worked with that for a bit but got tired of it and then my partner recommended front end development. I had gone to an IT high school, so I knew I liked HTML and CSS. I started to learned JavaScript and really liked it. I got into HIVE and after that was offered a job at Humblebee!
5. Tell us about one project you’re particularly proud of…
   We have worked in a team to simplify a workflow that is very complex! In the old system there were 5 flows of ordering, but now we have gotten it down to 2! At first, I worked a long time with maintenance of an old system. When we got a go for rebuilding, I got involved in a lot of design sprints seeing as I’ve had to learn how the old system was set-up. I was able to contribute and be a part of the decision-making process for the new system, ensuring it meets all the old demands.
6. Do you have one good tip for a tool you love, or perhaps a book or resource you highly recommend?
   Mostly I recommend just talking about stuff, communicating with everyone and trying to ask for help if you are stuck! But there is this Youtube channel that I like, it’s a woman who explains JavaScript in a very simple and fun way.
7. What do you do to make sure you continue to grow as an expert within Development?
   My way has been to communicate a lot, we have been a good team that have managed to solve a lot of things together. We have done a lot of pair-programming and I have learned a lot from the other developer, it is always good to discuss and see how other people solve problems. I have also talked a lot about programming with my partner seeing as he’s been working for a long time in this industry, and we have both worked from home a lot due to the pandemic.
8. How do you think Development will evolve in the future?
   Good question! In some way it’s going towards less code, that’s my understanding. But there will always be a demand for developers out there when the programming language will develop. Maybe it will go more toward 3D on the web, I hope so, then I can combine my interests. It will be exciting to see what happens in the future!
9. Do you have any advice for people starting out their career and considering Development?
   It’s good to be questioning! Asking why to do things in certain ways and asking for help if you don’t understand. Start looking at stuff and testing things out for yourself, looking at Youtube channels and such for tips and tricks.
10. If you could give a company one piece of advice (from a dev perspective)… perhaps a recurring error you have seen from your career… what would that be?
    I have talked a lot with both my team and Carl Niklasson (Humblebee's Cloud architect) as well as other people, and something to consider and that is important is to make it clear from the start how the data looks like. If not, everyone will have different models and different understanding for what is needed. It might be that big companies need more IT-architects that can understand and map how different systems should work together with front-end and backend to solve the user needs.

If you’re interested in working at Humblebee then get in touch and we’ll meet up for coffee and a chat.