Eu-Loong

Introduce yourself to our community!

Hi I’m Eu-Loong, I’m originally from London and did a career change from Investment Banking into coding last year where I attended a Full Stack coding bootcamp and applied to Thoughtworks (TW) as a graduate developer consultant in Oct 2019. I joined remote Thoughtworks University (TWU) APAC in April 2020 as part of TWU #70.

How much coding experience did you have before attending TWU?

I completed a 9 week Full Stack Web Development bootcamp with Le Wagon here in Melbourne in June 2019 and continued my self study until I started with TW.

Before attending TWU I had to complete a coding assignment to assess my level of coding knowledge and working practices. You get assigned a reviewer from your office who helps to provide feedback and passes on their assessment to the TWU core team.

One of things I found reassuring was that you are not judged on your coding background and the focus is on your potential as a developer and how you can become a better developer.

How did you adapt to remote learning for TWU?

In terms of my physical setup, I had to make sure that I had a good chair and that my screens were at the right level as I knew we would be in front of the screen for most of the day. I was lucky that I could use my spare room as an office so having a quiet space away from distractions is highly recommended for learning. I also made sure that I could tether to my phone for the times when my internet connection was a bit unreliable.

I had already gone through remote onboarding at TW the week before TWU and this was a good way to practise using Zoom and working with others remotely.

How would you describe your experience at remote TWU?

It was challenging and intense but fun and rewarding.

The week before TWU was spent onboarding - getting our laptops set up and gaining access to the team resources online whilst balancing this with the first week of remote induction at TW.

As part of TWU APAC my cohort consisted of trainees from Australia, Singapore and China. Trainees in North America, Latin America, Europe and India were in a separate cohort. To match up time zones between Australia, China and Singapore we started at 10am and normally finished around 6:30pm.

We all worked as part of a cross functional agile team consisting of a mix of Developer (Devs), Business Analysts (BAs), Experience Designers (XD) and Quality Assurance (QA).

Each team had two go-to trainers, normally a BA/QA trainer and a Dev trainer. Different trainers would also pair when delivering the lectures and it was a really good way to see pairing in action.

The daily routine normally consisted of a TWU wide lecture in the morning followed by hands-on lessons in our teams and then we would spend the rest of our day working on our client engagement project.

We had regular breaks during lessons and used Zoom for all of our meetings and lessons, the core TWU team put a lot of effort into making the content remote friendly and leveraged the tools available in Zoom.

In our teams we also would organise team activities after hours to help connect and for team building. Also in our end of day team sessions we shared our personal journeys to TWU, it was a really good way to gain some insights into everyone’s backgrounds.

How did remote TWU benefit you as a Consultant?

It helped me to practice patience and active listening.

When pairing remotely you can’t point to the part of the screen you’re talking about or rely on non-verbal cues as when you are physically co-located.

We all had to be understanding and made use of tools such as on-screen annotations in Zoom and to make sure we were specific in our verbal descriptions.

Even though we didn’t have the full fidelity experience of travelling to India or China,  I was still able to build a strong relationship with my team and we still chat remotely.

What have you been up to since finishing TWU?

Well, it’s been pretty busy!

After a few days after returning from TWU I went straight onto a 3 week Infrastructure and Data fundamentals course to learn about AWS, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes, Python, Data Science, Data Engineering and Machine Learning.

I’ve also been continuing my self-study on Java and Test Driven Development (TDD).

There have also been remote catch-ups with other TWers and getting involved with various grad activities.

What are your tips for any Graduate starting their career remotely?

• Be proactive!
• It’s just too easy to blend into the background whilst working in the current remote situation (you can’t even go to meet someone face to face for a coffee).
• Make yourself visible by getting in touch with people to build your network within the company - book catch-ups with them and ask them about their experience at the company. If there’s something you don’t know or are unsure about, just ask; people will be always willing to help.
• Volunteer your time to help out on activities and ask to shadow or pair with someone on a piece of work.
• Lastly, if you see things that need improving - make some suggestions or build your own solutions!