Ioana Nistor’s journey with our company started nine years ago. Since then, she has dedicated herself to crafting her professional path in software development while helping her teammates grow.
Get a glimpse #BehindTheCode. Read about Ioana’s career, the suite of projects she was working on, and get to know the team she’s leading.
Can you please tell us a bit about yourself? Your studies, hobbies, passions.
I graduated from the Computer Science department of the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. I am passionate about reading, and I am currently hooked on Agatha Christie’s books. I also enjoy playing video games and drawing. My other hobby is sketching. My current personal goal is to learn how to draw animals. It’s a self-learning project with lots of trials and errors, and of course lots of tutorials to watch.
Tell us a bit about your journey with our company. How did it start? What do you enjoy the most?
I joined the company in 2015 as a Junior Java Developer, and after a training period, I started working on a new project. I remember my first task like it was yesterday. It was an Excel file with around 200 test cases for which I needed to write tests. It took quite a while, but it really helped me understand the project.
In the beginning, working on the project was a real challenge for me, as we used a few technologies that I had never worked with before. However, my team members were very open and helpful. Whenever I had a question or needed further clarification, they didn’t hesitate to help me. Knowing someone would always have your back when you needed help was a great feeling.
The first big challenge we encountered on the project was when our client asked us to create a UI. We had a bit of experience in the team with Angular, but we are foremost Java back-end developers. During this time, I found out how challenging and rewarding creating a UI can be. I found out how hard it was to make everything look as requested and to find which libraries you should use when you have a lot of possibilities. But most of all, I found out how well a close team can work when we are under pressure and how rewarding it is to know that the last part of the code was merged and built and that the first version of the UI can GO LIVE.
A couple of years ago, my team leader decided to take a one-year break, and I was selected to replace him. I must admit that I was worried that I would not do well, but I quickly settled into the new role with support from my team and unit manager. It was a great experience for me, and I try to give the same support to my teammates to grow as well.
Tell us about one favorite project.
I’ve worked on several projects in the automotive industry. One of them collected and enriched vehicle data and offered some APIs for clients to search for vehicles, or data from vehicles using different criteria. Others were UIs used by the client to display and search for vehicles. And lastly, another project was used to manage translations for different countries.
What was the project’s tech stack like?
In the first project, we used ElasticSearch, Spring, Java 8 and 13, RabbitMq, MongoDB, Angular 9, Strapi, Git. For the two UIs, we used Strapi, Spring, Angular 10, GIT, Doker. And for the last one: MySQL, Angular 8, Spring, Doker.
What was your favorite thing about this project?
Besides the amazing team I was working with, I had the opportunity to learn new things continuously. I had never worked with most of the technology stacks we used. I had the opportunity to discover and learn about many new technologies, when I joined the project. I learned how hard it was to switch technologies and projects and to work on multiple projects. It was challenging but also rewarding.
What were the most challenging aspects of this project?
Switching between technologies and projects, for sure. The projects were pretty big, and while working on one, the others might have changed. Besides, we were currently upgrading to newer versions of the technology stacks, which always came with new challenges and unexpected issues. I was always looking forward to discovering them. 😊
How about the team? What traditions did you have?
My team had six members, including me. Most of my teammates joined the project at the beginning of their careers as junior developers. It is amazing to see how much my colleagues have grown. I think this was one of the best parts of being a team leader.
As I mentioned before, my team was fantastic. They would always put a smile on your face if you had a bad day. I can share with you a few of the team rituals we have:
- While we were at the office we used to host brainstorming sessions. If somebody faced a technical challenge, they wrote it on the whiteboard. Everybody would pay attention and throw some suggestions. That’s how our ad-hoc brainstorming sessions worked when we were at the office.
- We used to speak only English in the office, even when working from home. While none of us has problems writing and reading in English, speaking can be challenging for a few of my colleagues. That’s why we decided to speak only in English on certain pre-established days of the week or during time intervals set aside on such days.
- We had a favorite restaurant for client visits. When visiting a client in Germany, we always had dinner at the Greek restaurant that we found during one of our first visits.
- Colleagues from the office building often sought out my former team leader: they would check through the door’s window to see if he was in the office or ask one of us if we knew where he was. One of my teammates said it would be funny to create a cut-out of him and put it in his spot when he left. Although the idea seemed funny, in the end, we decided not to do that. But the cut-out idea remained in our minds. After many discussions, planning, and a voting session, we ended up with a cut-out of Deadpool in our office. Deadpool got the open tickets that nobody wanted. He was always eager to be assigned to any ticket that we didn’t find interesting.
Ioana, her team, and Deadpool “Who gets the open tickets that nobody wants”.
What’s next in your career journey, and what do you expect?
I want to become more involved with the architecture design of projects. I found this perspective very attractive for my career development. I’m also always eager to learn and work with new technologies. I am excited for the opportunities for growth that the integration with GlobalLogic and all the new communities and people that we will meet.