A day in the life of a Software Engineer

Welcome to our ‘A Day in the Life’ series. Each month, we’ll chat with a Mention Me employee to find out more about their role and what it entails, (as well as potentially unearth a fun fact or two!).

This month's interviewee is Gabriel, a member of the Engineering team.

Can you tell us about your typical day?

Every day is different, but it always starts with a refreshing morning cycle to the office.

My day begins with a stand-up meeting, where we discuss plans for the day, project timelines and the progress on each of our initiatives. Some of my current projects include customer conversion and internationalisation.

Around 12pm, I’ll break for lunch to catch up with colleagues and relax before getting on with more work in the afternoon. Typically I work alone, coding, or with fellow engineers, reviewing or discussing each other’s work. I also work closely with the QA team and attend regular planning meetings.

The day at Mention Me normally finishes off with a fun activity: on Mondays a bunch of us play rounders; on Tuesdays I head out with Running club. Then there’s squash club, pilates and company drinks once a month, too.

What is the best thing about the job?

For me, the best thing is how we work. It’s very open and transparent, and everyone’s ideas are listened to. A key aspect of working at Mention Me is feeling like I’m making a real difference.

What skills are needed to do your job effectively?

There are two sides to the job. One is the technical skills: php, javascript, git, git hub, phpstorm, jenkins. The other is the soft skills: communicating with the team (directly or on slack) and clients, being creative and taking initiative.

Which teams do you work closely with?

I work closely with the Product and Design teams on new features, and help the Customer Support team resolve technical issues.

How do you measure success in your job?

Success is the number of features I’ve deployed and the quality of the code I’m writing – it needs to be clear for people to understand.

We track every feature on cards in Pivotal-Tracker and are given a raffle ticket for every card we complete. At the end of the year, we do the raffle with different prizes; last year I won a £70 Amazon voucher.

What sort of company is Mention Me to work for?

It’s very colourful! But primarily it’s an open and transparent place to work. We discuss budgets and targets for the year in monthly company meetings, celebrate success together and discuss issues as they arise.

Ultimately, it’s a fun place to be; we have houses, company away days, donut coffees, lunches and more.

Which client is your favourite brand you work with and why?

This is quite tricky to answer as my role is resolving customer issues. I like all our clients; they all have great products and believe in powering new customer acquisition through referral.

What were you doing before you joined Mention Me?

I worked in a similar engineering role as the lead developer at another SaaS business.

What is your most memorable moment at Mention Me?

Definitely the laser tag game during our spring Mention Me away day! It was brilliant to see everyone excited and compete against the other houses.

What’s your guilty pleasure?

My guilty pleasure is simple: a good cup of coffee with sugar.