Welcome to “DeCoding the Journey,” our exciting blog series focusing on the vibrant experiences of our tech grads at Delivery Hero. In this edition, Markus shares his journey of the first 90 days as a junior data engineer.
The First 30 Days: Learning and Adapting
✨ The Welcome
Hey, I’m Markus, 33 years old. I recently graduated from a Data Analytics Bootcamp in March 2023. In September ‘23 I started my role as a Data Engineer in the Tech Grad Program.
My journey began with an incredibly friendly and open-armed ‘Welcome at Delivery Hero’ kickstart session. I was blown away by the positive energy that Andrea, the main moderator of the day, had. This felt like home right away. I was looking forward to meeting more people like her. This didn’t feel like work, this was pure joy! After receiving my hardware and setup instructions it was time to meet my new manager. Walking down the hallways of the building and seeing all the other employees working on all kinds of projects at their desks and whiteboards was stunning. I was hooked from the get-go.
🛝 The Learning Curve
The other side of the medal was the technical side. Countless new tools, unlimited unknown abbreviations and technical terms. Only having a 9-week Bootcamp education and almost no other Data Engineer related knowledge or working in the field experience made me feel super intimidated.
The phrase ‘I’m trying to achieve XYZ, I have an idea of what I need, but don’t know how to do it. Could you please give me some guidance on how to get there?’ quickly became my last resort on a daily basis when I tried to set up my Visual Studio Code, GitHub or any other tool that I’ve never worked with to the extent that I needed to from now on.
The crazy part was that everybody, without any exception, was extremely kind and helpful. This made me feel a lot more secure to ask questions. Heck even repeating the same damn question multiple times when I didn’t understand the explanation.
My favorite part about the Company is the people. Even though it was really hard at first to leave my ego at the doorstep and to be humbled every day, the people especially my personal mentor Salih helped me to adopt a productive learning mindset.
Days 31-60: Contributing and Collaborating
It wasn’t long before I started to work on my first small project. Setting up the repository on my local machine, using all the required tools and creating a small successful unit test. Damn was that exciting when it worked! It gave me a huge boost in confidence and showed me that I can make it in the company and my new tech career ❤️
Being a part of a collaborative team environment is exciting. Everybody works together and on their own at the same time. Contributing to a bigger goal of creating a new API felt very fulfilling. Seeing how the senior engineers could solve problems in the blink of an eye effortlessly was insanely inspiring. It gave me a goal and motivated me to give it my all on a daily basis and learn as much as possible. The positive feedback from my colleagues was a helpful reinforcement along the way.
Days 61-90: Growing and Impacting
The 90-day mark approached, and so did the presentation date of my starter project that I had to present in front of all of my fellow tech grads and their mentors and managers. It summarized what the tech grads and I achieved along our journeys. Oh boy was that impressive! I kept improving my unit testing skills and managed to implement an automated unit testing feature that would get triggered whenever someone made a change to our API and commit that to GitHub to ensure that the code was working as intended. I was so proud and happy!
This project was helpful in teaching me the basics that I would need to continue growing within the company. It equipped me with a toolbox to become more independent while working on more difficult tasks. My next goal is to get promoted to the IC2 level, taking on more responsibility and having a bigger impact on the company.
Conclusion
Looking back at these first 3 months it was unbelievably scary to overcome all these obstacles. Imposter syndrome and I had an almost daily get-together. I was worried frequently that the dream of working for Delivery Hero as a Data Engineer would end; it felt too good to be true. Luckily that day never came and I just passed my probation period. Compared to who I was when I started in September 2023 I would say that I’m a lot more confident in my ability to learn anything and apply my skills in a way that pushes the company forward, one small step at a time 🙂
Interested in kickstarting your tech career with us? Check out our Tech Grad Program. We’d love to have you on board for an amazing experience ahead.
