Working at callstats.io as a frontend engineer is my first real software job, though I’ve worked on my own projects ever since I started programming three or four years ago.
My Background as a Student in Helsinki
I graduated from high school in Vantaa, Finland in 2017. I spent the past year in Finland’s conscription military service, where I had a pretty cool gig: me and three other young developers worked on a 3D simulation game to train future conscripts and army staff.
My most successful project outside of the military and callstats.io is a bot app called Countle that, over a year after its launch, still gets over 100,000 visitors a month. It is a bot that parses Reddit posts and comments looking for mentions of time associated with a timezone using regex and creates a countdown for the user. I used Python, Node.js, and PostgreSQL to create it.
Working at callstats.io on the Engineering Team
The transition from hobbyist programmer to startup software developer has been surprisingly smooth. Unexpectedly, working on my own projects and working at callstats.io has been quite similar. The main difference is that here I collaborate with a team of engineers, so I can’t (or don’t need to!) make all the decisions by myself.
At callstats.io, I spend most of my time working on the callstats.io dashboard. I’ve learned so much about React, Redux, and Django, all of which were new to me before I started. I have also learned a lot about software testing, especially unit testing and end-to-end testing. In particular, reviewing and reading other engineers code has been eye-opening. It’s awesome to see how other people code and build things.
This is also the first time I’m working with product managers and using project management tools like the kanban system, attending daily syncs, and using Clubhouse.
I’ve worked at callstats.io for two months, and will continue my internship until September. In September, I start my computer science studies at Aalto University in Finland.
Technical Components I Worked on this Summer at callstats.io
My work changes from week to week, and sometimes even day to day. The latest thing I have been working on is bug fixes. For example, today, I made a pull request for fixing a conditional validation issue. Luckily, this was a quick task, as my colleague and I immediately realized that the issue was in the calling order. This kind of work is interesting in its own way, as I get to experience different scenarios and different kinds of code. Plus, finding the fix is always rewarding.
Figure 1: callstats.io Dashboard Update Popup Banner
The first feature I deployed at callstats.io was a popup banner on the upper left corner of the dashboard. It reminds users with an older version of callstats.io to refresh to the latest version. Along with coding the banner, I got to design it and write it, too!
Figure 2: callstats.io Data Storage Location Selection Feature
So far I have not worked on larger entities by myself. The biggest project I’ve completed is the data storage location selection feature, which involved creating a popup and adding selection functionality to the settings page. The popup is conditional based on the users plan, so it either prompts you to upgrade your plan or select your data storage location. The selection is saved in the database. Accomplishing this involved creating new routes to our Django server, new React components for the popup and selection area, and a redux store to cache some of the information. The popup code is also reused in our demo app to prompt the user to sign up after certain actions and timers. This feature has been used by many of our customers, and it has been very rewarding to me to see that things I have built are being used and of help.
Balancing my Day Job at callstats.io with My Own Software Projects
I’m putting all of my newly acquired skills to good use and continuing to work on my own projects in the evenings and on weekends. I am currently working on a larger project, Duunli.com, a platform to help individuals employ other individuals on an ad-hoc basis. I’m happy with the progress I’ve made so far, though I am still looking for a better payment API for salary and tax transactions.
I am also looking forward to starting my university studies and student life on campus in September.
A notice to students and fresh graduates: callstats.io is hiring interns and junior developers. Send us your resume and lets chat!
