Teamwork makes the dream work –
Lukas´ first weeks at Dotbite

Oh yes, we start super cheesy in this blog. But guess what – this sentence is from our team member Lukas. He is the guy in this photo, already part of the Dotbite Dev Crew for half a year, and an absolutely great guy.

We asked Lukas to tell us about his start at Dotbite so that other people could gain insight into what it feels like to start working here. We started with his very first day. So, let’s have a look at what he has to say there.

“Lukas, how was your first day here?”

“Well, first of all, it was super exciting. I was a bit nervous – just like you are every time you start a new job – and since I knew the founders before, I already had an idea of how it would be.” He goes on to say that he was welcomed by Tina, the HR Manager (you probably figured it out by now, yes, that’s me), who gave him another overview of Dotbite’s story. After that, he got all the links and accesses, and approximately after an hour, he already started getting into the project he would then work on. “It was hilarious because, after lunchtime, I was already coding – I think this was the first time I became part of a project so fast!”. When I asked him what his first impression of the team was, he answered, “authentic, super nice, and welcoming new ideas from the start.” I know, I know, stop it.

“Right, Lukas, enough with the cheesiness. How does your team work together?”

He takes a sip from his coffee and says, “Well, in the beginning, we had 2-weekly sprints for this project – we created them with scrum planning poker, so you already had fun there, then we decided on how much time the ticket would take together and split them up between my colleagues and me. Every day, we have a stand-up meeting in the morning to catch up so that everyone who needs help can ask for it immediately. After some time, it was a bit trickier to work on the tickets separately since some of them were linked together. We then decided to cancel the 2-weeks-sprints and work on daily tasks. We also have an internal test system because we know that the more you test before you deploy it, the better.”

Lukas smiles. „Also, I really like to work in this team. There is always the possibility to get help from my colleagues, start a spontaneous brainstorming session to fix a problem, give each other honest feedback and fix a bug while pair programming – four eyes just see more than two!”

Speaking of bugs…

Working at Dotbite means that you also face challenges from time to time. Just like in development in general (you know what I am talking about). So that’s why I was curious about what kind of challenges Lukas had initially. “Well, honestly, I hadn’t worked with Laravel before, so the month before I started here, I tried to learn as much as possible about it. I also started a side project with VueJS and Laravel so I could learn it on the go – and when I started at Dotbite, the learning curve was extremely steep since I started working on the project right away and learned so much by just doing it.” He also told me about a big challenge for him regarding his first project at Dotbite – implementing cryptocurrency as a payment system. He had never done anything like that before but was super excited since he had invested a little in Bitcoin and was very interested in this payment method. The challenge was to program the system without the possibility of testing it in between. When he finally got the opportunity to try it out, he “was so nervous, I can’t even tell. But it all worked out fine. I got the opportunity to do something I had no experience in at all. The team trusted that I would be able to find a way. And I did. That was just awesome!” 

Sounds good?

When you are thinking now, that sounds good, but I am not sure I could do that – we really think you can. Why? Because when I ask Lukas what helped him a lot when he started working at Dotbite, he mentions online tutorials, dev blogs, trying things out, and getting help & knowledge from his colleagues. “When you really want to learn something, you can!”

And speaking about the team, he mentions that, on the one hand, we all have different experiences and skills, and on the other hand, we simultaneously complement each other, especially regarding the personal side. For example, we eat lunch together and joke around, play FIFA from time to time in the office after hours, discuss important work topics openly and give honest feedback. “The feeling that we are a team and work together on our objectives, not against each other, is a huge deal here. I think that makes Dotbite work so well!”

“Lukas, do you have any tips for a new team member joining Dotbite?” He smirks: “Not really regarding Dotbite, but for everyone out there starting a new job – be authentic, don’t stress about things that are not important, and stay focused when you work!”

Anything else to say here? “My time at Dotbite so far has been exciting and challenging; I learn something new every day, and I have found new friends!”

Thanks, Lukas!

By the way – in case you are now interested in becoming part of the team, we are always hiring 😉