A day in the life of a developer

What does it actually mean to be a developer in a small agency?

We heard from Cameron at Biteable and Beth at Ionata Digital on what their days look like.

Beth starts out her day in a standup meeting. The team informally chats about what they did yesterday, what they achieved, what blockers they experienced – that is, if anything is stopping them from getting the job done. “And then we kind of discuss what we’re going to do today,” Beth says.

For Beth, who is a front end developer, what she is going to do that day, depends on the project, which might mean design and wireframing, or meetings, or building a new website. “Whatever’s needed. I’m pretty autonomous,” Beth says.

Cameron sees his role as mostly about helping people, so that’s how he focuses his day – whether those people are customers or members of his team. He usually starts out making contact with the team to find out what people need. “If the designers need help doing something, I will help them out will try to work to identify any issues for our users.”

Cameron is a programmer, and his role involves supporting the Biteable software and working out any issues, as well as development of new functionality.

So what does this mean day-to-day?

“As a front end developer I build the stuff the users see. I wouldn’t call myself a designer, but I do a bit of interface design. I mainly implement a design, implement workflows and build apps. So it depends what stage we are in.” Whatever it is, it’s all in a day’s work.

NB: Biteable is a company that provides simple, video-making software that was founded in Hobart. Find out more about Biteable. Ionata is a web and digital development company, see more info about Ionata Digital.

If you’d like to spend your days the same way, here’s some more information we have pulled together about training to become a software developer.