Growing at Harled

How we have fostered a culture of growth from day one at Harled.
David Nguyen
David Nguyen
September 15, 2022

One of the greatest benefits of working here at Harled is the endless opportunities it gives you to grow as an individual and as a software developer. Everyone here wants to see their fellow coworkers flourish and go on to accomplish great things. To achieve that goal, we have several activities and practices in place to help promote self growth.

Joining the Team

As a new employee here, you will be given a mentor who will guide you with your onboarding process. They will be responsible for showing you how to use our internal tools and navigate through the codebase. This will ensure you will be brought up to speed quickly and set up for success. One of my favourite onboarding processes is the pair programming sessions I have everyday with other junior or senior developers. Not only does it allow you to learn from each other and bounce ideas, but it will give you a chance to socialize and get to know your coworkers.

New Challenges and Opportunities

Working at a startup like Harled definitely has its challenges but that is what elevates you to the next level. Being a small company, you are required to wear many different hats to get the job done. In the first month that I have been here, I had countless different challenges thrown at me. The first two week, I was part of the Quality Assurance team, creating unit tests to increase the codebase test coverage. The following two week, our team pushed some mega changes to the codebase and I was responsible for finding and fixing bugs. And now we are onto our next objective, creating new features requested by our project owner. All this chaos in the span of less than 6 weeks of being here. The constant change requires you to always be on your toes and to be able to quickly adapt to the new situation. As stressful as the situation was, I can say with confidence that everyone on the team became a better developer and better at dealing with challenges because of it.

Growing Together

Once a week, the team gets together for a Learn-Create-Teach (LCT) session, where we use this time to learn and to share that knowledge with others. Topics can range from the latest and greatest technologies or to more general information like how to become more productive. Alongside these LCT sessions, we also set goals for ourselves that we try to achieve over a 4 month period. You'll have a goal for each of the stakeholders: professional (yourself), organization (Harled) and client (RCAF). These activities will give you the opportunity to take a break from your day to day tasks and focus on yourself so that you can become a better developer.

Are you looking to join a team that believes deeply in growth and continuous improvement? If so, please take a moment to review our current opportunities to see if there is a fit for you!

We hope you've found this post helpful! If you have any feedback please reach out on X and we would be happy to chat. 🙏

About the author

David Nguyen

David is a Civil Engineer turned Full Stack and Lead Developer based out of Mississauga, ON.