Zello! How The CODE Review Landed Me a Dream Job In Berlin

I am bad at naming things. I can’t think of a better title for this post! At Zalando, most of the names begin with a ‘Z’. Hence the title 😛

Copying these lines from my previous post:

Meanwhile, I had applied for Zalando in October 2015. After visiting Berlin for the first time in September 2015 (diversity scholarship recipient for JSConfEU), I had made up my mind to take up a job in Berlin (I badly wanted to be in this city, I wanted a job here, Berlin is so beautiful. It seemed just perfect to be living here). The week before flying to Singapore, I had completed all my technical interviews for Zalando through Skype. The results were expected when I was in Singapore. My joy knew no bounds when I received the much awaited positive response from Zalando. The whole process was so well organized, from the interviews to the relocation assistance, everybody involved did a commendable job. Presently, I am “onboarded” at Zalando, and I am loving every single day. #ILikeMyNewJob

So let me start about Zalando & me, from Day#1.

Here is the newsletter which I received from Women Who Code on 15.10.2015. Zalando’s advertisement in the ’employment opportunities’ section caught my attention.

Join Zalando — Europe’s largest online fashion platform — as a Backend Engineer. Code Java, Python, or Scala in Berlin, Dublin, or Helsinki!

Upon browsing through the various job openings at Zalando, I found it suitable to apply for this position. The ‘What you can expect from us’ section was of special interest to me and I found this to be a really cool job ad :). Relocation assistance, personal branding, hack weeks, tech talks etc, this job ad, according to me, was a match made in heaven and I was few steps away grabbing my dream job.

Most importantly, Zalando’s work culture was ideal. The concept of radical agility (purpose, autonomy, and mastery) was the driving factor while submitting my job application.

I had my first interview with Diana Caamano Serna (Tech Recruiter Specialist) followed by a tech screening interview, after a couple days and lastly, a detailed 3 hour technical interview (with a break of 5-7 minutes in between). Diana was always there to answer all my queries. Also, thanks to Isabelle Mettler and team (Town house management) for always being kind to offer help and respond to my mails well on time. The interviews and the relocation assistance were well-organized.

Currently, I am being “onboarded” (a 4-week mentoring program to all the newbies at Zalando). Every day has been exciting, the on-boarding crew is at its best. All the newbies work on a project (each one gets to pick an interesting project) and at the end of 4 weeks, share our learnings with the others. The goal is to have learned something new and interesting in these 4 weeks and to have fun and enjoy Zalando’s work culture – “Purpose, Autonomous and Mastery“.

My interests are “Perceptual Computing”, “D3.js”, “Teaching/ Speaking at conferences / Conducting workshops”, “IOT” and “JAVASCRIPT”! What’s exciting to me is that I have already found out to be doing all these things at my new work-place. How cool is that?!

I will be speaking on “Natural user interfaces using JavaScript” at JSConfBP, Budapest 2016. The “Employer Branding” team at Zalando is dedicated to encourage and offer support for such work. I spoke to the “Tech Innovation Lab” team today and inquired about getting to work with some of the hardware devices. The reply was affirmative plus they asked me for my interests in conducting workshops and I said a ‘YES’. I am looking forward for some great knowledge sharing through the internal “Tech Academy”. More work on this might happen shortly in the coming days.

One of my main goals for this year is to build my open-source reputation. Zalando has a bunch of open-source projects, and I am looking forward to be an active contributor.

Starting next week, I am selected to be a mentor for Learn IT Girl. I would help a girl learn a programming language and do an awesome project, during my free time, for the next 12 weeks. This would be a great start towards achieving my above goal.

Learning German, is my next goal. Looking forward to the classes starting next month at Zalando.

To be an active blogger is also this year’s goal. I hope I am able to contribute to the tech community by documenting my new learnings at Zalando.

I have a great track record when it comes to multi tasking, so please don’t sit and wonder if I can manage these many things.

With all the goals in place, I am looking forward to exchange knowledge, have a great learning and a fun work place. My new colleagues come from various parts of the world, hoping to eat some tasty tasty international cuisine too 😉 I am a total foodie.

It’s 12:36 am, as I am ending this post. Let me sleep before I show myself in the office in few hours. #ILikeMyNewJob