In Schibsted Tech Polska we love to share knowledge! We believe it is crucial in order to excel in software engineering. Why? Because software engineers who teach others are both better programmers and multiply the impact they have in the company.
But how do we do it? In multiple ways! Here are ten of them.
1: Developers blog
Sometimes presentations are filmed for the blog
More than 120 articles have been published in our Developers blog, all written by software engineers for other software engineers. The articles cover a wide range of technical topics, both within back-end, front-end, devops and mobile development.
In Developers blog the software engineers share experiences from their project, discuss new technologies or dig into a particularly interesting topic within their field of expertise.
2: Tech Jump
Back-end developer Krzystof Rudowski learned front-end technologies from colleague and mentor Mateusz Titz in the Tech Jump program
Tech Jump is one of the most popular programs in Schibsted Tech Polska, designed to help software engineers learn a completely new technology. Instead of attending regular trainings, they get a colleague as a personal mentor. Together the two of them make a six-month plan for how the “student” can learn the new technology.
“A great thing with using personal mentors in the company is that we double the learning effect, ” says HR Project Partner Marta Marczykowska. She explains that not only the mentees gain new knowledge, but also the mentors.
“I certainly learned a lot myself as well,” confirms mentor Mateusz Titz. “When you have to explain something to your colleague, you tend to triple-check that everything you say is correct. And I had to ask myself all those questions about why exactly we work as we do. It was very useful!”
3: Tech Talks
Tech Talks at Schibsted Tech Polska´s offices in Krakow
Tech Talks are Schibsted Tech Polska´s external events for software engineers in Krakow and Gdansk. The main idea is to share our knowledge with the wider tech community. The speakers are both from Schibsted as well as from other companies.
So far we have organized 5 Tech Talks:
- Tech Talks #1: The Rainbow of Death, driving automated test adoption at Google by Mike Bland
- Tech Talks #2: Event stream processing using Kafka Streams by Fredrik Vraalsen
- Tech Talks #3: JS Workshops: Test-drive your own react
- Tech Talks #4: Women in Tech
- Tech Talks #5: Blockchain
4: External presentations
Software engineer Przemysław Potocki talks about Typescript at Meet.js
Often our employees give presentations at external conferences, both at local meet-ups or on bigger national or international conferences. Employees are encouraged to do so – and Schibsted Tech Polska also regularly organizes workshops on how employees can improve their presentation skills.
Last year about 20 of our employees gave technical presentations outside Schibsted Tech Polska, reaching a large number of fellow software developers.
5: Internal trainings
Workshop to learn new skills
At Schibsted Tech Polska there are regularly internal trainings. It is not always organized by the company as such. Often a team organizes an internal training necessary for their project, and colleagues from other teams are invited to join.
For 2018 more internal trainings are planned, in some cases using our own experts as teachers.
6: Good Speaker
Who are the tech speakers who really capture their audiences?
Our employees often go to tech conferences and external trainings to upgrade their competence. But which conferences are superb and which are a waste of time?
Now a new internal app is being developed – called Good Speaker – to help the employees share information with each other about the quality of the trainings and conferences they attend. It will also help employees to follow upcoming events and store helpful links and documents from previous events.
Did your colleagues find a particular conference crappy? Stay away – and prioritize going to the ones that are recommended!
7: Schibsted Jams
Android Jam in Gdansk in October 2017
Schibsted has business in 22 countries, which can be a huge benefit for software engineers who like to build a network of skilled engineers in the same technology as themselves.
Sometimes Schibsted Tech Polska also organizes cross-company gatherings for Schibsted employees in a specific technology. Schibsted iOS Jam in the spring of 2017 is one example. The event gathered about 30 iOS developers from ….. countries. For two days they shared how they were working in their different projects.
A similar event was Android Jam in October 2017, gathering 30 Android developers.
8: Podcast and webinar
iOS developers Michał Apanowicz and Michał Kasprzyk hosted a webinar summing up WWDC 2017 from a developer´s perspective
Being planned now: A podcast for programmers in Poland from Schibsted Tech Polska. In the podcast, our software engineers, sometimes with outside guests, will discuss the latest trends in software development and the technologies they use. The plan is to produce a new episode every second week.
We have also tested the webinar format. In May 2017 two of our experienced iOS developers, Michał Apanowicz and Michał Kasprzyk, led a discussion about the main news from Apple´s annual developer gathering WWDC.
9: Open Source
Many of our software developers contribute to open source projects
Schibsted Tech Polska is on Github — and many of our developers contribute. In total there are 64 repositories on our Github page.
Some projects have gained more traction with visible contributions from outside the company. The best example is probably Good Guy – a library designed to support HTTP communication within a web application.
10: Hack days
Hack Day at Schibsted Tech Polska in Krakow, 2016
Two times every year we organize hack days in the company. Sometimes the teams can work on any project they want, while other times we have specific themes for the hack day.
Hack days are a fun way to explore ideas together and test new technologies or ways of working. And yes, of course we have demos at the end and prizes for the winners!