100 days @Xebia

My initial 100 days @ Xebia?

I’ll say it takes something “extra” to be here. It calls for the people with perseverance and "ready to take on any challenge" kinda attitude .

One thing that I really like is that every single day is a learning day. In true sense I can see my learning graph sloping upwards. I felt more nourished with each passing day. There is a lot in store in technology for you to learn. The only thing needed is “pulling” the task for yourself. I believe that in all of us there is this “untapped reserve” which we are generally not aware of. When you need to push yourself for that one extra step you become aware of your real capacity. Xebia offers you not only good technologies to work on but it also gives you the chance of developing yourself into a developer and not a coder.

New Technologies:

I had worked on Java Swings before joining here. But in the span of 100 days at Xebia a lot of things have added. I started with creating a web application based on JSP, Servlets and Javascript. Also learnt about Maven 2.0. Followed the Test Driven development Environment(TDD) by writing tests first with JUnit. Currently I am working on Amazon S3 to be used in my web application. So lot of exciting things happening. I ve written some Junit test cases to get my first hands on experience on this technology.

Conferences and Workshops

Attending and Coordinating workshop and Conference was another thing that I took up. Agile Awareness workshop was one where in I took up dual task of coordinating and attending. Then the Lean Software Development Methodologies–Tom And Mary Poppendiecks was another important event which I became part of. These events give you a chance of interacting with people from different interest areas and business spheres. Definitely boosts your confidence level and enhances your vision. Xebia on regular basis keeps working on organizing various conferences with big names in the industry. Naturally, attending these conferences as a Xebian is an added value that you get. And all this in the beginning stage of your career gives me immense satisfaction. Apart from this I also got the chance of doing some infrastructure work like setting up the communication centers for the conferences hosted at Xebia campus. Quite clearly it calls for you to be an all rounder.

Blogging

Blogging is a culture here. One can blog about anything.. from their technical experiences to personal. I, being an avid writer, always loved this part . Ultimately you don’t end up becoming a stuffy coder but an agile developer!

XKE and XTR

The Xebia Knowledge Exchange session(XKE) is a culture that we follow at Xebia. It s a platform where we all talk about anything to everything about technology and otherwise. Say a book review… I find it a good interface where I can see the direction of the industry.I also got the chance to attend the Xebia Tech Rally-The one day hands-on session on new and upcoming technologies- Wicket this time. The well prepared content and exercises made it enjoyable to learn a new technology with just a bit of prior knowledge.

To sum up .. my initial 100 days @ Xebia have been exciting,enriching and fullfilling.

–Nancy.