What stories would a new, present or future developer at Tagbangers have?

I. Introduction

It has been more than half a year since I joined Tagbangers, and I can’t wait no longer to share my feelings! I’d be so glad to hear if someone like you start to be interested in Tagbangers by reading this post.

Well, let me do a short introduction of myself first.

My name is Jianxin Pei, a Chinese who had studied Computer Science in Canada, and then I joined Tagbangers as a backend software engineer.

I know what you’re thinking: a long journey, right? But first of all, I came here to live with my SO, and also I’ve found things like Japanese animation and games appealing since I was a child. So why not?

Now, without further ado, let me show you something about Tagbangers, rather than about me!

II. Work as a Tagbanger

We make stories

So what do Tagbangers do?

A simple answer would be that we develop software, but we actually expect more than this.

What are softwares? I believe softwares are something that helps the users to have a better life. So, we do not only make softwares, but also make stories, with clients, and for clients as well as their customers.

Stories could be clients’ admiration on our product, customers satisfaction on our clients’ service via our product, and so on and so forth. Sound exicting, doesn't it?

With clients

It is not a general case, but you can even have the chance to develop the application with client developers here!

During the past 5 months I have been working on a project, and we are lucky that a client developer joined our development team. He literally came to our office and behave like a member of us! It’s definitely an efficient development style and precious experience.

For instance, as early as from the design stage, we exchange opinions as main developers and the client. In the development stage, we contribute to coding and reviewing together. He also plays as a bridge between developers and the client - you get the fastest replies and feedbacks which are ever possible!

As a result, you know better and faster about what you’re doing or will be doing soon.

With each other in the team

Not to mention too much on the Agile development style, which we’re using and most of you are familiar with, as well as the really productive tools including Pragli, Slack and those provided by Atlassian; I want to point out something particularly Tagbangers-ish instead.

A fact is that every developer may personally have strength/more experience in some aspects/languages/skills. I joined Tagbangers with some backend experience, mostly with Python.

Another fact is that people in a team always have different tasks and there is usually someone to be the leader.

(I'm not in the picture at that time due to COVID-19 but I like the atomsphere this picture shows!)

• Do more than your did

However, here, at Tagbangers, more facts are: you can utilize your strength, while you’re certainly not restricted and you’ll get full of chances to work on a wide range of things. And in many tasks, regardless of if it’s crucial or just a small task, anyone in the team could be the leader.

Only as short as half a year, I gained lot of experience on Java and Spring Boot, although I never touched it before. I also have understood a little bit about html with Thymeleaf, TypeScript as other frontend stuff.

What is more exciting is, as a kind of last step of the development, I can often deploy my work onto test and even production environments on AWS, with my own hands, and check how well they’re working normally as the expectation, with my own eyes!

So, although it’s hard to actually be a full-stack developer, it’s certainly worth trying hard to train yourself to be one, and leadership is also an important factor here.

• We're all leading each other

As I said, everyone can be a leader on any scale of a task.

It could be as small as a new function, including both front and back end. What if you only know back end like I was? No worries, people are here to help! You don’t have them to get the works done for you, but you certainly have them to learn how to get things done, I promise.

And it could also be as huge as a project. You may not need to have everything done by yourself, but you have some other responsibilities: you’d better know your team members and your project well. Design, planning, schedule, incidents and communication… Seem to be much, actually is much, but definitely worthing doing.

III. Live as a Tagbanger

The atmosphere is very cozy. Why? See what kind of life a Tagbangers live!

We Tagbangers

But first of all, who are Tagbangers?

• Globalization

As one of many characteristics, we're people with different knowledge and culture backgrounds:

I’m from China and have studied in Canada. There is another colleague who’s from Malaysian. We also have an intern member who is studying in Germany now! It’s not really an exaggeration to say that Tagbangers is a mature team with experience on remotely working together at a global scale, synchronously or asynchronously.

• Entertainment and interests

You can even play table tennis with each other here, Yes, we have table tennis table in the office!

Or, talk about your favorite video games, animations or songs… I'm interested in those! Maybe we can play Monster Hunter Rise together? How about One Piece, do you watch/read One Piece?

If you're wondering why there is suddenly a photo of Sakura (cherry blossoms) here, that's because it's photoed by a Tagbangers! You see? Tagbangers are really friendly and indeed a group of amazing people!

The baybike

It’s about 15 mins walk from the railway station to the office, which is not really a long distance itself; however, as a Tagbangers you get the chance to use the baybike in Yokohama freely!

The electric bicycle sharing system not only helps you to spend only around 5 mins to arrive the office from the station, WITHOUT A SINGLE DROP OF SWEAT; you can even ride to Yokohama’s landmark shopping centre and have a hot delicious bowl of Afuri ramen during the lunch break!

Meshiban

For sure you’ll enjoy working on Friday - not only because it’s about weekend, but also for a delicious meal which fuels you up!

An event called Meshiban is a Tagbangers regulation. Every Friday morning, by rock paper scissors, someone gets the chance to choose a restaurant on a food delivery App Demae, and everyone can order whatever dishes they want to have as lunch, freely!

IV. The stories have no end

There are really more than what I can write down here, just like that the following part wasn't even in the office, when I started to write this post several days ago, but now I can add it here:

Recently, the snacks corner has been released! Have a little break and fuel yourself in the afternoon, is the key for me to keep performancing throughout the day!

You see that new surprise is always coming? So I gurantee that even after I post this article, when you read this the stories may have changed! I'd like you to explore, or even better, to make a story here by yourself, if possible!