Jobhop Jobhop's blog : Life As A Web Developer An Interview With Vickie Allen

Interviewers note: I had the pleasure of interviewing Vickie Allen about her role as a web developer at Liftshare UK's largest car-share/carpooling service website

As a web developer what is a normal day for you?

I spend approximately a third of my day supporting the business through Helpdesk – this basically means if anything’s broken or a client needs a change on their website then that’s my job to do that. Sometimes I feel a bit like Sherlock Holmes when there’s a tricky bug to track down. The rest of the day I spend developing various new projects/features for the business or working on client websites. We have a C# MVC API so I spend time developing that as well as developing our legacy system on the frontend in Classic ASP- we’ve tried to integrate some modern technology in there too though, and we use tools such as Handlebars.js and Grunt.

Was being a web developer something you set out to do?

I’m not really sure what I set out to do, I’d always loved playing around with HTML/CSS from when I was a teenager, and I guess when I was working at Aviva as a Database Administrator that’s when I realised I’d much prefer to be working on the web side of things and made the transition across.

How did you get your job at Liftshare.com?

I found the job advert on LinkedIn and then used connections in common to get introduced to the team at Liftshare.

What’s most important to you about where you work?

I love where I work because we’re such a fun company to work for. We regularly do team away days, and we have fun in the office on an everyday basis, we play table football, have chair races across the office, and don’t forget the infamous Liftshare slide. I think culture is really important in a company.

What tip could you give someone looking to do what you do?

I guess the thing I think is most important is having passion, if you really love something, and really want a job in that sector and you have no experience, in my opinion, I think if you can display passion to a potential employer then that’s what will encourage them to recruit you over others in a similar situation.

What drives you?

I love problem solving, whether it be solving a problem for one of our members, or coming up with ideas for how we can improve the site. If you give me a problem, I won’t give up until I’ve found the answer!

Are there any networks that potential web developers could get involved in?

Yes! Absolutely. I run SyncDevelopHER myself which is all about promoting women in tech, however anyone is welcome to the meetups, and it’s a small community of very friendly people who will welcome you. Alternatively there’s also SyncNorwich, Norfolk Developers and Hotsource – all of which would be great for people to get involved in.

What’s the number one blog to read for web developers?

Hmm, I’m not really much of a blogger myself, I tend to dip in and out of articles I find on Twitter. I don’t hold a preference for any blog in particular. I guess I look at TechCrunch quite a lot and also we have The Net magazine in the office so tend to read that every month.

Find out more about Vickie Allen and what she does for SyncDevelopHer

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Julie Bishop Jobhop.co.uk

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