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The big day

It’s a typical autumn morning in Milan: mist, damp, and a bit of cold. Today is the big day, after barely 4 years and a half in FBK and the awareness that I am no longer a “normal” developer, my director will officially appoint me as a Senior. I am excited about my new role but also nervous about the additional responsibilities.

It all began a week ago, when the CEO of FBK, called me into his office. I thought it would be one of the usual chats about the career path, to check feelings and impressions but instead the big news arrived – a great surprise!

Becoming a DEV

After high school I wanted to pursue my passion for Graphic Design, so I followed a specific two-year course, in which among other things, I learnt how to navigate in the web development world, using CSS, HTML, PHP and JavaScript.

In 2019, after an experience in Switzerland and France, I joined FBK as an intern. It’s been a flying start for me because it coincided with a major product release. Hence, after the standard FBK training period and in accordance with my knowledge, I immediately had to prove to myself and my colleagues what I could do. All this in a new, exciting and fast-growing context.

The bar is high at FBK, but I was able to experience first-hand how commitment, determination and interpersonal skills can make a difference even during an internship – a truly formative one.

Among other things, I had the opportunity to:

• Take part in a major release, beginning to understand the complex and delicate logic that revolves around it;
• Start working with different applications to create new demo layouts for some components of the CM|XS Suite;
• Using my graphic design skills to help out with some communication activities on our website and intranet;
• Experience a couple of months in the Customer Service department, to better understand user requests.

Towards the end of my internship, despite a general feeling of satisfaction with my achievements, I wasn’t sure if I had demonstrated my desire to learn and participate more within the DEV team even though I didn’t have the same background as the others.

Once again, a game changer opportunity presented itself to me – one of the senior developers offered to guide me and be my new mentor. He had seen something in me and suggested that I broaden my horizons and start working in his team on backend projects. Having no experience of this kind I was very skeptical and fearful, but on the other hand I had a strong enthusiasm for the new challenge and felt ready to learn all that was needed.

There were many ups and downs. I had to deal with several challenging projects and face pressure situations, but I have never felt alone, and in the end, they have been incredibly rewarding. They allowed me to overcome my fears and pushed me out of my comfort zone, helping me to grow professionally and, most importantly, personally. It was the best choice I could have made. I advise everyone to make the most of every opportunity, even the ones that seem most difficult and “will not let you sleep at night”.

In all this, I am very grateful that I have always had my mentor by my side, who has invested in me and shaped my career path.

Challenges

I had to face and overcome several obstacles during my career journey – most of them were related to my personal fears. They may seem insignificant to some, but for me they were a big deal.

I'm the kind of person who doesn't like to be unprepared and having a different background didn't help me because there were a lot of things I had to learn. So, I used to pressure and stress myself a lot about things I had no idea how to do. After a while, I understood that I had to accept that learning takes time and that I had to fully trust the process and the people around me.

One more thing that makes me feel uncomfortable is to talk in front of a group of people, I am a shy person, so I don’t like being at the center of the attention. At the beginning I was terrified doing daily scrum talks and meetings with FBK’s teams & consultants. Time passes and it slowly became normal and part of the daily routine. I’m happy that I stepped out of my comfort zone and accomplished a personal goal.

Growth

Today, my typical workday is intense but fun – I handle ambitious projects, including developing new features, writing technical analysis, reviewing code, and fixing bugs. In general, there is strong collaboration within the squad and with the various teams involved to ensure that projects are delivered with the required quality and on time.

My professional growth and experience have now merged into a new role, one that is greater in terms of responsibility, and this will certainly mean that I will also have to delve into new aspects, such as resources management and/or control. I will therefore have to grow in various other aspects, such as delegation and how to exercise it, making sure that everyone has clear objectives, timeframes and that things proceed as planned.

My main goals are to collaborate more with others, increase leadership and mentoring skills to help the team grow, especially the younger ones.

Advice for future DEV

Even if it may seem scary at the beginning try to take on those hard but valuable projects that are offered to you. To me, quality is a very important requirement so as much as you can, always deliver a code that you are proud of. Last but not least, environment and people are fundamental and for me they make a big difference.

Kate Cabudil joined FBK in February 2019 as a new grad hire. She is currently a Senior Full Stack Developer on the CM|XS Suite Platform.

Milan, Dicember 2023.

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