Life of a developer in Care
Our Care team is responsible for the maintenance, hosting, and small-scale development of our client’s web services. We currently take care of nearly two hundred services, and our clients include companies like Porsche, Slush, Alan Wake, the Finnish Heart Association and the Finnish Film Foundation.
Working in Care is versatile problem-solving
We handle the maintenance of nearly two hundred websites, ranging from small landing pages to web services of large organizations. Some of our clients only require maintenance, but for our more active clients, we continuously build new features and actively develop their services.
Our daily work is guided by the Freshdesk system, where our clients submit tickets. A ticket may be a request to fix a website issue, an inquiry about content management and website functionality, or an idea for website development. Basic requests are usually handled by our service manager.
However, maintenance work involves much more than just ticket handling – the ticketing system is ultimately just a tool that guides our daily work and helps us prioritize tasks. At its core, working in Care is diverse and challenging problem-solving, where effective communication with the client is in a key role. In the role of a developer, you get to work on various tasks for different clients. Daily activities include launching new websites, developing new features, assisting clients with various issues, brainstorming together with clients, fixing bugs and suggesting further development measures to clients. The work can also be tailored to one’s skills and interests. If someone in our team prefers to focus solely on frontend development, that is possible – but a developer can also specialize in server configuration, for example.
Working in Care is pleasantly dynamic, and each day is genuinely different. For me, it is not uncommon to plan to work on a specific task in the morning and end up doing something different in the afternoon. Things change quickly in Care, so the work requires a proactive and self-directed approach. At the same time, communication within the team is crucial, especially now that many of us work remotely.
Today, my day included the following things:
- Publishing changes and updates to clients’ websites
- Preparing an API integration for a large shopping center’s website
- Weekly team meeting
- Helping my team members with some issues they faced
- Investigating and testing the functionality of new tools
- Discussing with a client on how to utilize our resources efficiently
Gratitude from clients makes our work rewarding
Our ticketing system makes our workflow transparent: after each ticket, we ask clients how satisfied they were with the problem resolution. We take pride in the fact that our Care team consistently receives high ratings and positive feedback from clients.
In 2022, 96% of clients were extremely satisfied with the quality of our Care service and the speed of implemented fixes. Many clients appreciate our ability to solve problems quickly and give out valuable suggestions and sustainable solutions that benefit them in the long run.
Our team works closely together and we are united by a desire to solve our clients’ challenges. Helping one another and collaborating across team boundaries have become integral parts of our everyday work at Evermade. Helping each other allows us to achieve our goals more easily and better serve our clients. In Care, a developer receives support not only from Care team members but from the entire community of over 30 developers. We also aim to be involved in the final stages of projects (in tasks like quality assurance and load testing) to gain a good understanding of the client’s web service before it is handed over to our team.
Automation frees up time for creative work
Part of our work involves automating routines, which I find genuinely interesting. Since we have nearly two hundred websites to maintain, developing tools and workflows is an essential part of our work.
We have developed a helper called AutoCare which frees up our time for creative work. The automated update process includes visual regression testing, taking backups before updates, and performing security scans.
One of the benefits of working in Care is that project pressure is absent. Unlike project teams, we don’t have to worry about big launches and deadlines. Instead, we focus on continuous small-scale development and customer service. This is somewhat steadier than project work. On the other hand, working on multiple small projects every day requires the ability to seamlessly switch between different technologies.
The great variety of tasks makes the work interesting. Because we use a wide range of technologies and tools, developers are guaranteed to learn new things. Personally, problem-solving has always motivated me in the role of a developer – when a client is happy and a problem gets fixed, it feels like tangible success. Working with big clients who are true pioneers in their industry feels rewarding.
Team days and sharing insights
We maintain close contact with our team and have multiple meetings every week. During the Monday morning meeting, we go through tickets and each person’s priorities for the week. On Wednesdays, we have a half an hour “Showtime” meeting where anyone can give a presentation on a chosen topic. Lately, we have discussed cybersecurity, shared problems we’ve solved, and had general discussions about project prioritization. Showtime is also a good opportunity to spar and practice presentation skills before the lead developer meeting. On Fridays, we take a look at how the week went, discuss the challenges we encountered, and, of course, go through our weekend plans.
We also organize casual team days with various activities. Recently, we spent a day together in Tampere.
