The Front-end Life at Appointy

I am a software engineer working with the front end development team at Appointy. We are responsible for how the user interface is supposed to look and function. But how did I get here? And what is it that I do?

How my journey began

Even though I was in the electronics and communication branch in college, I found myself enjoying computer science a lot more than my core subjects. I started learning about programming and creating software applications. Like other future coders, landing a software job in a good company became one of my goals. As I started researching more into how a software engineer can build their career, I saw how wide of an opportunity coders have to start their own thing.

I realized that a simple software job wouldn’t make the cut. I wanted to work somewhere where I could not only gain the right practical knowledge, but also be exposed to a more entrepreneurial environment. This would help me actually LEARN things instead of simply running pre-set tasks and projects. And call it luck, fate, or whatever you might fancy, I was presented with an opportunity that was an exact fit – Appointy.

During the pre-placement talk, I realized Appointy wasn’t a regular IT company. Appointy reps seemed quite friendly and this session was pretty informal as compared to the ones which I had previously attended. I felt that this was a company I could enjoy working for. From the top of my head, I can think of 3 reasons why: 

1. From what I learnt during the pre-placement talk, Appointy is a SaaS based company which is being run by a team of 60 odd people. This meant that any individual team member would most likely be given a lot of responsibility early on.

2. During the entire interview process, we were given tasks to complete. During these tasks, I got to learn about Golang to create an API within a span of two days. Such a fast-paced process was new to me and helped me understand what a professional work environment looks like.

3. In the final round of the interview process I got an opportunity to interact with the CEO of Appointy. He explained how he envisioned the company to grow and how he aims to help each of his employees to create their own “billion dollar company”. 

Generally, interviews for freshers are very ‘by the book’. But with Appointy, the entire process was very unorthodox. I got to interact with the CEO, was given practical tasks, and got a real exposure of how working at their company would actually look. 

Pretty sure you wouldn’t have been reading this particular piece if I hadn’t, but yes – I got in!

The learning and my experience

When I was in college, I used to love competitive programming and mobile app development . From what I had known, there weren’t many companies that based their operations on newer technologies. Especially those who were picking freshers from a non CS background.

But that wasn’t the case with Appointy. I got to work on front end web development using cutting edge tech like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Typescript, React, Relay, and Graphql. There were several projects which helped me to learn many new things and their implementation. 

And it didn’t stop there. After my 6 weeks of my training, I started working on the actual production code. It was an amazing feeling for me. Having the opportunity to develop a complete UI flow which would help the end customers to manage their personal identifiable information was thrilling. It gave value to my work which motivated me to keep giving my best every single day. 

The market is dominated by IT companies where you can code, take up projects and everything that comes along with it. But Appointy gives you the chance to take matters into your own hands from the very beginning. As a developer, having that feeling of developing a product which millions of people use around the world is unmatched. And before anything else, allow me to give my mentors their due credit. I always felt the pressure but had the right support and guidance to deal with it. The experience and knowledge which they bring is absolutely amazing. They have always pushed me out of my comfort zone to handle important projects, but have also been there whenever I needed help. 

I worked on many features of the product. Each and every day I learnt something new. From my experience and after gaining some insights about the industry itself, it is quite clear that software as a service is a rapidly growing market in the world. Software based applications are dominating the market, simply because it gives the end-users more flexibility and support. Having the opportunity to work for a company in this domain, while it is growing, is an absolute win which I have managed to secure. I am very happy to be at the right place at the right time. 

I hope I was able to give you some insight on what to expect if you get a chance to work at Appointy. Good luck!