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Today, we’re introducing you to Sally Hill; a Software Engineer here at Trail.
I went to a bootcamp in Costa Rica to learn how to code after going to art school. Initially, I thought I would be learning how to code to help other artists make net art - but then I soon realised I was actually really enjoying the challenge of coding and it was something I wanted to pursue further. I did some one off projects for people in Austin, Texas, then ended up teaching at the code bootcamp I originally attended.
My first two full time jobs were in Canada for start-ups that were still developing the base features of their product. I worked rapidly, taking responsibility for architecting their front end patterns. I quickly found that I enjoyed the frontier quality of front end frameworks of the time. They were changing constantly.
I work mostly on the front end on the react framework. I also sometimes work on backend code in Rails. I like analysing where our code base is at, what our pain points are around coding in the front end, and where we would like to be. Patterns shift so quickly, so finding strategy to shift our approaches without rewriting everything is a good challenge.
The ‘Be Human’ value here at Trail really resonates with me.
Be Human - we really care for each other at Trail. We are always people first before colleagues, we cover each other when life happens and we treat each other with kindness and respect
I like that this value encourages us to feel comfortable and authentic at work. We are at work for a significant portion of our life. It feels like a gift to see the quirky and human sides of my coworkers and not spend all my mental energy role-playing and being self-conscious.
I like to get up and move rooms throughout the day. I don’t have a big setup with tons of monitors or anything. When I start getting distracted at work, I will briefly move my body about and do some living room dancing. I stay inspired at work partially by taking advantage of the remote aspect of the job - I do a lot of working vacations and find appreciation in my work’s consistency as a touch point. I try to also do interesting things outside of work so I come in every day refreshed.
I worked in a cross disciplinary pod with other divisions at Trail for a bit, and enjoyed getting a better understanding of how the product produced work for them. We looked at how the product could help, instead, with a new feature. I did the base work for our Record Log editor. It was fun to take a feature that was so ambitious and daunting and break it down a bit
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