Well, you made it! This is your final onboarding email! We hope they have been helpful and given you a lot of good information about how we do what we do. We're excited to have you on board! Without further ado, let's see what today has in store!
Taking Time Off
You're not a machine. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's talk about why that's important. At Bitwise, we understand that you're human, and as such, require time for rest and relaxation. Bitwise has adopted an unlimited vacation policy that allows you to take the time off that you need. Be it a mental health day, doctors’ appointment, or taking a long weekend just know that we've got you covered.
A few things to note, any vacation of more than 30 days does need to be explicitly approved by your manager. For shorter amounts of time off, still let your manager know so they are able to schedule around it. Do this by sending your manager a calendar invite for the dates that you'll be out of the office. Title these with your name and the words "Out of Office" or "OOO" for short. For example: "Corey OOO". This will alleviate confusion on your manager's calendar regarding who is taking the time off at a quick glance. Do not be alarmed if your manager responds with a "Maybe", often that's just so the event doesn't take up time on their calendar.
BrowserStack
Tell me if this sounds familiar, "Hey, the new feature isn't working, but you told me it was complete, what gives!?" Sure, we've all been there. We're software developers, after all. At any given time, our software developers are building world class software for hundreds of environments (desktops, phones of near unlimited size and shape, tablets, TVs, watches, etc...). This means that there is bound to be inconsistency in how the application runs across all those environments. So how do we navigate those waters and ensure that the applications we build work well in many different environments? Enter BrowserStack.
BrowserStack is a software testing platform that lets you run your application with just about any operating system and browser combo you could need. We run MacBook Pros for our development so how could a developer test how the app is running on Windows? BrowserStack's how.
You can get your BrowserStack credentials from your manager if you haven't already received them. Happy Testing!
DevOps
One of the most important things we do as a development shop is deploy and maintain our applications. This can be incredibly complicated, so we use DevOps to help us roll out software and updates without tearing our hair out. DevOps is a newer term, that at its core attempts to harmonize the operations between software developers and system administrators. This ranges from automation tools like CircleCi to IaC (Infrastructure as Code) tools that allow for provisioning servers using code instead of clicks. At BWTC, Terraform is picking up steam as our IaC solution. Terraform is a cloud-agnostic tool that allows us to create reusable code templates to provision server infrastructure. The goal with each template is to create a Lego-like code module that can be customized for any given project. Simply add in the services you need, customize the required variables and run terraform apply! Terraform will then save a state file that represents your project's infrastructure, so that everyone on the project can be kept up to speed on what services have been created!
CD (Continuous Delivery) pipelines can be defined as a series of steps your code goes through before finally being pushed to a live (production) server. As software developers, we tend to spend most of our time and energy cranking away on a keyboard pushing out features. In some cases there can be a large gap between when a feature set is developed, and when that feature set goes into production. While this isn’t always a bad thing, there are times when we push out a build only to have the client say “this is not what I wanted”. In some cases, months can be spent on features, and developers then have to go back to the drawing board and rework based on feedback. If we break this down into a process, we get the following picture:
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Day 10 Checklist
DIRECTOR OF DEVOPS, BITWISE TECH CONSULTING