What Do Back End Developers Do

I’m 40 years old and I’ve been working as a backend developer since 2008, focusing in Java technologies and some Android development. Since 2015, I’ve been working in one of the most important media classified companies in the world.

My typical day

I work in the product department. As a product team, we have a task blackboard where we put and move our weekly tasks. Every day in the morning the team explains the current status of every task, what we did yesterday and what we are expected to do in the current day. After that, I am completely free to work independently on my tasks apart from the calendarized meetings.

My tasks are normally new product developments which I implement using Java or Kotlin, but a short % of my week time has to be dedicated to fixing bugs detected in the website.

In meetings, all the team discusses new ideas, the solutions, the problems to solve with them, and the priority to all of them in order to provide the company the most valuable input according to the company mission. Every team member is empowered to push an opinion and has a vote to decide the path to follow. It’s all democratic and agreed by the team.

Basically, we follow Scrum and Kanban, agile methodologies, which work very well.

My key responsibilities

New code developments

Our websites require new features to resolve user demands that are not present on the web. It can be anything related to, for example, helping users search products from our database, mobile push notifications to notify any kind of updates, email campaigns where we try to offer the products that better fit every user according to their profile, whatever action that a user do in a web or app.

In the last few years, we’re pushing a lot into machine learning which we use to implement algorithms to try to match user profiles with our products in order to automatically offer the users the more appropriate content for them. That’s the same that, for example, Netflix uses with their recommendations for films or Spotify with music. The idea is “you don’t need to lose your time searching for content, don’t worry, we’ll do this for you and we’ll offer you the best possible you want”.

Data and Metrics (big data)

We also develop and keep an eye on the metrics of everything we do. It is important in a product company to know if the business is in a good shape. Active users, number of leads, app downloads, CTRs, session time, everything that can help us to know if everything is ok is managed by us too.

Bug fixing

Customer service open tickets according to emails and telephone calls received by users with complaints about webs or apps crashing. We must prioritize and fix them in order to give the user the best experience.

Refactor legacy code

It is important, especially in older projects, to maintain the code with good readability and structure. It is typical that, after lots of years and different people developing code, there could be a lot of waste and difficult to maintain code. We’re responsible to code it again to keep it as clean as possible.

Testing

Any code must be tested, not only manually but especially automatically. Every development must have their automatic tests which are responsible to have few methods that check that the feature works well. When you want to deploy something in production, all the tests are launched automatically, and if anyone fails the deployment is stopped. That’s a very important step to avoid introducing bugs in production when deploying new features.

Pros

• There are a lot of demand of developers nowadays. Technology and the internet are very important nowadays and this is reflected in the job market. Lots of companies require more and more tech profiles and schools are not able to provide enough people to cover all of them, so there is a lack of people in the IT sector, especially with several years of expertise.
• As a consequence of this high demand, salaries are growing in the last few years. As there is more offer than demand, companies must offer better conditions to the people who have a job in order to convince them to join them. Salary, no doubt, is a key point which helps companies to convince techs, but also good medical insurance, flexibility conditions or teleworking are benefits that we really appreciate when we receive a proposal.
• You can work remotely at home without going to the office every day. With the internet, working remotely is really easy for us. We have all our servers and databases allocated in the cloud so we can connect from anywhere simply with our credentials, there are a lot of applications to manage chat with the team, email managing, etc. Even the meetings are done all of them via Zoom or Google Meet. Software development is clearly one of the easiest types of jobs to work remotely.
• There is a lot of flexibility with working hours, lunchtime, and family conciliation. As our work is very autonomous, apart from meetings, the more important for the company and the team is the results. We don’t need to receive calls or meet with clients, so it is not important if we start at 8am or 10am. If we do 8h every day it is ok, apart from that distribute yourself the best way for your family needs.

Cons

• Stress is quite common and mental health is something to take care of. If you don’t do a few stops every X hours you can suffer from stress. As I said before, the brain is pushed hard lots of times and sometimes there is a lot of responsibility because of our multitasking skills. If you are not mentally strong you can pass difficult moments, feel under pressure if the deadlines are near and the job isn’t finished and it could turn into some anxiety problems, which could cause in extreme cases depression. That’s why it is important for me to disconnect after work. Schedule some activities for your free time, better if they are outdoors, to get some fresh air and rest your mind from your daily tasks. Sports, for example, are perfect for this goal.
• Back, cervical and headache problems. It is important to have a good and comfortable chair and a good back position because we also have work risks. If the screen is not in the perfect position with your eyes, you can suffer from neck pain. Also, the back position must be good or you will suffer too. Too much time concentrating on something can be very stressful and cause you headaches, especially when you are completely blocked.
• It is a 100% sedentary work so you have to take time to do some sport or physical exercise to help you recover and disconnect from your job. 8h per day you sit on a chair, in front of a computer screen, just writing with a keyboard, reading, or concentrating trying to find the best algorithm for a problem, which means that most of the time you have your brain completely focused on something and working 100%.
• You have to constantly read and learn new technologies. IT is a constant motion sector. New languages, new features, new technologies appear every year so, if you’re not constantly learning the new ones, your skills will be deprecated very soon and your market value as a developer will fall.