Onboarding Experience

OnBoarding Experience Sep 20, 2021

The first job is always a special milestone in our lives. It was when we first experienced freedom with responsibility. So as a fresher it's always a great feeling to enter into a field which we love. So in this blog, I am going to talk about my first job experience as an intern at Halodoc.

My mindset about an IT job before joining Halodoc

Being a fresher, I had a lot of assumptions and imaginations about corporate as well as software engineering. The following are my genuine assumptions about a typical IT job:

1. Software Engineers are the people who code 24x7.
2. Fresher's ideas are not nurtured properly.
3. They don't have a work-life balance.
4. Fresher's feedback and suggestions are neglected.
5. They don't consider other activities other than work.

After I joined Halodoc as an intern some of the assumptions became wrong which I am going to talk about in upcoming sections.

First day at Halodoc

Since being fresher, I didn't know what to expect from the company so I don't know how my first day goes in the company. We got a call from HR that we need to be there at the office premises to collect our laptops and for our technical onboarding. So it was a hot sunny day in February I think around 11'O clock we were at the office. HR greeted us with a warm smile and a great gesture. Since the pandemic was still going on, the office is quite empty with very few engineers. Then we are given laptops and asked to check whether everything is fine. After that while we were having lunch, I had some chit chats with the senior engineers about the tech stacks they are using at Halodoc and asking them why only that technology and why not other technologies and the reason I got are very convincing. This interaction with the senior engineer led me to some curiosity and made me excited to work with them and also for the technical onboarding.

Technical Onboarding

So this is the part that I waited for to know the tech stacks of the company, I mean successful company. So the technical Onboarding didn't start in a typical way. It's almost like healthy interaction so after some time senior dev started talking about the tech stacks that Halodoc uses.

So after all these quick introductions to each technology we got some very good suggestions like:

1. Don't settle for small things.
2. Try to figure out every problem we get, by ourselves it will give us an understanding of the flow of the product.
3. Don't depend on anyone too much it will affect our growth.
4. Help others in need it may be our friend or colleague.
5. Stay updated with the technology.

Company's Culture

A company's culture always plays a very important role in the employee's growth and also in his well-being. Halodoc has some core values which are employee friendly  which I want to talk about.

Talk is cheap. Show me the code                              
                                                              - Linus Torvalds

Halodoc has a bias for actions because that's the only thing that matters at the end of the day. And also tech org always support small fast improvements than big slow improvements.

Attack the idea not the person

The company won't work in the master-slave fashion every employee can question the authority even Org supports the idea it's ok to disagree but respectfully because there is a difference between Being open and Being a jerk.

Strive for the individual mastery

Halodoc always brings the best out of you. It's always concerned about the employee's growth.

The things I loved about Halodoc so far

The only motivation I have when I wake up is that I am going to work for a mission "simplifying healthcare". Each  line of code that I write here helps to save someone's life. There are many things that I have loved about Halodoc so far the following are some of those:

1. There is no specified work like you are an intern you have to do only this.
Like as an intern I have worked on the  login flow of our Medisend project.   which is one of the key parts of any project. With the support and help of my senior I have learned a lot in this project and also  I have learned important topics like Router Guards. This way Halodoc always supports everyone irrespective of their roles.
2. The learning curve will always be growing, there is no downfall for that curve.
3. You can ask any senior-level dev for any kind of clarification and you will get the reply with a lot of patience reflecting it.
4. The company is concerned about individual growth and development. That's the reason they suggest employees be self-driven.
5. You will be appreciated even if you make small progress which  motivates us to do more and also it's really important to anyone who just started a career.
6. They believe in their employee.

They are many but the above one is those which I noticed that happens in a loop.

Major Learnings professionally as well as technically so far

As I mentioned earlier the learning curve in Halodoc is always growing. So the following are some of the professional learnings so far:

1. It's always important to take responsibility as an individual as well as a team.
2. It's very important to say I don't know to somethings which we are not aware of, otherwise we may miss some major learnings.
3. Don't go hard on yourself.
4. Before approaching anyone with the problem have your findings and analysis of the problem.
5. Even if we have a solution it's better to listen to other's solutions which can give us another perspective on the given problem.

Halodoc taught a lot of skills in a very short span it may be from my friends or my senior dev's. Below are my observations as a web developer.
 
1. How to efficiently use the tool that we use.

Like, have learned a lot of shortcuts and came across a lot of plugins in the V S  code which saves a lot of time in development.      
V S code shortcuts
Prettier a efficient code formatter.
Git Lens visualize code authorship at a glance.
Thunder Client REST client for testing API's this helped me by avoiding usage of the external tool to test API.
Angular Material provides tools that help developers build their own custom components with common interaction patterns.

2. I realized that even googling is also one of the key skills.

3. Came to know about the importance of open source usage as well as contributing to the same.

4. How to debug the given problem efficiently.

Here are my general learnings:

  • In software engineering it's only 50% of coding rest, 50% is debugging.
  • Talk less listen more.
  • Even software engineers have a very good sense of humour.
  • When we share the knowledge we will become more perfect in that.

So to conclude Halodoc has given me a lot of opportunities in a very short amount of time. It's being a very great journey so far. Will be excited about the upcoming challenges.

Summary

In this blog, I have talked about my experience and also the learnings that are shaping me to make me a good developer here at Halodoc.

We are always looking out to hire for all roles in our tech team. If challenging problems that drive big impact enthrall you, do reach out to us at careers.india@halodoc.com

About Halodoc

Halodoc is the number 1 all-around Healthcare application in Indonesia. Our mission is to simplify and bring quality healthcare across Indonesia, from Sabang to Merauke.
We connect 20,000+ doctors with patients in need through our teleconsultation service, we partner with 1500+ pharmacies in 50 cities to bring medicine to your doorstep, we partner with Indonesia's largest lab provider to provide lab home services, and to top it off we have recently launched a premium appointment service that partners with 500+ hospitals that allows patients to book a doctor appointment inside our application.
We are extremely fortunate to be trusted by our investors, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Singtel, UOB Ventures, Allianz, Gojek, and many more. We recently closed our Series B round and In total have raised USD 100million for our mission.
Our team works tirelessly to make sure that we create the best healthcare solution personalized for all of our patient's needs, and are continuously on a path to simplify healthcare for Indonesia.

Shriganesh Hegde

Web Engineer