Meet Jasmin: From small startups to Slack

Meet Jasmin Virdi

Jasmin Virdi is from Ajmer, Rajasthan, India, and is a Software Engineer II at Slack. She knew from the moment she began studying that she wanted to become a Software Engineer. From a background at small startups to landing a job at her first major tech company: read her story to learn how she made this goal come true.

What was your career path that led you to become an engineer at Slack?

"I graduated from college in 2017. After that, I started working with a startup called Terribly Tiny Tales. I knew I wanted to start with a smaller company because, as a fresh graduate, I had tons of energy and I wanted a lot of exposure.

Since the company was very small, we were the first few engineers in that company. The members were all very nice, and I felt very lucky to be a part of it; I learned a lot. After, I went to a midsize company called upGrad which was also a startup. Before Slack, the first big company in my career, I preferred working at startups.

In my career, I have mostly worked with Javascript and its frameworks. At the first company, I worked as a full-stack developer. Then in my second company, I mainly worked on front-end. These experiences helped me land my current role at Slack."

How did you land that first job at Terribly Tiny Tales?

"During my final year of college, I applied for an internship opportunity at Terribly Tiny Tales. I interned there for a couple of months and got a pre-placement offer from them."

From the engineer perspective, what are some of the benefits of working at a small startup?

"You get a lot of ownership over your work. As a fresh graduate, you don't know what you should pick in terms of front-end or back-end, so I had more opportunities to figure out what I actually wanted to do.

At my first startup, I got a lot of opportunities to work on different features of front-end and back-end applications. I had the space to figure out my areas of interest. That is definitely a big advantage of working at a small company."

Was there anything that you learned early on in your career that has stuck with you as you've grown into larger companies?

"One thing I learned early in my career was to take some time to plan and organize tasks before picking them up for implementation. Taking this step helps me save a lot of time in the later stages of my projects. This step helps me make sure that I have all the necessary details to complete the tasks. Writing blogs helped me to improve this."

When did you first start writing?

"I began technical writing around the middle of my career. One day, I was talking with a colleague about how a Git folder works and he encouraged me to write about it on Dev.to. Shortly after this, the pandemic began, and since I wasn't commuting to the office, I had more free time. So I began writing."

What does writing mean to you? Is it important to you?

"Writing is important to me because it has helped me better understand my thought process. When I began technical writing, I realized there is a two-way relationship between the writer and the viewer. If I write an article, there are people who will read my work and give me feedback. This mutual relationship helps me learn and understand the process better."

Have you found that this two-way relationship also helps you as an engineer?

"The process I have learned from writing has helped me in my day-to-day tasks. I begin all my tasks now by writing everything down and planning. When I start writing an article, I think about the whole piece. For example, if I pick a topic on Webpack integration or on how to build a plugin, I first spend time thinking and learning about the whole process. Then I write down the approach, which I discuss with my teammates. I now do the same for my job. First, I write down all the necessary points when I pick up a task and then I ask my team for feedback."

What are your favorite things to write about?

"I have mostly worked as a front-end dev. So I tend to gravitate towards front-end and related topics. When I write, I try to explain the project step by step. For example, if I'm building a boilerplate, I like to write down the process: how to set it up; how it works; what libraries I am using; and how it helps optimize your code."

Do you have a specific writing process that you repeat?

"The article should be as short as possible because I lose focus after a while when I read a very lengthy article. So, the article should be broken down into segments if it is on a long topic.

I try to keep my writing short and I like to include code examples. I also always try to integrate images, diagrams, or videos if it is a theoretical piece."

How do you approach a challenging topic?

"I work on the project first before I write about it. For example, I wrote an article on XState and a new library was required. Before I began writing, I created the project using XState and did my POC on it. I have found that working on a project before writing about it helps me the most."

What resources have you found to be the most useful in your coding journey?

"Multiple things helped me grow, but the first lesson is that you should always be learning and you should always be eager to learn. I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by people who were always doing something or innovating. The friends I made during my first job were all very motivated, including my mentors. My mentors and peers have played a major role in motivating me to learn, focus, and innovate. They would always direct me and suggest things that I should be doing. For example, if I were reviewing a PR, they would tell me to look for defects and to ask questions. They encouraged me to be active on Twitter and to follow other devs to read their work and network with them.

They also suggested that I continue to take courses. So early in my career, I took courses and did competitive coding. They always told me that if I found a good challenge I should participate and take a chance. So I would say the greatest resource has been the people around me who are also very enthusiastic about tech.

In addition to mentorship, there are plenty of resources available online. The ones that I use most frequently are Educative.io, Stack Overflow, MDN docs, CSS tricks, DigitialOcean, Product docs, and Dev.to. I also follow a bunch of developers on Twitter who share their learnings and good resources."

What is a day like in your current role? What are your main responsibilities?

What is the most rewarding aspect of being a software engineer?

"Learning is a good piece of this career. You have to learn a lot; if you stop learning, it becomes a problem. I always feel like a student, which is the part I love the most. As a software engineer, it is good to question as many things as possible."

Contrary to that, what is the most challenging part of being a software engineer?

"It is a very competitive industry, so I feel like I have to keep up the pace. Sometimes it feels like you are not doing enough if you aren't continuously learning. Sometimes it can feel like a problem if I am not inspired to learn something new.

Seeing other people constantly sharing their projects and doing well in their careers adds pressure to do the same. It feels like I always have to be ready to try something new.

Another challenging aspect is that you need to network and have a lot of connections. I am not great at this on a personal level, so sometimes it feels like I need to work on that."

What is the most valuable thing you have learned since being a software engineer?

"Earlier in my career, I always thought I should pick one thing and try to excel in that one thing. For example, working in one technology and sticking to one framework.

However, I have recently figured out that this isn't true. If you want to excel in one thing, you should still have a little bit of knowledge in other areas. As your experience grows, you should expand your knowledge. I have realized I don't want to limit myself to only one aspect of technology.

Also, you should constantly be learning from your mentors and peers. I used to be very adamant and I had unrealistic deadlines. For example, if a task typically takes five days, I would say that I could complete it in three days. Eventually, I took feedback and advice from others and accepted the phases of completing certain tasks."

What piece of advice would you give to someone who aspires to be a software engineer?

"Never stop learning and try to meet new people! To do this, you can attend meetups, Hackathons, and coding challenges. These will allow you to network with people. There are so many amazing people out there that you can learn from.

I was not great at this myself at the beginning of my career. But once I started practicing daily, I discovered Hackathons and interacted with people who were really active in this space. I've recently started participating in the open source, which is a great area to branch out."

How did you find out about Educative Answers?

"I knew Educative from some courses I've used. I especially like the Grokking Modern System Design Interview for Engineers & Managers course, which has helped me with interviews. From there, I saw somebody I follow on Twitter share a post from Educative Answers."

How has your experience been writing on Educative Answers?

"I really like the review process, there are a lot of good suggestions that help me improve. I also really like the platform because it has its own editor and you can execute your code there, which is not seen on many other platforms."

Looking towards the future, do you have any goals for yourself?

"I am focusing on some short terms goals right now. I want to contribute more to the open-source space. I haven't been very active this past year, so I want to try out some projects I have in mind and participate in more meetups. That is on the top of my bucket list right now."

Check out Jasmin's article on Educative Answers

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