A Developing Situation: EquipmentShare Shows Commitment to Helping Employees Grow Professionally

EquipmentShare is committed to helping its employees grow professionally. For a group of 30 EquipmentShare software developers — including three interns — that meant a three-day break from work on June 21-23 to participate in the Kansas City Developers Conference. 

It was a chance to get to know their coworkers better and learn both tech skills and personal growth strategies that could help them in their careers.

Three of the attendees shared their favorite takeaways from the conference.

• Kean Mattingly, senior software engineer for the Work Orders team: “The ‘Reframing Shame’ talk I went to was a really great session and reminder. Given the complexity of software systems, it is inevitable for everyone to make mistakes or overlook things regularly, whether it’s on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis. It can take a lot of effort to escape the rut of blaming yourself for mistakes that everyone has made as mistakes occur so frequently in software engineering. Thus the ratio of ability to make mistakes to actual repercussions is comparatively low, but people make mistakes and blame themselves constantly. Having a culture that embraces failing fast and learning, and encourages it is key."
• Hyunsu Kim, software engineer for the Billing team: “I just started reworking my front-end app, so I went to some front-end sessions and UX (user experience) design sessions. There was some stuff I learned from a design perspective and some common mistakes people make in React. I also went to a discussion on maturity and personal growth in software engineering, which was basically how the rest of my career might look and how I’m advancing.”
• Maggie Swartz, software development intern on the Work Orders team and student at the University of Kansas: “My favorite technical panel was a woman who talked about using (Apache) Kafka, which is an event-driven platform that can help you with messaging. She used the example of utilizing this technology and hardware components to tell her when she needed to water her plants, which broke it down into an easily understandable workflow. My other favorite session was a gentleman who has worked in software development since he graduated college in the ’80s, and he has worked with engineers at all major points in their life cycle in terms of being a software developer. He talked about the best people he worked with in each position and what made them stand out, so that was great practical advice about how to stand out as an employee and how to grow.”

EquipmentShare is growing nationwide, and we’re looking for talented team members in all areas, including software development. Check out our job openings at equipmentshare.com/careers.