Evangelia Koleli is a software developer working at our employer partner FreeAgent, an Edinburgh based company making accounting software for small businesses and freelancers.
Born in Athens, Greece, Eva realised she wanted to be a software engineer at an early age, as she enjoyed the structured and logical way that programming offers to problem solving. Following her undergraduate degree in Computer Science in the department of Informatics at Athens University of Economics and Business, Eva decided to move to Edinburgh and study a MSc in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh.
We spent a day with Eva to find out what the role of software engineer at FreeAgent really involves.
8:00 AM – “Wake up! Wake up!” my alarm is ringing like crazy and I have to get out of bed. I find it difficult to wake up every single morning, even after a good night’s sleep. Software developers have the reputation of being nocturnal people after all.
8:45 AM – Time to go to work! What I love about Edinburgh is that I can walk almost anywhere. Every morning, I walk past the Union Canal, which is full of people going to work, jogging or cycling. When I arrive at work at 9:00, I prepare a cup of tea and I am ready for my work day to start. I spend the first minutes of each morning checking my emails and organising the rest of my day.
9:30 AM – Our team’s daily stand up meeting starts. This is a very short meeting, about 10 minutes long. Each member informs the rest of the team about the progress they have made the previous day, the problems they’ve encountered and what they plan to do for the rest of the day. This way we all know what is going on in our team and we can share our thoughts and possible solutions.
After catching up with my teammates, I go back to my desk. I started working at FreeAgent recently, so there are still many things to learn. It is good that my colleagues and a big selection of programming books are here to help me.
1:00 PM – I go to the kitchen to have lunch. Most of the times, I spend this one hour chatting to my colleagues and relaxing around the company.
3:00 PM – Throughout the day I attend various meetings. During these meetings, people from different teams have the opportunity to share their work and future projects.
5:00 PM – The work day has officially ended. Most of my afternoons are full of activities, ranging from rock climbing to painting classes. Other times I stay a bit longer at work to take advantage of the peace and quiet at the office.
If you fancy pursuing a career in software development, come along to an info session to find out about our 16 week coding course at CodeClan.
