Meet our Academy Consultants – Jeet Dandy

Our Ten10 Academy is busy creating the next generation of technologists and helping businesses across the country improve how they work. Jeet Dandy is just one excellent example, who joined us in 2022 from a non-tech background and is now helping his client save time by implementing automated tests. And we know he’s doing an amazing job because Jeet is about to join his client permanently! Before he bids Ten10 a fond farewell, we sat down with him to hear about his work, what tools he uses, and what advice he has for other people trying to start their own tech careers.

How do you feel you’ve transitioned from the Ten10 Academy to your client work?

The transition into the Academy felt quite smooth because the training set me up with a good foundation of a bit of everything, really. Even though we weren’t experts in all these different areas, when we went into the client site and worked on the different projects, using different software, it felt like we already knew a little bit to begin with. And from there, we just grew our knowledge, so I’d say that it was a really smooth process and transition.

Take us through your placement, where are you currently working?

I’m working [for a client] in the Retail industry. We currently work in a team that are called ‘Automation Enablers’. We’re basically going from team to team, helping them automate regression packs to save time.

What parts of the Ten10 Academy training have been most useful in your placement?

In my opinion, a little bit of everything was useful. The most useful was learning about the methodologies like Waterfall and Agile. These were good because you’d find that when you go to the client site, teams work in different ways within the business. There’s been times when we’ve encountered teams that are working in a Waterfall methodology, and we’ve had to integrate Agile methodologies or ways of working within the team. So it’s about understanding both sides of the argument there. When integrating the teams, it was a lot easier because we knew how both operate.

The [training] with GitLab and GitHub was really good as well. I think I hit the ground running when we started the project and I already knew quite a bit about that so I’d say those two bits are the most important for my project.

What is a normal working day or week for you?

A normal working day would be: log on in the morning, check the pipeline results from the night before – the pipeline runs every night at five o’clock which is just going through every single automated test that we have in the regression pack – check the results, make sure they’re all run fine. If there are any failures, make sure that they haven’t left the environment in an unstable state. We’re working in SAP at the minute so if anything fails, I go into SAP and make sure it’s all good in there.

That’s the morning, then we have a stand-up. We’ll talk about what we did yesterday, what we’re going to do today, any blockers that we may have. I think these stand-ups are quite good. I think they’re a bit underappreciated by some people but I think they’re brilliant because you get an idea of what the rest of your team is doing as well. I really love hearing about what the plan is for the day.

After that you just crack on with developing. We’re developing scripts or regression packs for the various teams that we’re working with, enabling them to automate. Sometimes we have the odd code review and we’re ready to merge into Git. It’s not a typical code review. Rather than merging onto Git and the approver approving the request, we’ll actually get on a call and we’ll go through all the changes we’ve made.

Have your roles and responsibilities changed during your time on placement?

When I first joined the client, we didn’t have the go ahead to use the software that we’re using to automate (UiPath). For the first few months, we had to do a proof of concept. We had multiple meetings with the tech board, trying to justify why this product is the right one and the most cost effective, and the one that will save us the most time. That was the first few months of my time on client site.

After that, we started to work in the FinTech sector of the business where we scoped out (with the FinTech team) the regression tests that would be most useful and valuable for them. The ones with a higher priority. That was a year into the client site. Since then, because we’ve automated a few FinTech regression packs, we’ve actually moved onto training now. There are three people on my team who do the development with UiPath. We each have a different area to work on. At the minute, I’m working on Distribution, so my job role is training the Distribution Team in UiPath. I have a one-to-one session with them, they run the session and asked me if they have any questions or queries and I’d help them with it. But most of the time, I’d sit back and watch them, mentor them, and tell them if they’re going wrong anywhere.

What technology, tools, frameworks, and processes have you gained experience with since starting client work?

• UiPath – that’s a day-to-day tool we’re using to automate our tests.
• Visual Studio Code – we primarily use this to resolve any merge conflicts that we may have.
• Git Bash – we use it in case we make changes on the wrong branch and we don’t want to commit under that branch. So we don’t use that too much but we do use that from time to time.
• JIRA – we use JIRA almost on a daily basis for the stand-ups.

Methodologies-wise, we are working in an Agile team. We work not in sprints, I’d say, but we work quarterly, so we know exactly what’s assigned for the quarter and the stuff we need to get done.

How has your client supported your development?

My client’s been great with supporting my development. I have biweekly one-to-ones with my line manager. These are really good because not only can I ask talk about any questions or blockers I may be facing, but I can also talk about what is next for me in my self-development. We can set targets in these biweeklies which gives you really good visibility of where to go next.

We also learning afternoons every last Friday of the month, which you can just spend the entire afternoon doing whatever you want. It could be a certification, or just learning a new coding language, or training to be a BA, or just something that you want to develop your skill set in. We also have the Slack channels where they post codes and you have to crack the code. They give you a problem and this could be in TypeScript or JavaScript. It was really good because they’ve been doing that for the past few months now. They started at level one and then every week they post another level, which progressively get harder. So it’s quite a good culture. Everyone’s learning together.

Have you been given any extra opportunities through your client work?

Recently I’ve been offered a permanent contract with the client, which is amazing and really exciting for me. Obviously, it’s really sad to be leaving Ten10 because it’s such an incredible company. Honestly, the culture is amazing and you make so many friends, so it’s really sad to be leaving. But at the same time, it shows the training that I’ve received from Ten10; the client definitely sees the value in that training and deems it enough for me to actually be onboarded permanently. I came from a non-tech background so the training that took literally three months has taken me this far in my career already. I’m really excited about the next chapter.

What would you say to anyone considering joining the Ten10 Academy?

If you’re looking to get into the tech industry, I think Ten10 is definitely the best way to do so. The clientele they have is incredible, the training they provide you with is also great. They give you all the core knowledge that you need – the foundations – to build your career in any area of tech. If you don’t come from a tech background, especially, and you’re contemplating ‘how do I get into tech?’ I definitely say Ten10 is your best way forward.