A day in the life of… Ed George (Senior Android Developer) | Ed Holloway-George | Android Developer

This article was featured as part of the ASOS Tech Blog - please click the link to see it in full

This ‘day in the life of’ series gives you an insight into what a typical day looks like for our people in Tech at ASOS (hint: there isn’t one) and how they started their careers. Hopefully, you take something inspirational away from it.

My alarm clock goes off…

…at 6:15am, or earlier if the dog decides it’s time for me to get up! An early start means I have time to get to the gym and have a quick workout before breakfast. It might not be for everyone but I do quite like plenty of time to get ready to start my day. That said, I am certainly not a morning person by any means!

I got the job…

I joined ASOS in May 2021 after applying online. Previously I had worked at a digital agency and a start-up, so moving to such a large company was an exciting prospect. I had always been aware of ASOS’ talent within the apps team from reading their tech-blog and seeing ASOSers at meet-ups, so I knew immediately it was somewhere I would fit in and a place where everyone shares my passion for mobile development.

The application progress…

The application process was fairly smooth and consisted of an initial interview with existing team members, a ‘take-home test’ and a final interview with other team members. Being in the middle of a pandemic, all of these were completed remotely. The very first interview was with a principal engineer and was a casual chat about my past experiences, my strengths/weaknesses and what working for ASOS is like. There were a few technical questions, which mostly centred around my knowledge of the Android framework and the technologies used at ASOS. It was the first interview I had done in close to 7 years, yet the ASOS team put me at ease and made me feel incredibly relaxed.

The next stage was a take-home test in which I was asked to implement a small Android application based on a set of requirements and design wireframes. I used it as a chance to show off my technical knowledge and demonstrate the use of some of the technologies used within ASOS’ app. The team were very keen on me delivering something I was happy with, so there was no time pressure and a very laid back attitude throughout, which I appreciated! Finally, there was the last stage in which I was interviewed by the lead engineer and questioned about my submitted test. This stage was again kept very casual and mostly involved me walking through my design decisions with the team and answering the questions they had.

All in all, the process was frictionless, and I was extremely excited to receive my offer at the end!

My typical day looks like…

The mobile apps team at ASOS are split into smaller sub-teams, so my day usually starts with a coffee and sub-team stand-up where we talk through our current work, status and any other business we need to raise. These will sometimes feature cameos from my dog, but most of the time be fairly straightforward and a good start to the day. On an average day, I’d work on anything from new features, technical debt and bugs, to improving our CI pipeline or investigating upcoming Android features we might want to put into the app.

I usually spend some time discussing my work with other members of my sub-team and then crack on with the coding. We do also spend a lot of time at ASOS ensuring the code-base is in a state we as devs want it. This means writing tests, modularising code and refactoring is something I can be found doing most days.

One really great aspect of my role has been the fact that every day is different!

Find out more on the ASOS Tech Blog…