A Day in the Life of a Developer: Meet Venture Stream’s Head of Development, Andrew Surrey

October 8, 2019

There is no hiding from the fact that the role of a website developer is a very specialist yet demanding job, and with the ecommerce market growing at a rapid rate, here at Venture Stream our developers are busier than ever.

Although we specialise in building ecommerce sites on either Magento or Shopify, we’re pretty platform agnostic here when it comes to the websites that we manage and maintain. This means our developers turn their hands to a whole host of tasks on a daily basis – from bringing beautiful ecomm design to life, to putting out digital fires and everything in-between.

But, what does a typical day for a Venture Stream developer look like? Our Head of Development, Andrew Surrey, works from home as part of our flexible working culture, but most weeks we’re lucky enough to see him in the office, so we caught up with him to find out what he gets up to in the world of ecommerce development.

08:05

A morning walk with friendly Doberman Kobe gets Andrew pumped for the day and we can’t help but notice it may release some Doberman energy so Andrew has an almost peaceful working environment. 

This is followed by a breakfast of champions; honey porridge and a protein shake (come on Andrew, you could have made it a bit more exciting!)

09:00

9am is the start of the usual working day and by this time everyone who works at Venture Stream HQ are through the doors, so Andrew touches base with fellow developers over Skype and a caramel latte fresh out of his coffee machine.

The daily meeting is essential to catch up on all clients as well as the day’s activities. 

During a morning ‘stand-up’, the developers discuss what they are working on, what’s been completed, as well as any pressing issues that they need to pay attention to. It’s a good way to see what the team are up to and allows them to set daily tasks and know exactly who is covering what. 

09:50

The hard work begins as Andrew gets nestled into his cosy study, a “you can do it” playlist blasts through his surround sound system and he begins maintenance, patches and upgrade work on some of Venture Stream’s clients. 

11:04

Mid morning snack and coffee to power through more maintenance work on key sites.

12:15

Andrew gets up to start his lunch and take Kobe for a walk until we catch sight of this message…

*PING* Can you check this site’s PDS2? – A client is making an enquiry about recent regulation changes regarding PDS2/ strong customer authentication (SCA). 

Andrew is happy to inform them that all of his client applications have been investigated and the relevant action has been taken, to ensure their site is running efficiently and maximising sales. Happy days!

Now it’s time for lunch! On today’s menu it’s copious amounts of chicken washed down with another coffee – this time a vanilla mocha. Apparently it’s like a dessert!

Followed by another quick walk around his hometown of Cramlington (we want a Kobe!)

13:15

QA and code review for a new feature to be deployed for one of our clients is well underway this afternoon. Once the changes have been fully tested and the feature has been reviewed by all developers, it can be pushed live – this is Andrew’s favourite stage of the development process.

14:01

The 2pm creativity hit! To stay ahead of competitors and ensure we are appealing to new clients it is important to work closely with the design team to collaborate on innovative ecommerce developments. Today, Andrew is working closely with Venture Stream’s front-end designer Dean Dolan and COO Andy Robinson, as well as doing his own research and looking for inspiration for new project designs and features to present to clients. 

15:23

Phone call with a new client at 3.30pm. This is one of the main ways at Venture Stream we keep in contact with our clients, to create a strong relationship together. 

Andrew introduces himself and they discuss the latest project. It’s imperative at this stage that Andrew finds out the client’s requirements and gets to know their business inside out, to ensure the project specification fulfils and exceeds their goals. 

16:00

After the call, Andrew gets started with setting up a new, optimised Magento 2 production hosting environment for an exciting client. 

17:05

The work does not stop here. It’s a critical and integral part of Venture Stream’s ethos to guide and train our clients on the work we are doing to improve their knowledge on digital marketing – and in this case, ecommerce development. 

Andrew is on Skype to a client demonstrating how to import a new catalogue collection to their ecommerce store using a new, bespoke procedure which allows them to import product data easily en mass – cool stuff!

18:30

A productive yet tiring day – Andrew closes down for the day and heads to the gym for a well earned break!

Thank you for letting us in your home today! 

Are you a developer looking for a new role?  Do you want to work within a fast growing multi-award winning agency? If you are thinking yes, Venture Stream could be for you. Find out about our latest vacancies here.