We’ve already made it to our third LLI spotlight! Today, we’ll be sitting down with Shuhan Hu, LLI’s Ruby on Rails Junior, who joined the team early on this year.
Shuhan is originally from Taiwan and has been enjoying growing her career at LLI while living in Warsaw. Let’s jump in!
When did you first join LLI and what initially drew you toward the company?
I joined LLI officially in February 2022, but before this, I had already been in touch with some people from the team.
The first thing that made me want to join LLI was the team’s vibe. Before starting the interview process with LLI, I had the chance to meet the whole team in a restaurant to grab a beer and chat with people.
My first impression of this company was that if everyone can work in a delighted mood here, the organisation must be doing something seriously right. I verified this assumption after I joined. This is a team where people say, “There are no stupid questions.” Your coworkers are never afraid of getting their hands dirty with you together even though you may work on a different project.
What has been your proudest moment at LLI so far?
I actually just recently had quite a thrilling moment at work.
Lately, I noticed a pattern of code repetition in one of my project’s features. Therefore, I chose to spend some time in order to achieve the same work in a more concise way. Sometimes, it may seem that we spent more time and the user would not notice any difference, but in fact, not a second has been wasted.
In the future, these sorts of tasks will save even more time for the whole team to locate, add, or revise the same feature. It is similar to anyone who spends time adding formulas in an Excel file instead of summing thousands of numbers manually.
Meanwhile, I felt so much encouraged that the customer developer team not only adopted my improvement idea but also enlightened me on the bigger refactoring scope.
Who do you go to on your team when you need support in overcoming challenges at work?
Whenever I feel stranded while working, I separate the subjects into work culture, frontend technology, and backend technology. And luckily, there are plenty of people able to ask for help in each topic internally.
For example, the company assigned a Ruby on Rails peer mentor for me in the first three months, and this mentor gave me a lot of useful tips in both soft and hard skills.
How has LLI helped you in developing your career?
The process of LLI hiring me as a Ruby on Rails developer in and of itself has been a great step in my career. Anyone who’s looking for a job or seeking to change their career path knows what a pain in the neck getting that first job can be, so this was a big deal for me. What’s more, with trust and ongoing support, the team encouraged me to work as a developer for one of LLI’s biggest clients.
Furthermore, LLI encourages everyone to keep improving. In a one-on-one meeting with my team lead, I once asked what I should focus on in order to become a next-level developer in this company. Their response was to keep learning, start a new self-learning project, and share the result in our learning channel with everyone. On an ongoing basis, my team lead even provides extra resources, such as the option of arranging a front end developer for me as a learning project mentor. And I’m being given any sort of special treatment – these sorts of opportunities are open to everyone at LLI!
As a Ruby on Rails developer, which technologies and/or initiatives are you interested in at this time?
I’ve recently been fascinated by diving deeper into the Ruby language itself, since I’ve realised how powerful it truly is. Every little piece of the algorithm that I have practised always comes back to me on a specific day that I need it.
Many newbie developers may be tempted to dive right into a framework before gaining a proper understanding of the programming language, and this reminds me to keep polishing my Ruby skills.
What’s something that some people may not know about you?
When I was 16, I dreamed of becoming a performance art actress. I announced to my family that I was dropping out of regular senior high school (and out of the exam-oriented education system), which drove my traditional family crazy for a while at the time!
Eventually, I went back to prepare for the general test for applying to university. I don’t regret anything, though, and I laugh every time this memory pops up in my mind.
Besides performance art, I love freediving. I started to practise freediving and meditation at the same time, and they have a surprisingly similar effect in slowing down a person’s mind and achieving mindfulness.
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We’ve loved talking with you, Shuhan, and we’re proud to have you as a valuable part of our development team.
If you’d like to check out more of our LLI spotlights, you can read our first and second instalments of the series. Stay tuned for more upcoming LLI team members to be featured.
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