My name is Nicole Dolot. I am a Specialist IT Engineering at Van Lanschot Kempen. I come from Romania, but I have been living in the Netherlands for almost three years. In my free time, I try to read as much as I can (both fiction and nonfiction) and then discuss the books I've read at book clubs. I also enjoy cooking and taking long, aimless walks with my friends.

What my jobs involve
I am a full stack developer in the Mijn Van Lanschot Kempen team. My team and I are responsible for developing the web portal where clients can access and manage their data, products and services (among other functionalities). As a full stack, I program the frontend of the website (in Angular), as well the backend (in .NET). Moreover, I also deploy the new features I've implemented and make sure that they reach our clients safely. My team works DevOps, so we also write the pipelines ourselves, respond to production incidents and do our own testing. 

A typical workday
My day starts with a 15-minute daily stand-up meeting, where my team and I update each other on our progress and ask for help if needed. After that, I go on with coding and completing whatever tasks I'm working on. Next to that, I review pull requests and manually test features my teammates have worked on. During lunch break, I eat with my coworkers (if I'm at the office) and we take a walk after, in the park next to the office. After lunch I get back to coding. We often do pair-programming, which is really educational for me. About once per week we refine the tasks we have in our backlog, in order to make them ready for the next sprint. On some afternoons, I have coffee breaks where I meet coworkers from different departments and get to know them and their work better. If there is not a lot of work left to do for the day, I reserve some time for learning.

What I like most about my job
I like that my team sticks by the Agile principles and approaches every discussion in an open and mature way. I also appreciate that we are honest with each other and we always work together towards a common goal. Seeing my team be so dedicated motivates me. I am also very grateful for the learning opportunities that Van Lanschot Kempen offers. During just six months of working here, I have already attended a large .NET conference, an intensive banking course, a two-day feedback training and I have taken weekly Dutch courses. And this does not even include the weekly one-hour in-company conferences (Digitalks) on various tech topics. Not only do I have access to so many learning resources and platforms, but I am also encouraged to use them and develop myself.

Let me tell you a bit more about a recent project I worked on
Outside my regular full stack developer job, I am also a member of my department's Young Board. Our mission is to create an inclusive workplace where young professionals from all backgrounds can thrive and feel like they belong. One of my main goals for the Young Board this year is to organize social clubs where young professionals sharing similar interests can meet and have fun (for starters, a board-game club).

A piece of advice for people thinking of applying to work for Van Lanschot Kempen..
Go in open-minded. I had many preconceived ideas about working as a software developer in a bank. I expected the atmosphere to be rigid and not too international. The reality was far from that. I ended up in a friendly office, where the self-development is valued and where there are plenty of fun, community-building events. And in my team of six people we have six different nationalities.