people
#WeAreCondeNast - Software Engineer
3 November 2020
We spoke with Austin Nwaukoni about working on Vogue Global Runway.
Austin Nwaukoni studied mechanical engineering at university and never thought he would switch careers into software engineering. However, after working in the industry for some time, his desire for speed took over and he began to learn coding. After living in Nigeria and the U.S., he settled in London and started working at Condé Nast a year and a half ago.
Most recently, Austin worked on the Vogue Global Runway project, which brought fashion show coverage from across our portfolio together under one umbrella. Now he shares more about his role as a software engineer and how he keeps a work-life balance when working from home.
What does a typical day look like to you? A typical day consists of a stand-up, which is where we go over the previous day and the tasks that we’re going to do on that day. The day could also include refinement, which means clarifying tickets or tasks that need to be done in the future. After stand-up and refinement, you are usually left to your own devices or paired with somebody. Pairing is recommended, because you learn a lot of things and sometimes when you're too close to the code, you might miss some stuff. A lot of time is actually spent on understanding the best way to solve that problem because if you don't understand the problem, you're going to waste a lot of time.
What is the most rewarding part of your job? For me the most rewarding part is seeing the finished product. That's why I got into the industry because things are moving fast and you can see your changes live on a web page – there's that quick, continuous deployment. That is something Condé Nast is pretty good at and we're working really hard to get even better.
What is your career highlight? My team did a service called Hreflang service, which was rewarded because it contributed to Condé Nast’s goal of becoming a truly global company. Hreflang helps with syndication by giving credit to the appropriate source of that article. So say Vogue Italia syndicated an article from British GQ – that U.K. user visiting the syndicated Vogue Italia article would get redirected to the British GQ article, which was the source of the original article. It's not a small thing because it means that markets are more comfortable with allowing their entities to be syndicated. The service helps us better become a truly global company where information can be exchanged without any repercussions, in terms of, for example, losing revenue.
What advice would you give to your younger self? The best advice I would give to my younger self would be to not be so focused on hitting the landmarks. It's good to admire the journey and it's okay to fail and try new things because you don't know where you'll end up. The ecosystem for software engineering is so large that you don't know what will make you happy unless you try different things.
How has the pandemic affected your job? Before there was a clear demarcation between when I start work and when I stop. I’d usually start work at around 9:30am and end at 5ish, and it meant that I had time for other things in my life. Also in the office, I’d have breaks for drinks or chats with colleagues. Now I'm working longer hours. I've had to be stricter with myself. I have my alarm clock set to 5:30pm to stop working, otherwise I'll continue working into the evening. It’s difficult to say if I'm being more productive or more efficient, because I'm working for longer. But I can say that the work-life boundaries have blurred.
What project did you work on recently? My team and I have just finished working on Vogue Global Runway, unifying the fashion shows experience under one umbrella. It has been great. Due to the pandemic, we can't have the usual fashion shows that we’ve had before, so brands are having to innovate. That means we also have to innovate with the way we implement Runway. So it was cool to be part of this team — there's an opportunity to explore new things in this space.