Pablo Picasso once said, “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” For someone who spent so much time on things he couldn’t do, Picasso was pretty successful. But seriously, this quote perfectly sums up the purpose of Picnic’s Tech Academy. Developers join the Tech Academy to learn new skills. To grow. To transition from beginners to pros — not as pioneers of cubism, but as outstanding Java Developers!

Because we want to hire the top talent at Picnic, we have a fairly rigorous recruitment process. But even the most talented developers, especially recent university graduates, don’t necessarily have a lot of real-life experience in using certain technologies or codebases at scale. The Tech Academy gives developers the opportunity to apply their knowledge to awesome projects in a fun and supportive environment. On the Tech Academy’s Java Learning Path, students learn along with like-minded peers, following expert-led topics on a wide range of Java-related topics. With both theory and practice, and plenty of time for reflection, developers get to hone their skills and set themselves up for future success.

To give you a better understanding of what the Tech Academy is really like, and more importantly what it means to the people who’ve been there and done it, I spoke with 5 recent graduates. So, without further ado, let’s hear from our awesome graduates Anne, Luke, Mahmoud, Tobiasz, and Francisco.

How would you describe the purpose of the Tech Academy in your own words?

Anne Hoogerduijn Strating, Software Engineer for Picnic’s automated warehouse (FCA) team:
“The Tech Academy offers new developers like me the opportunity to learn from both theory and practice, with lots of hands-on examples from our instructors and even some small coding exercises that you work on together with your learning buddies. It’s also really nice that each course is followed up by a reflection session to talk about how what you’ve learned applies to your daily work. Plus, it’s a nice way to get to know developers from other teams.”

Mahmoud Sallam, Java Developer for Picnic’s Distribution team:
“The Tech Academy helps engineers adhere to writing clean code and following best software engineering practices. For me, it helped put some of the pieces together and be more confident about WHY we do things the way we do them — you get that ‘Aha’ moment when you realize what you’ve been doing was a design pattern.”

What qualities do you need to succeed in the Tech Academy?

Francisco Silva, Java Developer for Picnic’s PPL team:
“The willingness to learn, energy (especially in the morning), the ability to accept that you won’t learn everything there is to learn about the topic, and the capacity to balance your time between the Tech Academy and the team you’re working with.”

Anne:
“Curiosity and the acceptance that there is a lot you don’t know (yet!).”

What are your goals now that you’ve graduated from the Tech Academy?

Luke Prananta, Backend Developer for Picnic’s Accounts & Service (ANS) team:
“Now that I’ve graduated, I’ll be doing a tech safari to explore three other teams. Afterward, I’ll be back at the Accounts & Services team to help them realize some big plans they have for the store (the app our customers use to shop with). In the meantime, I’ll strive to keep growing and learning to become the best software engineer I can be.”

Which team did you join and what are your team’s goals?

Tobiasz Barczyński, Software Developer for Picnic’s Payments team:
“I joined Picnic’s payments team. We want to make payments flexible enough to be future proof so that we can introduce cool concepts that would make the customer experience even more convenient. We’re always thinking about having a wider reach — more payment methods mean more potential people that can use Picnic.”

Can you share an example of a recent project you’ve worked on?

Francisco:
“One project is the configuration of timesheets for Picnic’s German operations. The goal was to automate the manual timesheets process. We had to take into account factors such as actual work hours, absences, holidays, public holidays, maternity leave (and other types of leave), and so on. As each country has its own rules, an absence or a public holiday will not be paid the same way in Germany as it is in the Netherlands, for example. Therefore we need to configure timesheets for Germany whilst preserving the current behavior in the Netherlands. That requires adapting or creating new configurations, as well as code changes. I started working together with my team on identifying the requirements for this, as well as implementing them.”

What tech do you use in your role?

For this question, we asked all 5 graduates so that we could share a comprehensive list of the technologies used:

• Java 17
• Spring
• Reactive programming (Project Reactor)
• PostgreSQL
• MongoDB
• RabbitMQ
• Docker
• Python
• Kubernetes
• Prometheus
• Micrometer
• Behave

What’s the culture like within the Tech Academy?

Anne:
“Of course, everyone is very motivated to learn, people are very accepting of differences in knowledge and experience, which makes it pretty easy to ask questions and approach people. Overall, the culture is pretty relaxed! We help each other when we struggle with exercises, can have fun during lunch, and have drinks on Fridays.”

Luke:
“The culture and events at Picnic have been great. Friday drinks, team outings, parties, and a big ski trip in March have definitely been the highlights of my time at Picnic so far.”

What do you like most about working at Picnic?

Tobiasz:
“I do enjoy the fact that behind an online supermarket there’s a huge number of engineering teams, from your standard ‘Java backend’ all the way to the huge amount of data science and Picnic Sneakernet :) It shows dedication and vision. People are super nice too. It’s never been easier to find people from all across the globe.”

Luke:
“The culture and the people here are what I like most about Picnic. The people are driven, talented, and willing to help you grow. And as an added bonus, they know how to party as well.”

Francisco:
“Training and other opportunities to learn outside the tasks of the job, the quality of the codebase, and the tech stack. Also, the atmosphere in the company. It’s an informal vibe with plenty of freedom to manage your time. People are welcoming and easily approachable. Lots of my colleagues are young and international people who are at a similar stage of their life as me.”

Anne:
“Working in a diverse and dynamic environment, where you work but there is also a lot of room for self-development because of things such as the Tech Academy, and at the same time there is a lot of room for fun events and activities.”

Mahmoud:
“As a musician, it’s always cheerful to be able to play music WITH your colleagues TO your colleagues at Picnic parties — shout out to The Black Totes (Picnic’s in-house band!).”

Congrats again to Anne, Luke, Mahmoud, Francisco, and Tobioasz on your recent graduation — thank you for sharing your experiences at Picnic’s Tech Academy. We’re sure this fab five will go on to have wildly successful careers as Java Developers and Picnic is honored to be a part of their journeys!

Are you a Java Developer and want to work on awesome projects with a diverse and international team? Check out the current vacancy to learn more and apply today!