A Day in the Life of a Front-End UI Developer

I’ve been a front-end UI developer at Apexon for about a year and a half now, and in that time, my team and I have made a really big positive impact for our client.

If doing UI development work that yields real outcomes for your clients appeals to you, you may want to work at Apexon. Read on for more insight into what it’s like to work here as a UI dev.

My Daily Schedule, Meeting by Meeting

In my current role as a team lead, I focus on UI and front-end software. My days were more coding-oriented early on, but since I’ve become a team lead, my coding work is mostly limited to maintaining error logs and writing documentation.

I’m in a lot of meetings these days. I start off every morning with a call about defects to see what might have broken overnight, as diagnosed by our QA team.

My next big meeting is a status update with my team. In this one, we go over stuff that people may be stuck on. My goal is to help clear any blockers and give my devs some new perspective.

Sometimes I have cross-team meetings in the afternoon. In these meetings, we usually coordinate our UI front and back ends.

We close out the day with a code review meeting, where we review each other’s code over Zoom. I like our real-time approach because it personalizes the process and holds everyone accountable. You can actually show your team what each feature does and fix problems more efficiently.

My Favorite Part of the Day: Helping My Team Succeed

I love it when I know my team members are going in the right direction.

I can’t hold their hands, but I ask them: Are you stuck right now? Can you continue? Do you have what you need?

I don’t end my meetings until I know they have the tools and the understanding to go forward. The best part of my day is seeing that progress being made.

Client Success – and Employee Success – Shine At Apexon

At Apexon, we put a lot of emphasis on building trust between our team and our clients.

That trust comes through collaboration: instead of strictly taking orders from the top, there’s space for employees to have a say and push back when needed.

Our focus on collaboration runs so deep that I don’t even think about it much day to day. It’s the baseline experience at Apexon.

In other consulting positions, you might not be listened to as much, or maybe you’ll be railroaded by the client. But in the collaborative spaces that Apexon creates, I can leverage my experience to give clients the best product they can get, even if they’re not sure what that is yet.

I think clients like our approach: on the project I’m on now, the client gave me a team leader role, which is kind of rare. Normally they save that role for their own employees, but they had trust in the work I’d done.

My Biggest Tip for New Devs: Focus on People Skills

A lot of people come into UI development focused on the technical part – they know how to code, and they’re really good at it. But you’re not always going to be working with only devs.

That’s where consulting throws a wrench into the system as compared to in-house development. You need to be able to communicate well with people in lots of different roles.

Good communication means being able to step back and zoom out from the super-technical details – being able to articulate how your code helps a non-technical person and their bottom line.

For example, at a tech demo in front of a large audience, a lot of devs just dive into the code and show the technical challenges they faced. That’s all well and good, but it can lose the crowd. Instead, try framing your delivery in terms of how it will help the user with the business vocabulary they understand.

Consider Finding A Home At Apexon

If you think you might want to do UI development at Apexon, we’d love to hear from you.

We’re currently looking to hire folks who see themselves thriving here. Learn more about our open roles.