IgnitionOne was my first salaried developer position. I was hired as a junior developer to aid in the creation and implimentation of user tracking and popups. Essentially the company ran a backend on PHP which would take a highly specialized request from frontend javascript. It would then handle external management of the data to trigger javascript which served a custom coded popup.
The general life-cycle of a project for me would start with an approved design. In most cases, I would be given very specific requirements from marketing. IE: This exact font, in this exact size, in this exact color value, in this exact location, no flexibility, to-the-letter. I would then take these designs and code them into a popup. I would integrate our javascript-to-php interfaces, define the QA tests, and send it off.
In my time working there I was asked on several occasions to take over QA duties and perform testing on these popups. I would be responsible for loading these popups and executing very exacting replication steps in order to test. I was also assigned to auditing existing code. Customers would have doubts about the code or our triggering conditions, so i would be left to determine trigger conditions and provide specific information on the installations.
In my time as a junior dev I learned about how the company worked, jira and project management, development, version control, and a slue of other base level skills that I now take for granted. It was very limited on overall responsibilites but i found my time with the company and my team invaluable. I even went on to work alongside my manager and her husband in another position several years later.
The blog is mostly here to serve ass a simple way to link to long-form content on the site. There won't be any breaking news or tell-all stories here. Just good ole fashioned boring crap no one wants to read.