Welcome
to Team Lego
Team Lego is an initiative of xe.gr. The idea is very simple: we will onboard several entry level developers without any prior working experience to our engineering teams. The entry level developers will be led by senior developers of the existing engineering teams to assist them with the onboarding process. The entry level developers will be taken through an induction phase to understand xe.gr and the stack they will use. They will start working with the team and very soon they will take a feature live in the xe.gr production.
Update: The initiative is over for 2021. We are very happy with the results and the people that were added to our team! We were happily surprised to find more people than initially expected who engaged with us and wanted to be a part of Team Lego, so we increased our investment to hire 20 people instead of the original 5 we planned to. Click here to learn more about the initial experience with the initiative and here to learn more about how it unfolded until recently.
Keep reading…How does it work?
The steps are simple:
- You apply to the initiative by 25/05/22.
- At 26/05 an online selection process will begin. The selection process will consist of an online test that can be taken from a place of your choosing.
- Candidates that pass the online test will participate in an online interview, which will help us to compile a short list of the final candidates.
- Shortlisted candidates will be offered a place in our team and will be given a few days to respond to the offer.
Who can apply?
Here's a list of the ideal candidate qualities:
- Have a degree in Computer Science or related field or a similar field. It's OK if you're in your last semester before getting your degree.
- Being able to work on a full-time basis.
- Be eager to learn. You will be doing a lot of that!
- Be smart and driven to get things done.
- We verbally communicate in Greek but you need to have business-proficiency in the English language as a lot of our documentation and written communication is in that.
We require no previous working experience and in fact candidates without experience will be given priority during selection.
What happens after I apply?
First you will be asked to take an online test. The online test will be a mix of multiple choice questions and algorithmic problems. You will be given a few days during which you may start the test but note that once started the test cannot pause. You will be given one and a half hours to complete the test.
If you pass the test you will be invited to an online interview with more candidates in small groups. During the interview, we will be asking you a few questions about your programming experience so far and will also focus on your soft skills.
A shortlist of candidates will be compiled after these two steps. If you get shortlisted, you may be invited to a final online meeting and we will make an offer to which you will have to reply within a few days.
We are looking to hire four to six team members. The shortlist will be sorted so we might not be making you an offer if all positions are filled before we get to you.
Regardless of the outcome, we will be letting you know how you are progressing at every step - this includes applicants that are not selected for the online test.
Development paths after
Team Lego
Web
Everything that our users and customers see falls under the responsibility of the web team. Ruby on Rails with React is their preferred technology stack. The web team does not live on the browser only, so they often deal with some back-end components and they make use of APIs provided by the back-end teams.
Back-end
The stack of the back-end teams is dominated by Java, with other technologies like C# and Javascript also present to a lesser degree. The back-end teams maintain our existing internal and public-facing APIs and create new ones according to the needs of the development pipeline. They use SQL and NoSQL data stores daily and deal with systems such as Postgresql, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, Oracle, Memcached and Elastic Search.
Devops
Infrastructure and operations are the purview of the Devops team. But not only that. The DevOps team is instrumental in assisting the other teams to establish good development, cloud-friendly approaches to software development through continuous-delivery of incremental releases. The team uses an extensive tool chain that includes Terraform, all shorts of scripting languages, speaks only Linux and is intimate with the Amazon cloud.
Mobile
The newest engineering team of xe.gr, the mobile team is tasked with making our mobile applications look great. The tech stacks of the mobile team are strongly dictated by the rules of mobile development: Kotlin and Java (to be migrated to Kotlin) on the Android side and Swift on the iOS side.
Data
One of the strongest points of our company is that it generates and accumulates its own data. The data team is using Python, Spark, Kafka, EMR, AWS Dynamo and other technologies in order to gather all sorts of events that happen within our systems and turn that to useful and actionable insights and information.
QA
Last but not least, the Quality Assurance field is one of the most vital for a company that wishes to invest in integration and end-to-end testing and avoid painful regressions. The QA team uses Java, Selenium, Appium and BrowserStack and is fairly knowledgeable in HTML/CSS as well. Along with the DevOps team, the QA team is perhaps the one that has the broadest understanding of every system in XE.
Success stories
We who started in Team Lego, were fortunate to be part of one of the most ambitious projects conducted by a Greek company, as they trusted us completely, giving the opportunity (mainly) to people without previous work experience, to work on and learn the most modern technologies, showing us from day 1 that we are equal members of the team.
Working at XE has been a wonderful experience. As a fresher, I had the opportunity to learn a lot of new skills and accelerate my growth.The work culture is friendly and supportive. The communication channels are open and frank. The entire team including team leaders are always willing to help. I feel fortunate to be part of a company that appreciates its employees.
XE's initiative for Team Lego was a great opportunity for me, from the very beginning, to start my career as a programmer. The whole process of training, getting to know colleagues, the first contact with the professional world in this field and the general acceptance and help from the company helped me a lot to feel comfortable and very eager to learn and face future challenges.
(Up from the point of the application process until finally joining the team) team LEGO for me, was a helping hand full of love and knowledge. We got accustomed to using cutting edge technology that is utilized in the field of computer science in the present day, as well as to the company's culture and values. It was amazing having an experienced and patient person from the team helping us make the leap from technical university knowledge, to the business world.
A unique opportunity to start a career as a programmer in an amazing environment of trust, continuous learning, and daily exposure to the most up-to-date technologies and the best practices around coding. Well organized and friendly, XE embraced us all from the very first day.
XE with its "Team Lego" initiative showed its willingness to integrate people with no previous professional experience and to provide them with proper support and guidance. The realistic expectations combined with the friendly but at the same time professional atmosphere, made me have a very positive work experience.
The thing I like the most about Team Lego is the fast-paced, team-oriented environment that gives everyone huge room for growth and success. What is most important though, is that at the end of this journey you find yourself productive and confident to take on new challenges.
Who are we?
XE is the leading classified ads company in Greece, specializing in the Real Estate, Jobs, Auto-Moto and Business sectors. More than 2 million people in Greece browse xe.gr every month.
Our ambition in XE is to create a unique environment that will help people effortlessly match supply and demand. Whether it be in real estate, jobs, auto/moto or any of the hundred other categories we support, our goal is to offer an efficient marketplace that promotes such transactions.
Helping our customers find what they are looking for easily, quickly and unambiguously is the sole most important factor that influences what we do in Engineering at XE. Areas of focus of our engineers are developing high traffic and always-on web applications specialized in classifieds, optimizing code to run faster and adding features that make the journey of our customers easier. All of our systems are running in the AWS cloud and we make extensive use of AWS services.
Why are we doing this?
Our goal is to grow our own product and delight our users and customers. To do this we need to innovate in many fields. There are no ready-made solutions for most of the things we do in our core business. Therefore we need to develop our own stuff.
During the last few years and for the foreseeable future we will be in an almost always-on talent-seeking mode. Since mid-2019, our development team has grown 4 times its original size and we will keep growing it at the fastest pace that is sustainable.
To grow the engineering team we need the right mix of skills and seniority. Senior developers always make significant contributions and can be instrumental in mentoring people with less experience so they can grow. More junior developers always bring in a more energetic and fresh approach with them, sometimes constructively stirring the team with their openness to new ideas and their eagerness to learn.
On-boarding a junior developer to our team is usually a stressful and tiring exercise both for the new developer but also for the team as well. We know from experience that a non-trivial percentage of the capacity of the team is devoted to each junior team member we hire. And we are OK with this because the results are always worth it.
The Team Lego initiative is an effort to make this process more sustainable and productive. By having several entry level developers join in at the same time, we have a lot to gain. We can streamline the on-boarding experience. We can create an environment that is easier for the new developers to adapt to and learn quicker. We can make it easier both for us and new developers to start this new relationship. And since it's going to be easier, we can increase our investment in this area and give an opportunity to more people without experience to start their career.
Frequently Asked Questions
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When do I start if I'm selected?
If we make you an offer and you accept - great!
We want you to start at the end of August or the beginning of September. We will let you know of the exact date well in advance.
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Is this a full employment opportunity?
Yes. You will have full-employment status from the first day you start and will also be part of the private insurance plan of the company.
Part of the job of team leaders is to help you get started on what may very possibly be your first full time job. You will be given regular guidance and feedback and you will have to be ready to adjust to the requirements of the job and the need to pick up hard skills as you go.
We have previous experience with such an initiative and we have good reason to believe that everyone is going to do well. Having said that, it is possible to find out during the initiative that, despite your efforts and ours, we are not a good match for you. In that case you will be compensated for your work up to that point and we will have to let you go.
To be clear, this is not an initiative where we want people that will complete a project and then leave. Our intention is that everyone that starts in Team Lego will complete the initiative and stay with us afterwards.
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What will I be doing?
Initially we will take you through a few on-boarding sessions. You will need to understand what the company is about, what we're trying to achieve and how we prioritize work. You will also need to understand how we're making a living and how the engineering department works.
After that, you are going to be assigned a very small production feature in order to ensure that you go through the steps of our development life cycle. This will be an intense period where you will get familiar with the Scrumban cycle we use and you get the necessary access to systems you need to do your job.
Once this period is over, you will continue working with the team on production features and projects. We want you to quickly go through the steps of deploying and monitoring parts of our infrastructure so you can better understand what goes on behind the scenes and not just stare at the production systems in bewilderment. During the next months, you will definitely need to learn at least one new technical skill. This might be Java, Ruby on Rails, React, server-side Javascript, Amazon Web Services infrastructure or other technology. Also, you will almost certainly encounter infrastructure that you will have to understand and use, like Jenkins, Postgresql, Mongo, MySQL, Redis or other such things.
You will need to start grasping requirements, go through software design, implement functionality in phases if possible with incremental rollouts and monitor the performance of the deliverables. The beginning will be a demanding time. But we can promise that it will be a very interesting and learning experience.
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Is this an internship or assistance-ship opportunity?
No, this is a full-employment opportunity. You will be paid a full salary once you start and you will be part of the private insurance plan of the company.
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I will definitely need to learn new stuff. How can I be productive enough?
New languages and technologies are the so-called hard skills. It is surprisingly easy to pick up new hard skills and the younger you are the easier it is. As a developer you are bound to be doing that throughout your entire career anyway. This might feel daunting at first but we understand that and we will create room for it. You will be given time to practice and learn new stuff. You will be always guided and assisted directly by your team leader and indirectly by every engineer in XE to get where you need to be.
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If I apply, will I be notified of the results of my application?
Yes, even if you don't progress past a stage.
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How large is the team?
The engineering team currently has 52 members.
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Where will I be working?
That depends upon a few factors. If you are not based in Athens, you will be working remotely permanently but we would love to have you work in Athens alongside the team for the first three weeks so we can get to know you a little better. Currently, engineers that are based in Athens work in our new offices 2 to 3 times a week, and the rest of the time they work remotely.
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What equipment will I use?
We issue a laptop to every engineer. The laptop is equipped with a latest-generation i7 processor, M.2 disk and 32GB RAM.
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I still have a question about Team Lego.
Send your question here and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.