Software Engineer at Thermo Fisher Scientific

About Thermo Fisher

Thermo Fisher makes scientific instruments and the software that runs them. In a research lab a bug can ruin someone's experiment, so the bar for "done" was high.

What I worked on

I built and maintained the search screens and pagination for the platform, and got results showing up in under half a second. I also automated our full-stack release testing, which cut the time to check a deployment from about two days to about six hours.

That is where I learned what working in a big, old codebase is like. I think about that a lot now, when I am the one asking engineers how long something will take.

What stayed with me

• In some software, reliability matters more than any new feature.
• An estimate is a guess. I try to remember that when I am the one asking for it.
• Before shipping a change, trace everything it touches.