Lyndsey joined Ampersand in 2018. Fast forward three years, new projects, a promotion and of course a global pandemic – we catch up with Lyndsey to hear more.

Hi Lyndsey, so tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do at Ampersand.

Hi! I’m one of the senior front-end developers here. I’ve been doing development professionally for around ten years now. I’ve worked for companies who provided a variety of services, from drop-shipping to fast fashion to publishing and social media. At Ampersand, I do a variety of work from development and dev support to estimating work for sprints and assisting in recruiting and training new hires. 

What made you make the move to Ampersand? 

My last job was in-house; while there were plenty of fun things to do, it was truly just time for me to move on. Funnily enough, I’d just started working alongside someone who used to work at Amp and they recommended the role to me, so I applied and, well, surprise! (And thanks again for that recommendation – you know who you are!)

Why did you choose a career in software development? 

I started making websites for fun when I was much younger – I started with WYSIWYG software (shout-out to Microsoft Frontpage!) and the more I learned, the more I wanted to do so I just kinda kept at it! 

How has the sector changed since your career started? 

Magento has definitely come along in leaps and bounds, and their PWA Studio is evolving really quickly. As for the front-end scene, the evolution has been wild, especially with the creation and evolution of libraries and frameworks such as React and Angular; I never dreamed that one day I’d be building entire sites in JavaScript like we are now. I won’t deny that it’s pretty fun though! 

What’s the progression been like for you?

I started here at mid-level, and started picking up work fairly quickly. After that, I helped to prototype and devise the tech stack for a greenfield project, and later on, supported on recruitment. Shortly afterwards I got my promotion! Since then, I’ve carried on with more of the same; working with the team to improve our stack and workflow and just doing the absolute best I can! 

Fast forward 3 years, what are you working on now? 

I’ve worked on a good variety of things whilst I’ve been here; from assisting with Magento 1 client maintenance to building out component libraries and working with Magento’s new PWA Studio. Currently I’m working with one of our clients who run a PWA, doing bug fixes and planning feature updates.

What has your involvement been with the PWA accelerator?

Initially I did a bit of development, but right now I’m supporting; as one of the main devs on our original PWA project this is great, because sharing the knowledge gained from that across the wider team is invaluable. 

Have you got anything exciting coming up in the front end? 

Of course! Front-end tech evolves so quickly nowadays, there’s always something exciting happening in R&D at Ampersand! We have something internal we’re discussing and hoping to work on imminently, watch this space! 

How has working through lockdown affected the dev team? / changed how you work….

Things have definitely been tough, though prior to the pandemic our team actually started having monthly meetings to discuss new things we wanted to try, cool stuff we’d seen, issues we were facing on projects, that kinda thing. Doing more of that – and working closely on projects with -tight deadlines – has definitely brought us together.

If you’re interested in joining Lyndsey and the team, head to our careers page to view all of our current engineering opportunities.