What brought you to Polarsteps?

I had been living in Singapore for almost three years and was looking for a change. I hadn’t heard of Polarsteps before, but I was looking for job openings on LinkedIn and the listing showed up. The job description looked really interesting and really human when compared to all the others. I downloaded the app and instantly thought it was awesome. My mind was made up that I needed to apply. 

Do you think you're more critical when using an app as a developer?

Oh, for sure. I can tell when something goes wrong in the app and can guess what caused it. But when I downloaded Polarsteps, I used it for a while, interacted with it, and everything was super smooth. The designs were really nice, and I was impressed by the transitions and animations. 

Can you describe your role as an Android engineer here?

I'm one of the Senior Android Engineers in the Android Team, and I work in the cross-functional Plan Team. We've been busy building a lot of features so that users can plan their trips directly in the app. Over the past one and a half years, I would say we have completely overhauled the whole planning experience in the app with new features.

When you started here, the Android team was just two people. How has it been growing to a team of ten?

When it was just the two of us [Amanshu and Lead Android Engineer Florian], we didn't have to think about adding more structure to our workflow. Or if we were writing something, the first consideration wasn't whether it would be understood by someone else in six months. It gives you a lot of speed, but as the team has grown, it has been nice to take things more slowly and think about how we structure and record everything. If a new colleague joins the team and they read this piece of code, will they understand it? That’s important. 

What does collaboration look like for your teams?

We have our separate teams, like the Plan Team and Track Team, but we don't work in silos. We always try to keep everyone in the Android team aligned as much as we can. We have an Android all-hands, and we also have a kickoff for every sprint within the entire Android Team. In that meeting, everyone shares what they'll be working on during the sprint and whether they need help from another team member. Sometimes two teams are working on the same thing, and these check-in moments are a good opportunity to find out if we need to collaborate and avoid conflicts in work later on. 

What does a typical day look like for you when you come to the office?

I'm usually at the office between 9 and 9:30am. I block my morning to do code reviews (checking colleagues' code before it is merged into the main branch) because I'm still fresh and have the most headspace to read somebody else's code.

We have a daily stand-up for around 15 minutes with the Plan Team. We update the team with what we're currently working on or about to start. It's also an opportunity to discuss any problems or things we are stuck with. After that, I'm in focus mode and busy with development, sometimes with breaks for meetings. 

What do you think it is about the way people work at Polarsteps that supports great app development?

For me, it's that Polarsteps is very engineering-driven. Whenever we want to build something, it's always a conversation between the engineers, the designers, and the product managers. It's not a top-down thing. Sometimes we have to reach a compromise on the initial idea, but in the end, it means we deliver something good with minimal bugs.

Is there any new feature you've worked on that you're particularly proud of?

A huge one for me is the new trip experience — we introduced a toggle in the app so users can switch between Plan and Track depending on what stage of their trip they are in. I was of course working with iOS engineers and designers, and I also had help from other Android engineers, but I feel like I played a big part in the project. It was not a very easy thing to build because it had a lot of moving parts, and there were a lot of new interactions. I'm very proud that I could contribute to this.

Last year, you won our company’s Explorer at Heart value award. What did that mean to you?

I don't think I deserved it, to be honest. I look at some of the people I work with and they have been to a lot more places.

You definitely deserved it. I think you were nominated by colleagues and crowned the winner because of the way you travel and your adventurous spirit. I think a great example of this is how you traveled to the company trip in 2023. Can you share a bit more about that?

When they announced that the next company trip was going to be in Girona, I had also been researching hiking trails in that area of Spain. I found this really nice coastal trail [Camí de Ronda] and thought, why not hike the last part of the journey? In the end, it was around a nine- or ten-day hike from the French border. I arrived one day before everyone else who came by train and plane.

Are there any other Polarsteps company values that resonate with you?

I think the one I connect with the most is the "We are Human" value. To me, it means everyone understands that human beings are imperfect and they make mistakes. When something goes wrong, we don’t point fingers; we just look at how we can resolve it. Everyone really bands together to try and solve it. It makes it easier to ship new features or improvements. Even when I’m introducing myself in interviews, I always say, I've been here three years, I'm still here, I'm still creating bugs every single day. 

What advice would you give to someone joining the Android team?

That's a tough one, but I would say take it easy. When I look back on my first days at Polarsteps, it was just me and Florian (Lead Android Engineer). But now, we’re a team of 10 and there is lots of information to absorb. It can feel overwhelming, so take things step by step and get to know one person at a time. You don't have to be a code expert in a couple of weeks. Just learn about how things work, get familiar with the codebase, ask questions, and ask for help.

Want to join Amanshu and the Android team? Check out our open positions.