Tech Talks vol.15 – Frontend Engineer

About Tech Talks

In this Tech Talks series, we will directly share with you the attitude and vibe of the PayPay Tech team through the voices of the unique product members from around 40 countries! This time, Shin Yang from the Web team will share her story.

*The Japanese version of the article is also available here.

What I currently do

I’m currently the owner of web features related to Core Apps & Growth, leading two team members to arrange project development and product maintenance.

A technical challenge I experienced recently

The Otoshidama 2022 Lottery Campaign project at the end of 2020 had a super tight schedule. It was a big project, and we had a mere two months to get everything ready to serve millions of users.

We held a 15 minute meeting every morning to sync up on any changes that occurred on the previous day to ensure agility. All members on the project in their different capacities worked very closely to support each other to deliver on time. Although I would prefer not to face such a schedule again, I must say that the teamwork was great, which was an honor to be part of.

Challenges I want to take at PayPay

As there are so many opportunities at PayPay to take up responsibility as an owner or leader of a project, I want to strengthen my skills in supporting team members to make a strong team that contributes to the overall goal.

My typical schedule

Lately, I’ve been spending less time coding. I spend more time on discussions about the project at hand, adjustments between stakeholders to develop plans, and reviews of codes written by other members. I also spend some time on SRE tasks to improve our system stability. Roughly, a third of my schedule consists of meetings, a third towards managing the team, and another third on coding and other survey related tasks.

My career before joining PayPay

I’ve been a frontend engineer in two startup companies. Before that, I also worked as a PM in the IT department of a global company that employed 40 thousand people in Taiwan. It’s been very interesting experiencing different companies with differing scales!

Why I decided to join PayPay

I was on the lookout for a growing but not-too-small company offering opportunities that a small-scale business could not. Also, it was in the first year of the covid outbreak, so being able to work remotely was a big plus. PayPay had both these things, and I was lucky enough to receive an offer to join.

Message to aspiring PayPay employees

Firstly, PayPay has a great HR team, as well as a translation team that provides language support in Japanese and English for those who are not fluent in either language, so the environment is well set-up for non-Japanese employees. Also, people are willing to make the effort to help each other out. Another good thing is that you can get the chance to explore different locations across Japan, working remotely. I’m taking full advantage of the “Work From Anywhere” system – I stay in a particular city anywhere between a month to several months before moving on to another.

Let me welcome you in advance, to this fast-growing company that is set to make a difference in how people pay for things in their everyday lives!

Author: Shin Yang / Editorial Supervisor: Mune / Managing Editor: Az
*Employee affiliations are as of the time of the interview.