Meet the Team: Frontend Developer Simon White

Alison Visser: What do you do at Annertech? 

Simon White: I am a frontend developer and work alongside a team in Managed Services as a Support Engineer. My role is diverse which makes the work really interesting. I have a wide range of responsibilities such as assisting customers with questions and issues, peer reviewing code, testing maintenance upgrades, carrying out feature requests and deploying them. I also like helping improve our processes. 

Our goal in Managed Services is to maintain the health of our sites and find ways where we can improve them. 

Alison: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? 

Simon: I’m Simon White - my friends call me Si. I am from Bristol in the UK which is in the south west of England. I’ve lived here most of my life and care very much about my city. 

Bristol is famous for many things like Banksy the graffiti artist, the toppling of the Edward Colston statue, but my favourite is the slang - for example those who are from Bristol can say “I’m Brizzle born and bred” which means “I am from Bristol”, or “gert lush” which translates to “rather nice”. 

“Ark at ee” is another one which is baffling when read back, but this is a sarcastic term used if someone is being a bit fancy or flash, like “oh, check you out”... “ooooh, ark at ee”. 

I am proud to say I am a Bristolian. I live in a vibrant part of Bristol with my wife and two daughters south of the river Avon (and yes - they too are Bristolians - born and bred!).

I feel really blessed with where I live. Dundry is on my doorstep, and if you head a little further out you’re into the countryside where you can explore the beautiful Mendip Hills. Butcombe and Cheddar is not far from my neck of the woods and when I get a chance I enjoy heading that way for a walk.

Alison: What are your interests outside of work? 

Simon: Scouting was a big part of my life. I was a Scout from age eight to my early 20s, becoming a warranted leader with Trident VSU (Venture Scout Unit) in the early 2000s. 

I’m no longer involved but it really did shape the person who I am today. I did so much in scouting. It took me places, I developed friendships and I learned so many skills. 

If you’re out hiking and you’re lost you’ll want me on your side, put it that way. Map reading, bush craft, open fire cooking, camping are all things I still like to practise. 

I’ve got a decade under my belt as a homebrewer and I am a member of Bristol Craft Brewers where we meet once a month and showcase our finest of wares! 

I’ll never get tired of brewing; I love the entire process from designing something using base ingredients and seeing it through to the end and beyond. You have to look after beer, and I really like that.

Even before you make your beer there’s a tonne of research involved. I find myself agonising over the choice of ingredients, and then playing with water profiles in brewing software to bring out malt or hop flavours.

And then there’s yeast strains which is a subject all to itself! Goodness. I could talk forever about how yeast can shape a beer.

There are so many variables you can play with and the fun goes on and on! Fermentation is a fascinating thing. It’s brilliant.

My recent foray has been “no to low” alcohol brewing. Believe it or not, it’s hard to achieve. It’s been a black hole of fun.

Being a keen gardener, I particularly like growing tomatoes. I guess I do that mainly because I love eating them but also it reminds me of my poppy (my grandparent) who was also an excellent tomato grower.

I grow my own hops too which I use.

I’m into heavy metal music, I’ve always listened to heavy metal and will continue to listen to heavy metal. I love going to music festivals and seeing live performances, the more obscure the better.

Alison: Is there anything quirky about you that you’d be willing to share? 

Simon: I recently got into skateboarding, and now that I’m saying this I’m thinking I’ve experienced what is known as a midlife crisis! 

In all seriousness it’s been a brilliant thing to do and I’m enjoying feeling fit. I’m a regular at Brunel Way pump track and can proudly say I can smash the track and get round it 10 times without stopping. 

It’s really hard but it’s allowed me to look after myself. The community there is great and I’ve had mums from my kid’s school approach me and comment on the fact that they see me at school pick-up and didn’t know I was into skateboarding! 

Some of the young 20-somethings also comment on my endurance which is really nice to hear.

I’ve also gotten into weight training which is just brilliant – the home brewery is now a home gym and I’ve even got my eldest daughter on board.

Alison: What does a typical work day look like? 

Simon: A typical day could involve working on a feature request, it could be peer reviewing code, communicating with our customers to schedule in deployments, customer liaison, having internal comms with the team, figuring out why a site has all of a sudden having performance issues and remedying. 

Then there’s First Response! As a First Responder, I monitor customer requests and triage accordingly. We confirm the problem and replicate it, then look at ways we can solve the issue. It often involves doing some initial investigation to capture the bits you need to change and ensuring all necessary details are available for assignment or resolution. 

It takes certain skills to juggle the many websites we manage, it’s challenging and exciting. 

Alison: How did you get into this line of work? 

Simon: I’ve always been interested in computers. At home we had an Atari 2600, a NES, and a Commodore 64 (with a half MB upgrade!), and much to the dislike of my Mum I’d always be taking them apart and putting them back together. At secondary school we had a suite of PCs that were Pentium 5 machines with Windows 3.1. 

When I got to university I studied software engineering and learned more about the internet and its possibilities. After finishing I built a few static websites with HTML, CSS and JavaScript and it was when I landed my first IT job I was introduced to Linux and Drupal. 

I’ve got several people to thank for that (all of whom are Drupalists to this day) as it was a massive turning point and changed the trajectory of my career. 

Several years later I took time out of the industry to look after my kids full-time and a new type of work began. That was probably one of the highlights of my life, it was hard, but massively rewarding. I have a great bond with my daughters and I am grateful for that time I’ve had with them. 

Fast forward to Covid-19, I did several years of contract work and then ultimately joined Annertech, where I’ve been really happy. 

Alison: Was there a favourite project/bit of code that you worked on? 

Simon: Alongside the day-to-day work we also have several internal projects on the go, and recently we got all of our sites to use Behat with basic tests. Behat is great - it streamlines testing by automating tasks, the tests are easy to maintain as the language is human readable and ultimately ensures consistent quality and reduces manual effort. 

Alison: What do you love most about your job? 

Simon: I really like helping our customers and making sure they feel heard. The variety of work keeps things interesting and I really like that we are open and transparent around sharing knowledge. I work with an awesome team who are supportive and experienced.