My 9 Years at Groundswell

by Ben Nguyen

I started my journey at Groundswell Cloud Solutions in 2014 as a co-op student when we had fewer than ten full-time employees. After finishing my degree in Computer Science, I transitioned to a full-time position and have been here ever since. In that time, I have worked in all four office locations (five if we include the temporary office!) and watched us grow from a company that only had two full-time developers to over 40 teammates on the Technical Team. 

After 9 years at Groundswell, here is what keeps me here! 

Professional Growth 

Over the years, I have worked on 15 different projects, ranging from smaller projects that spanned a few weeks to large projects that lasted several years. My first project was an internal project the time card application, which we still use today. I was mainly responsible for the UI and front-end development, which was challenging for me since, at the time, my experience in JavaScript was virtually non-existent. Today, front-end development is my specialty and makes up the majority of my work.

One of the most interesting projects I have ever been in was the Service and Experience Cloud project which was an implementation for a large multinational company. It also happens to be the longest and most complex project due to the sale and diversity of the user base. The wide variety of customization options that we had to allow forced us to come up with creative solutions that also needed to be user friendly as possible. The client was also very willing to experiment with emerging technologies and invest a lot into processes and tools that would be beneficial to the developers on the project, as well as their end users. This was the first major Lightning Web Components (LWC) project that I worked on and the first project to implement front-end unit tests. These days, I am typically working on creating custom Lightning Web components, which can be used by many different clients and thousands of end users.

Since 2014, Groundswell has seen tremendous growth, and I’m proud to say that I have had the opportunity to be involved in shaping some of the development processes and standards that we have today. I started in a very junior position, with virtually no professional experience. The people surrounding me were great at mentoring and teaching us about development and business processes, considering that back then, there were only 2 full-time developers at the company.  Now I am leading a team of developers on some very exciting projects.

Personal Growth & Support 

Since my first day at Groundswell, I have had two kids and even purchased a property with my wife, so there have been many adjustments that I have made regarding how my work-life balance is managed, and the management at Groundswell has also been supportive of that and helped with that however they can.

Groundswell has a very high standard for their employees. Everyone from junior to veteran developers seems to be very smart and capable when they start here. Not only that, but everyone is genuinely helpful and is always willing to teach whenever they can. Groundswell management strives to give us a good work-life balance. Management truly cares about not overworking us whenever possible, and projects are generally planned out in advance so that declines and workloads are reasonable.

My Advice to Consultants

My advice to consultants starting their journeys is that it never hurts to ask. Whether it is asking for help managing your workload or requesting projects that interest you, the worst thing to do is to keep quiet. If you tell people everything is fine, then they will assume so. If there is a type of project that you want to work on, or an area you would like to explore, make it known to your managers. You may not always be able to get the work you want right away, but if the opportunity comes up, you could be overlooked, simply because nobody knew what you wanted.

---

From becoming a father to working through a global pandemic, my life at Groundswell has been filled with changes, challenges, and growth. The people, work culture, and exciting projects are what keep me here all these years later.