Talking to Jesus Castañeda about growth and Netcentric’s frontend community

First impressions matter -- and in today’s fast-paced world, you rarely get a second chance to make a first impression.

Frontend developers are the architects of digital-first impressions, conveying brand and company purpose to customers, managing user experience, and building user trust and confidence.

At Netcentric, our well-established frontend community is growing and thriving. We recently caught up with Jesus Castañeda, Senior Frontend Software Engineer at Netcentric to chat about the growth he’s experienced both within Netcentric as a whole, and as part of our frontend community.

The importance of Netcentric’s frontend community

It goes without saying that without frontend developers, all users would be able to see on a website or web app would be indecipherable code.

However, at Netcentric, our frontend community is much more than code. In fact, our frontend community is nurtured from day one. Many of our frontend developers started their journeys with us in our Netcentric Academies, which are on-the-job training programs designed to help junior-level talent quickly jump into projects, ready to contribute from the very beginning.

As a dean and trainer for the Netcentric Tech Academy, Jesus helps organize and coordinate training for junior employees, delivers workshops, and contributes to the topics that new frontend developers study. He is a firm believer that the Academy helps new starters define their own path within Netcentric by providing them with the tools and means to put their learned knowledge into action.

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Personal and professional growth at Netcentric

Personal and professional growth is a central focus at Netcentric, supported by our holacratic way of working. And as one of our most experienced frontend developers who’s been with us from almost the very beginning, Jesus is a testament to this commitment to growth.

Jesus believes that Netcentric’s culture of both self-management and extensive community support is what’s driven both business success and his personal and professional growth during his time with the company.

As an experienced frontend developer and mentor to new starters, he’s also tasked with balancing his usual client workload with his responsibilities as a trainer. Netcentric’s holacratic mindset allows him to be agile and manage his own capacity. For Jesus, this looks like blocking out his calendar for specific training and project work and revisiting his workload every two weeks for each new sprint.

In fact, Jesus has witnessed the impact of holacracy at Netcentric from its very inception and believes that it’s this way of working that contributes to both personal and professional growth. He says, “At Netcentric, you’re not alone. You are not an individual that needs to do everything on your own. When you join Netcentric, you join a team.”

Why join the Netcentric team?

Netcentric’s culture is based on growth, learning, and self-exploration while being supported by your team. Jesus says, “I always tell new joiners that if they have a question they can reach out to anyone, even if you’ve never spoken to that person. New joiners soon realize that they don’t have to figure out everything on their own -- they’re part of a bigger team where everyone’s more than happy to help each other out”.

We’re also passionate about empowering people to embrace new challenges and encouraging them to drive meaningful change when and where it’s needed. On this, Jesus says, “It’s okay not to know stuff. It’s a very hard lesson to learn, but it’s fine to say I don’t know the answer, but I want to learn. You’re not supposed to know everything!”

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While we’re passionate about helping each other be the best versions of ourselves, we don’t hire people to tell them exactly how to do things. We provide them with the structure they need to embrace new challenges and discover the answers.

We’re always looking for new talent to join our agile, forward-thinking community of frontend developers. If you’re looking for your next opportunity where you can truly take your career to the next level, check out our careers page for our latest openings.