iOS Development at PayPay
Yoseph joined PayPay after being attracted to their mission of making Japan a cashless society. As an iOS Engineer, he originally joined their iOS feature team, but now works on their platform team, creating an internal SDK for their iOS and Android apps.
Yoseph, originally from Indonesia, first came to Japan to work for an IT consulting firm. When he was looking for new opportunities, PayPay stood out due to their mission: turn Japan into a cashless society. A fan of science fiction movies, he imagines a future where people can do cashless transactions without even using a smartphone, and instead a device like Glass. By joining PayPay, he hopes to help make this future a reality.
As an organization, PayPay focuses on rapid development and release of new features. So when Yoseph joined the iOS feature team, this speed of development was one of the challenges he faced, especially when tackling bigger features. He said, “Like one time, three months after I joined PayPay, we were working on a merchant-facing tool that involved developing something like Google map. Even though we approached it incrementally, it was a big thing, though we still released a feature every week. That was really interesting.”
Everyone has a positive attitude, and supports each other.
To keep up with this fast pace, it helps that PayPay’s engineering team is highly collaborative. He said, “Everyone has a positive attitude, and supports each other. If we have a problem, we can discuss it, and come up with some sort of solution together. Through this discussion, we often learn something new, and understand what might be possible.”
When PayPay decided to create a dedicated platform team to focus on improving the internals of their app, Yoseph switched to it. Initially the team focused on refactoring, but now they’ve begun to develop an internal SDK. The SDK itself is written in Kotlin, and is used to generate frameworks for both iOS and Android. This creates its own challenges. He said, “We have to deal with both platforms, Android and iOS. We need to think about the differences between the two environments, and how to overcome them.”
Yoseph recommends PayPay to developers who are interested in creating a cashless society. He said, “If you are interested in a cashless society and how to make human life better, PayPay is a great place. If you have a good idea as a developer, you can propose it here.”
You can meet people to mentor you. Here you learn faster, and can develop faster.
It’s also a great place to learn from other developers. He said, “You can meet people to mentor you. It’s not like you can always learn by yourself, and you sometimes need somebody willing to help you. Here you learn faster, and can develop faster.”
In addition to mentoring, PayPay also encourages knowledge sharing. He said, “There’s a session called sharing knowledge. This knowledge is not necessary for the development of the app, but rather if you have things you want to share personally or get feedback on. Other developers are open minded, so it’s a good opportunity.”
He also mentioned they hold iOS specific sessions. He said, “Every month or so, we discuss interesting things in iOS development. So you always are up to date with the latest trends. This makes iOS development more fun, and you can love iOS even more.”