Q&A with Caner Canbaz: What makes CobbleWeb attractive to ambitious software engineers?

It’s one thing for a company to tell you what a wonderful work environment they offer, but the reality is we all prefer hearing it from the horse’s mouth. Our series of Q&As with CobbleWeb software engineers does just that – it offers deep insights into what made them join CobbleWeb, the rewards and challenges of the job, and how they see their futures unfolding.

This week we chatted to Caner Canbaz, a senior full-stack software engineer at CobbleWeb, who told us about the interesting road that took him first to software engineering and then to CobbleWeb. 

He explains how a passion for building, problem-solving and having an entrepreneurial mindset served him well in his chosen career path. We discussed some of the projects he has worked on, including a food delivery app, which involved some smart footwork around tech stack selection.

On the organisational front, some interesting thoughts on remote work culture and company IRL get-togethers were shared. CobbleWeb’s flexible, collaborative culture and the opportunity to grow beyond technical roles are also put under the magnifying glass.

---

Merhaba Caner, thanks for joining me for this chat about your Cobbleweb journey. I’d like to kick off with a bit of background. So first of all, where are you based?

I’m based in Ankara, the capital of Turkey.

How long have you been with Cobbleweb? 

I joined in November last year.

Cool, so it’s almost your one year anniversary?

Yeah!

The path to CobbleWeb

Well, congratulations. How long have you been a software developer for? 

Professionally, I have been working as a software developer for seven years, but I have been exposed to software development since high school.  I studied web design and programming at school.

What sparked your interest in software development? Why did you choose it as a career?

It’s actually quite an interesting story. At school I was selling online game servers for Counter Strike. I think it was version 1.5. But I needed to have an admin panel. 

At that time PHP was very popular. At first I just wanted to buy a PHP panel. But you know, as a student I couldn’t afford one. So I decided to learn PHP and build an admin panel myself.

I really enjoyed the experience and was quite proud that I could build something that was useful for my student business. So yeah, that was my entry point to software development.

That’s a really cool story. Solving that problem basically planted the seed of your career. You previously mentioned that at university you built an app as well?

My family, my brothers and uncle, have dry cleaning businesses. They wanted me to build an app to make running their business easier. So while at university I built them an app that can track customers’ orders and look up previous orders, together with QR code and SMS integration.

Actually, I learned a lot of things from that experience. There was quite a bit of iteration based on feedback from my uncle and brothers. I spent about two to three years improving it. For example, I discovered a pattern that was useful in improving the performance of the app. The best way to learn is by doing. 

What was the foundation of the app? What framework did you build it on? 

I used drag and drop Windows Forms. And for the backend C# and MySQL for the database.

Interesting. And that app is still being used?

Yeah. I built it in 2018, so it’s been used for 7 years.

Well done! Is your family paying you commission on that? 

They should! Every time we have a conversation about it, they are very glad to have it. Even their customers have gotten very used to it. When they haven’t received an SMS to collect their items for example they’ll ask when they’ll be getting an SMS instead of phoning the store. So that’s great.

It’s almost like Apple’s products where people become so used to it that they don’t want to use anything else. A mini Turkish Apple that you built out there in Ankara, haha. 

You mentioned that you attended web design classes at school level, but did you study computer science at university?

Kind of. I did a degree in computer education at the Instructional Technology department.Not quite at the same level as computer science, but most of the lectures were the same.

What makes a good remote work culture?

So you’re based in Turkey. And as you know, the CobbleWeb team is distributed over a number of countries. There’s a lot of talk about remote culture these days. Some companies are forcing their teams to go back to the office and others follow a hybrid approach. What is your initial perception of the remote culture at Cobbleweb? Did you have to adapt, or were you already used to remote work beforehand? 

I have been working remotely since the beginning of 2020. I was pretty much used to it. 

Would you say that you were comfortable slotting in with the tools that we use and the way we do remote collaboration?

Definitely.  At my previous companies there were no Jira time trackers, just really strict working hours. I prefer the flexibility that Cobbleweb offers.

Because sometimes you may not be available because of the time zones, etc. At CobbleWeb five to six hours are shared by most team members with two hour buffer zones around them. 

I agree with you. I like the approach of having core hours where everybody can operate at the same time, and then, like you said, your buffer hours, that allows a little bit of flexibility. It creates a nice balance between productivity and flexibility.

Exactly

You and I had a few chats at the recent team retreat in Istanbul and got to know each other a bit. As you probably know, there’s a lot of research and commentary on how to manage remote teams and make sure that there’s good cohesion between everyone. 

When you meet someone face to face, you immediately build a deeper rapport with that person than if you just experience them as a disembodied voice and Zoom face. To what extent do you feel that an employer should be organising company get-togethers like team retreats where there is some IRL interaction? 

When you work remotely people often simply remain a profile picture on applications like Slack or Mattermost. But when you meet someone face to face the dynamic changes. You are more inclined to have conversations outside your field of experience, especially with someone from a different culture or country. When you work remotely, you don’t really talk about anything, besides the work.

At our team retreat I learned some things about France, South Africa and other countries. I really enjoyed that and it made me embrace the company even more. It has been a definite motivation boost for me.

That’s great to hear. I feel it can be overdone. If a company gets too social, then there is, for me, a downside. But if there’s a nice balance, it’s very good for creating context and humanizing the people that you work with.

In my case I haven’t met anyone from my previous company in person since 2020.

Oh, really? Wow. 

I would see my previous teammates in meetings and so on, but without any personal interaction. So the team retreat was a really good experience for me. 

How do you feel about the two presentations we had during the team retreat? The CEO’s presentation gave us a rundown of what we are focusing on next year. Did you feel that was valuable or was it just more noise? 

Not at all. It was really valuable for me, because I’ve been working on CobbleWeb projects, but I didn’t know how it fit in with our broader vision. What are the company’s goals? 

So for me, that was really useful. Now I know that the ShareWise library will be a big focus in 2025. Such details are very important for me. 

Indeed. That’s the value of adding context, because there is a danger that people start operating in a vacuum. 

Collaborative project management at CobbleWeb

I want to move on to the project management process. Are there any differences with your previous jobs in the way that we do things?. How would you gauge the project management process at Cobbleweb?

Actually, it’s very different when I compare it with my previous experience.

Previously, I would be told by a  project manager or product managers what to do without ever being asked for feedback. In that sense CobbleWeb is very different. 

When I joined CobbleWeb, I was assigned to a project as part of a team. I was quite surprised when the product manager asked me to interrogate the design and the business rules. I found it interesting to share my ideas and comments. At my previous companies I wasn’t really given a voice.

It’s good to be involved at a deeper level,  because sometimes the design may be missing UX or UI elements or some use cases. As engineers we even collaborate with the client to define the scope or prioritise epics.

This level of collaboration is basically baked into every step of the development process from the design  to the technical specifications. At each step, as an software engineer, you have a voice.

Yes, exactly.

And do you feel this makes the process more productive?

Yeah, because you are more likely to embrace the product. When you make a contribution to the design and the business rules it motivates you. It feels like I’m working on my own product because I have a voice. You also feel that the company wants you to build the best product you can build. 

Higher levels of involvement leads to more ownership, I suppose? You feel more pride in the work that you’ve accomplished.

That’s very true.

What was your main focus before joining Cobbleweb? What kind of projects were you working on professionally before Cobbleweb?

I worked at a startup platform that initially focused on food delivery and then scaled to cover other types of delivery such as rental cars. A super app of sorts. I mostly worked on the food delivery segment.

After that I worked on a secondary phone number application. It was a mobile application that sold business phone numbers built with fullstack JavaScript – Node.Js and React. So the main technology was similar to what we use at CW.

So you had some solid exposure to platform development in your previous projects. The multisided aspect wasn’t alien to you.

Correct.

Dealing with complexity in CobbleWeb projects

Let’s move on to CobbleWeb projects. Is there one that stands out for you? And what I mean by that is one that was quite challenging, where you had to bridge technology, solve complex user flows, and that process led to new expertise.

I know that you’ve had your hand in a lot of projects. There’s the MealMap delivery app with some interesting IoT stuff and seller shop apps. You are also involved in ShareWise, the modular library for marketplace startups that we are building. Out of those projects, what do you think you’ve learned? How have they expanded your insights? 

As I’ve mentioned, on the project development side, I really enjoyed interrogating the design and business rules. It grew my focus and understanding of use cases – putting yourself in a user’s shoes.

On the technical side, there were lots to learn about server and client side rendering. For example, we used RabbitMQ for queue management and Redis for caching in the MealMap project. Other technologies I had to familiarise myself with included using Terraform to configure, test, and deploy infrastructure across AWS. Our team collaboration on the project was very useful to get up and running with those technologies.

There were also lots of complex features. The discount module was one, because discounts can get really complicated. It can be a percentage or a fixed amount discount and it can include multiple conditions such as buyer type or product type. The order management module, which required integration of the front-of-house POS with the kitchen printers was another challenge.

Was there one specific complex technical challenge that really stood out for you?

That might be the shop builder app we created for MealMaps. It had to generate both Android and iOS apps for each participating restaurant on the platform based on their menu items, pricing, delivery hours, etc. These individual apps also had to include each restaurant’s splash screens and icons. In addition, we also had to make sure restaurant owners could generate these shop apps within five or six clicks. 

What technology did you use to do that? 

We used Node.js and RabbitMQ for the backend and React for the frontend. Actually, there is quite a lot of expertise involved. You need to know how the Apple App Store works and how Google Play Console works. You need to work with Xcode IDE to build the iOS application, etc.

And the individual restaurant apps? Were those built with React Native? 

Actually, no. It is a good example of CobbleWeb’s focus on the best possible solution for each scenario. 

We wanted to go with React Native, but after some discussions and testing some proof-of-concepts, we saw that it would take too much effort. Eventually we decided to use the Ionic framework, after I built a POC that took 30% of the time to create compared to React Native. This was due to the fact that we could re-use more components from the main platform.

Each app store has its own requirements and review guidelines for splash screens, icons or how UI elements should behave. You should therefore be aware of them when generating each restaurant app.

It’s great that you can challenge the go-to technology at CobbleWeb, because in this instance it meant we could protect the client’s budget with a faster solution. It was also satisfying to see that my suggestion led to productivity improvements.

Professional growth at CobbleWeb

That’s a great example of being able to contribute on all levels. Caner, in which areas, technical, business, or UX do you feel you’ve grown the most?

It would probably be UX or the product design side. Because, as I said previously, I never really thought about UX or UI in my previous jobs.

It sounds like you were operating in silos at your previous jobs. Not as cross functional as at CW? 

Yes. The design was ready. The business cases were already interrogated. You didn’t need to think about any of those aspects. You simply executed what was asked of you. Pretty easy stuff.

At CW you need to put yourself in a user’s shoes. It makes you think deeper about what you are doing, which has meant a lot of growth for me. 

And I’m sure that contributes to job satisfaction. On that subject, one of our goals in 2025 is to triple our teams. We’ve therefore done some work to position ourselves as an employer of choice in our niche. 

That said, there is a perception that software engineers hop from job to job for a variety of reasons: upskilling, better pay, etcetera. What would you say is the main factor that has kept you at CW so far?  

That very much depends on the individual. Some software engineers only work for money, but that is not my priority. My first priority is to be in a work environment that makes me happy. Since CobbleWeb gives me the opportunity to build the best possible products, I’m very happy.

And to what extent would you say the company culture plays a role? To be precise, how big is the impact of CobbleWeb’s emphasis on aspects like collaboration, product discovery, and mastering complexity?

Of course you cannot completely understand the work environment or company culture before you join. In my case, I have not had any experience with CobbleWeb’s type of work environment previously. That includes working closely with product managers, the remote culture, how we estimate tickets, etc. 

I do think that the culture-fit meeting with the founders, Ramdane and Paul, was useful to understand the project flow – how epics and sprints are structured. But publishing more details on each aspect of our process will be helpful to new candidates.

That’s a very good point. As a young company, there should be a strong emphasis on constantly improving our onboarding, which is a big focus for us.

At the moment, the primary focus is on our positioning. You know, what is our culture? Where do we fit into the bigger world of software development?

The technologies that CobbleWeb uses were the main factor that appealed to me initially. I went through the technologies on the website and found them to be relevant to my career.

Then there’s our culture – to build the best possible product for our clients – which requires the ultimate collaboration as a team. I have a motto for it “teamwork makes the dream work”!

How do you feel about the fact that we are fairly tech agnostic? 

My previous mention of choosing Ionic over React is a good example. We use whichever technology would work best for the business case.

It also means that you are always learning something new. As I said, I didn’t have any experience with Terraform before. I also didn’t have much previous experience with load testing. Because CW’s clients tend to have much more traffic, we have to make sure that loading testing is done. Now I have a good amount of experience in that.

And that focus on what works best is good for everyone. It’s good for the software engineers because you grow professionally, but it also gives the client the best possible solution. And, of course, the end users, let’s not forget about them.

Indeed. Actually, since we are talking about putting yourself in the end user’s shoes, it’s worth mentioning that at CobbleWeb everyone is involved in testing deliveries. 

During our internal demos we test each epic or feature in collaboration with the whole team in a very user-centric manner. That greatly enhances our ability to pick up bugs or other issues in a timely fashion. 

That’s a very good point. I went through the demo doc that you shared with me and it seems like  a very structured process. I’ve never seen one before and I could immediately pick up how it works.

Advice for new CobbleWeb software engineers

Ok, let’s move on to my last question, which I think is quite important for anyone who would like to join the CobbleWeb team. What advice would you give a new Cobbleweb team member and, specifically, software engineers that are new in the team? 

The fact is there is quite a steep learning curve. Not just with regards to the technology, but also understanding the business models and the user flows. Marketplaces are complex and there are a lot of moving parts. A single epic can be extremely complex, and there can be a lot of interdependencies. I think for a lot of people, who are not used to building multisided platforms, it can be extremely intimidating.

As a newcomer, I would suggest going through all of our documentation first. We document all the business rules and technical specifications for each project in our Confluence repository, so it is a valuable resource.

The next step is to try and understand the company culture and processes. Dig in and learn how we built previous features. For example, how we defined the technical or functional specifications for a feature. 

It’s also important that you ask your teammates to help you. You can use MatterMost or one of our regular meetings to get some help or feedback. The main thing is to have a collaborative mindset. It’s key to your success at CobbleWeb. 

Even for myself, after more than a year, I still ask for help when necessary. I’m comfortable with reaching out, because I know the feedback will always be supportive and constructive. 

I suppose it boils down to a willingness to learn. Our projects have got layers of documentation: There’s the initial storyboard. There’s the grooming docs. There’s the technical requirements. There’s the functional specifications. There’s the design. 

So, yeah, it would be a good idea for a new person to jump into one of the older projects or ask around which project is a good place to familiarise themselves. It’s not about knowing all the answers from the outset.

And of course to succeed at CobbleWeb you need to be involved. You need to make a contribution in discussions.  And to do that you need to read a lot, write a lot, and work hard and efficiently. 

That’s so true. We don’t do production line silos. In our collaborative environment everybody works together on each step of the process, which is a much more holistic (and productive) approach to problem solving.

And on that collaborative note, teşekkürler Caner. Thank you for your time and insights.