Hello there!
I was creating websites since I was like 12 years old. First with Notepad, FrontPage, Dreamweaver and what not, and then I got into hacking with PHP and JavaScript. In 2012, I discovered Ruby and started to fiddle with it. It was love at first sight, and so I went and bought a ton of books, watched countless videos and got involved as much as I could. I applied to RailsConf 2013 scholarship and got it, and that was my first trip to US. Now, as if the language itself wasn't enough, I also fell in love with the community. Everyone was super helpful, super nice, they all made me feel special, which was a completely different experience from any PHP conference I attended.
When I came back I wanted to "spread the love" so I mentored on a RailsGirls event and then helped with CodeCatz (https://github.com/CodeCatz). It's a weekly meet-up for girls who want to learn to code, and we are now at around 30 members. We are learning everything from Ruby, Python, and JavaScript to HTML and CSS. Because at that time I only knew 3 local Ruby developers, I also stared Slovenia Ruby User Group (http://rug.si/) in December 2013. We had monthly meetups until the pandemic started in 2020 and at its peak had over 400 members.
My parents own a small business, and I've helped with it since I was a little boy. This is one of the reasons why I went to study management. I always loved to be the leader at school and faculty. When an opportunity came to be promoted to a team lead at Toptal, I took it. I was there for almost 3 years, when the engineering part of the company grew from around 20 to over 150 people. That gave me a chance to try myself in many roles: from team lead, to engineering manager, project manager, and even project owner. All while being fully remote. I've learned a ton of things, which I was able to apply at my next job at Silverfin. There I was hired to be in a position of a team lead where I was leading a fully remote development team focused on reconciling accounting data and developing a template language on top of Shopify's Liquid. I was also a part of the hiring process, and I mentored many developers.
After almost 3 years there, I was given an opportunity to join Advisable as the first backend engineer. I was hired to modernize and stabilize the codebase, and transition away from the integrations that were holding them back. Once that was done, I was able to experiment with Hotwire, and other new technologies from Rails, even before they were officially released. That gave me an ability to file bugs and submit PRs to several open-source projects that were broken by the new features. Unfortunately, we had to shut down (https://www.schlupfloch.xyz/explaining-advisables-failure/), so here I am, looking for a new adventure.
So now more about non-technical me. I used to be an event photographer of concerts and parties and such. Now, photography is one of my main hobbies. Another thing that came from RailsConf 2013 (which was in Portland) was my love for coffee. I'm in the deep end of things with an industrial coffee grinder, and a premium espresso machine. I've also made a freemium SaaS (https://visualizer.coffee/) for said machine. My web app is used by almost 3,000 people all over the world, over 170 of which are paying €5/month or €50/year, and it is written and maintained by me and completely open source (https://github.com/miharekar/decent-visualizer).
I like to organize things: like the code meet-up and RUG I mentioned above. Being an avid runner, I have also co-organized many running events: trail explorations, marathons, ultra-marathons, and so on. I have good people skills; I'm known for bringing different kinds of people to work well together. I'm also a good sales person, and I was the most successful Apple promoter for a year when I was doing that. If I believe that something is good and worth having, I can convince almost anyone into buying it. Many friends and other people who follow me on my socials, frequently come to me asking questions about what gear to buy.
While I love technology, I enjoy talking about people's hobbies way more. Nothing makes me happier than talking with someone and seeing their eyes light up. Which is why I started a podcast (https://www.parallelpassion.com) where I interview software engineers and other people from IT about their hobbies and passions. I managed to interview 40 people, but then COVID-19 hit, and I had to take a break. Pretty much every hobby was affected by it, and I really didn't want to talk just about that. I am planning to start it up again in the near future since it's one of my favorite things to do, and it has way more avid listeners than I ever expected.
Thank you very much for reading this 🥰
