interviewing
Hi there!
I am a highly skilled software engineer and team leader with a strong background in Ruby, JavaScript, and management, currently based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. I am excited about the opportunity to bring my technical skills and passion for leadership to your organization.
Since the age of 12, I have been fascinated with website creation, starting with Notepad, FrontPage, and Dreamweaver. Later on, I dove into 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 before.
Upon returning to Slovenia, I was inspired to share my passion with others. I mentored at a RailsGirls event and co-founded CodeCatz (https://github.com/CodeCatz), a weekly meet-up for girls learning to code. In addition, I started the Slovenia Ruby User Group (http://rug.si/) in December 2013, which at its peak boasted over 400 members.
My experience with management began with helping my parents run their small business. Throughout my education, I consistently took on leadership roles, which later translated to my career at Toptal. I spent three years with the company as it expanded from 20 to over 150 employees, taking on various roles such as team lead, engineering manager, project manager, and project owner. After Toptal, I joined Silverfin as a team lead, leading a fully remote development team focused on accounting data reconciliation and template language development on top of Shopify's Liquid. At both companies, I was also responsible for interviewing, hiring, onboarding, mentoring, and when necessary, making tough decisions about letting people go.
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 “no code” integrations that were holding them back. Once that was done, I was able to experiment with Hotwire, and other new technologies in 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. I also initialized and followed through the transition from an “ad-hoc Kanban” process to Shape Up method, which made us both much happier and more productive. Unfortunately, we had to shut down (https://www.schlupfloch.xyz/explaining-advisables-failure/), so here I am, looking for a new adventure.
Before my technical career, I used to be an event photographer, specifically capturing concerts and parties. Photography remained one of my main hobbies to this day. My love for coffee, sparked by RailsConf 2013 in Portland, led me to invest in an industrial coffee grinder and a premium espresso machine. This enthusiasm and community around it inspired me to create an open source (https://github.com/miharekar/decent-visualizer) freemium SaaS (https://visualizer.coffee/) that serves over 3,400 users worldwide, with over 200 paying customers.
As an avid runner, I have co-organized numerous running events, including trail explorations, marathons, and ultra-marathons. My interpersonal skills have enabled me to bring diverse groups of people together, whether in a sales capacity or as an organizer of various events. Connecting with others and learning about their passions is a driving force in my life, which led me to start the Parallel Passion podcast (https://www.parallelpassion.com/), where I interviewed software engineers and IT professionals about their hobbies and passions. Although the podcast is currently on hiatus due to the pandemic, I plan to resume it in the near future.
With my diverse skillset, management experience, and passion for technology and people, I am confident that I would be an excellent addition to your team. Thank you for considering my application. I look forward to the opportunity to discuss my qualifications further.
