Employee Spotlight – Aleksander Ironside
Getting to know Aleksander Ironside, Full Stack Developer at matrix Eastern Europe.
1. Do you remember the day you chose your profession?
This profession was “meant” for me from day one. I was always in front of the computer. At first playing games, then when the time came, I decided why not IT. I already have some knowledge from troubleshooting broken saves, game mods, etc.
2. How did you choose to enter this role and what strengths did it develop?
Programming developed my critical/analytical thinking to the point I can actually do the math and understand science classes even though I was always awful at this in school. I actually explain Math and Physics to some people now. I was unable to understand mathematical functions back in school.
There are also people skills – like talking to non-tech people about their requirements, or discussing programming approaches, as well as leadership skills.
3. Why did you choose to work for Matrix Eastern Europe?
Good pay, good benefits, best offer that was even upgraded without the need to negotiate from the start 😉 Hope to keep on learning more and earning more in the future…
4. How does your day go?
I wake up, walk my dog, get breakfast and coffee, go to the gym, do my training. and get to work. I am a team lead that works on a tool to manage Cyber Security processes and take care of the f/e. I develop new features, refactor code, review code and perform investigations into new technologies. During work I take a break, walk my dog again, work some more, and after I’m done working, rest with my wife.
5. What do you like most about your job?
Learning new things all the time and the uniqueness of every problem – everything is connected, but nothing is the same.
6. How do you manage to keep the work-life balance?
I work more when it’s needed, and take a shorter day when we’re on track (or ahead) – it’s important to agree on this ahead with the client and the team 😉
7. What are the biggest challenges you are facing in your work and how do you overcome them?
A lot of new knowledge is needed in a short amount of time. Paradoxically, it’s best to slow down and just read for a day or two. Just gather the info, and read about approaches. In 99.99% of cases, someone did it before and has info on how to do well what you’re looking for (or how to avoid doing it wrongly).
8. What was your best day at work and why?
Releasing a new version and receiving positive feedback on a feature that was highly experimental and unconventional without too much-written specifications.
9. What are you most proud of?
Lately, I had to create a 3D hypergraph from scratch to display the client’s data. I never did any 3D modeling before in my life, but some amazing person created a react-force-graph library that handled 90% of the heavy lifting. Still, Finding it, understanding what it needs and how to customize it, was challenging and fun.
10. What tips can you give to a person who would so like to choose your profession?
Don’t follow tutorials. Grasp the basics and build something of your own. It can be small or big. You’ll fail, but after failing a couple of times you’ll see what works and what what’s not. After enough trial and error, you’ll be able to write code that scales nicely. Also, join the programming buddies subreddit (on Reddit). I’m there and also many other people who often help beginners out.
