A 00000001 about myself and my past experiences.
This is a living document that summarises my past life and work experiences, presented in reverse chronological order, similar to a resume.
While this is not strictly a resume, it is a story I want to share about my path that has led me to where I am today (see my LinkedIn for a more detailed look at my career).
- π¨π»β𦲠2016 - Present: Software Engineer
- π 2014 - 2016: SEO & First Contact with Web Development
- π½οΈ 2010 - 2014: Luxury Hospitality
- π¦π» Early Life
- π Fun Facts
See my Github Profile Status or Now page on my blog.
Over the years, I have had the pleasure of working for several London-based companies in fintech, live-stream video and employee engagement sectors and growing professionally:
- Junior Engineer to Senior Engineer in 3.5 years
- Senior Engineer to Team Lead in the next 2.5 years
- Team Lead for 1.5 years
I was fortunate to work with many talented engineers and non-engineers, many of whom became my mentors and close friends.
In my role as a Team Lead, I managed a fully remote team of 8 engineers across 7 nationalities, managing 3 finTech products for UK-based banks and financial institutions. These microservices systems were deployed in Kubernetes clusters as in AWS and GCP.
After this experience, I embarked on a self-improvised sabbatical to reflect and think about my next steps.
- β Team Leadership
- β Payment Systems, Real-time video streaming
- β Technologies: Go, Java, Spring, AWS, Postgres, Redis, Terraform, Helm, Git and others
- β Distributed Systems, Microservice Architecture
During the sabbatical for about 3 months, I took care of some of the health issues, read lots of books and completed 2 pilgrimages:
- Shikoku Henro Pilgrimage (εε½ιθ·―), Japan
- I took many longer alternative paths and did an extension to this pilgrimage, which totalled to ~1775km and ~30km elevation gain in 53 days.
- El Camino Frances + Fisterre Pilgrimage, Spain
- Walked a total of ~1000km and ~14km elevation gain
Those were some of the most epic adventures I've had to date, with a number of personal breakthroughs, valuable life lessons, decisions made, and countless blisters on my feet.
While working at the hotel, I quite randomly went for a hackathon. I was quite into bodybuilding at the time and had an idea related to that to pitch. My idea even got shortlisted, but I failed to attract the interest of developers who were at the hackathon to join my group, so we couldn't build anything. With the team disbanded, I joined another team where I met someone who ran an SEO Agency. I asked if I could come and work for them, and to my amazement, they agreed. I had no clue what SEO meant at the time, or how the web worked, but I learned pretty fast and started to dabble with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Apache servers, WordPress. The more I learned, the more I found myself enjoying doing the technical side of things, which eventually led me to enrol on an online coding bootcamp.
After finishing the bootcamp, I spent 3 months searching for a new role whilst still working for the agency. After going to a random tech job fair, I landed 2 opportunities, both of which translated offers for a Junior Software Engineer position. This taught me the importance of a face-to-face interaction and networking. I blogged about my search here.
- β Web Development Fundamentals & SEO
- β Coding
- β Client Management
I studied Hotel and Tourism Management, and worked in between the semesters at prestigious 5-star hotels and 3-star Michelin restaurants in the UK. The career prospects were promising, but shortly after moving to London for my Manager-in-Training, I decided to drop out and leave the industry. I had no plan and no idea what I was doing, but I was determined to make the most of time in London and figure out my career path.
- β Communication Ability
- β Working in high-pressure environments
Born in Riga, Latvia. Growing up, I was a nerdy kid who got my first computer at 13 years old. I broke it consistently and had to re-install Windows more times than I can remember. I had the reputation of the "IT guy" in school.
I played ice hockey for 11 years, which taught me the values of trust in the team, camaraderie, accountability and self-sacrifice. Upon reflection in adulthood, I think those experiences shaped me in many ways I am today.
1οΈβ£ In 2017, I had a chance to ask 1 question to "Uncle Bob" Robert Martin), whom I met at the tech event in London. My question was:
What would you advise a 25-year-old self who switched careers to become a Software Engineer?
With a wise and friendly smile, he replied:
Find a mentor
I follow this advice to this day. In life and work.
2οΈβ£ I probably became fluent in English by playing World of Warcraft. I will be forever grateful to my grandma for investing in my extra English lessons from an early age.
- π§° LinkedIn
- π» GitHub Profile
- π¨π»βπ» How I Work
- π Blog
Thanks for reading!
P.S. Feel free to fork and steal :)