NEWS_

Employee Interview - Stefan Kjirkovski
December 17, 2021
  1. How did your career start? Can you tell us more about the career journey, with the beginning of your education?

    Getting into programming was kind of a long journey for me.

    I went to faculty for programming for four years and then had a detour doing several other jobs not related to the IT field for a while.

    When finally life gave me a chance to rest and rethink my priorities I got back into programming with a full stack course which got me my interview and my first job in this field.
     
  2. What was the biggest challenge for you after choosing your profession?

    The overwhelming amount of general knowledge you have to attain to even be able to start with coding. 

    Learning methodologies like Agile, issue navigators like Jira, then all the software setups for backend, frontend, databases etc.

    Every day for the first couple of months was full with new information that I had to store and compile in my brain to make a sense of what is happening.

    That initial period of everything being tough and barely understandable is definitely one of my hardest make-or-break moments in this career.


     
  3. In your opinion, what are the best 3 skills that a programmer should possess?

    ♦ Patience
    You cannot know everything from the get go.Be kind to yourself, appreciate all you’ve learned, look forward to everything you didn’t. Life is long, no need to rush it.

    ♦ Curiosity 
    This is a never ending field of learning.
    Don’t get burned out learning too much too fast and then not wanting to learn anything for a long time. Learn something new, apply it, and then when you start to feel too “comfortable”, take a task that is way out of your league and repeat the process.
    This way the learning comes naturally and not forcing it will leave very little room for burnouts.

    ♦ Be humble
    No need to make your life harder by doing everything yourself. Always give your best and then, when you come to the limit of your knowledge, ask for help.
    Never be ashamed to ask for help. Sometimes, a colleague can explain things a thousand times better than searching the entire internet for solutions by yourself.
    Then you can do the same thing and help those who know less than you so you can all grow together. Keeping your team spirit up will make the work a lot more enjoyable.

     
  4. Lastly, your advice to those who are starting their career in programming

    Be persistent. If you really want this, do not let any battle be your last one. It will be overwhelming at times, it will be hard, there will be moments where you will feel like a failure, but if you overcome this, the sun will shine at the end.

    Sooner or later, you will enter the Matrix that is programming. You will have that moment of clarity when you stop feeling like a fraud and then your true journey into this field will begin! ðŸ™‚