The multiple career growth opportunities and tight-knit community are part of the reasons Bogdan chose to join AscentCore. We sat down with him virtually to find out more about his professional journey, his passion for tech and the challenges of being a Technical Lead. Keep reading to discover Bogdan’s important lessons learned from his role and much more.
Tell us a bit about yourself: your background, personality and hobbies.
I started working as a developer while still in university, 7 years ago. The first year was kind of a back and forth between the job and my last year of studying for the bachelor’s degree. After graduating, I could really focus on improving my technical skills and learning new technologies. Initially, my focus was purely on backend development within the Java ecosystem but after some time I wanted to expand my area of expertise and transitioned to a Full Stack developer. After experimenting with a couple of frontend frameworks on the project I worked at the time, I decided to focus solely on frontend technologies. This gave me the opportunity to build a product from scratch, be involved in architectural decisions and take on many responsibilities. Fast forward a couple of years, it was time for me to also take on a leadership position, as a Technical Team Lead. This position gave me the greatest satisfaction, because I could help fellow colleagues develop their careers, but also the biggest headaches when having to deal with a lot of pressure, deadlines and uncertainty.
Speaking of hobbies, I like any activity that can be done outdoors, especially football or skiing (depending on the season). On the flipside, I also enjoy playing some video games with friends or some good old binge watching. Last but not least, I’m always working on some side projects related to some technical stuff I’m interested in.
What is your favorite tech?
When speaking about tech stack, I believe each project has its particularities and there’s no silver bullet for each problem. So I try to keep an open mind and choose the technologies that best suit the project and the team working on it.
Speaking of favorite tech, I would say JAVASCRIPT. It’s the most popular programming language, has the best integration and can be used for virtually anything. On the other hand, it could quite tricky, if you don’t know what you’re doing.
What is a typical workday for you?
I like to start the day pretty early with some physical exercises and a good breakfast. After that, it’s time to focus on the day ahead by checking emails and setting my priorities . I usually have a couple of hours in the morning when I can really focus on my tasks and get the most done.
After the daily meeting with the team, there are always some other topics to attend to, like helping someone out, taking decisions on technical or business aspects with fellow developers, doing code reviews, fixing incidents or refining upcoming features.
At the end of the day, we usually have some meetings with our American colleagues where we clarify any open points and plan the next milestones of the project.
Why did you choose to work at AscentCore?
I liked the idea of joining a young and ambitious company where I could really make a difference. It certainly helped that I got the chance to talk to the senior management in the company and was instantly hooked on the long term vision they had. In addition to this, having a flat hierarchy and infinite growth opportunities were big upsides.
What is your favorite AscentCore value and why?
‘Relationships’, without a doubt. No endeavor can be achieved unless you are surrounded by people you trust and like to work with. From my point of view, this is the only way a company or organization can be “greater than the sum of the parts”.
What is the most important lesson you’ve learned in your role?
‘Mindset over skills’. Although it may sound counterintuitive at first, it’s way more important to have the right mindset than having incredible technical skills but lacking basic soft skills. It only takes one such person, and the whole team starts to underperform. From my experience, it’s way harder to change a person’s mindset, than it is to train them to learn (most) technical skills.
