This week, we had the opportunity to get to know Alexander Zheka better, who's been with us for nearly three years!
1. What is your position at ToolTime?
I am a lead software engineer, which is like software engineering, but I also support my colleagues to grow and develop themselves in their career paths and have more conversations with internal stakeholders.
2. What does your typical day as a Lead Software Engineer look like?
Like everybody in engineering my day starts with a stand up with my squad. There we say ‘hi’ to each other, make jokes and then start discussing work related topics. Afterwards, I pair with my colleagues to work through potential problems, or brainstorm ideas. We have this technical Monday where we don’t work on any features, but improve the system and are overall working towards our engineering goals.
3. What is the best part of working at ToolTime?
I would say the team. I also like the product a lot because I can really see the contribution it makes. It's quite motivating. But still, for me the most important aspect is the people. I have very open minded and creative colleagues with whom I can exchange thoughts and have them as a sparring partner for ideas. That's the most important thing for me here.
4. What are you most proud of doing at ToolTime?
I’m probably most proud of improving the ecosystem. At ToolTime, I can participate in the whole process - from ideation, where we discuss what this feature will be about, what we need to do to achieve this, how it will look like and so on, to the gradual creation and release. For example, recently, we improved the pipeline time between when we update code to when our customer can see the update. It used to be around 10 minutes and now it's less than three. So even though it’s only a seven minute difference, given the fact we deploy updates daily, I know that we have saved a lot of people a lot of time.
5. What would people be surprised to learn about you?
It might surprise some people that I don’t have a very typical career history for an engineer. During my first year of university I was a waiter. Then I worked as a sales manager selling paint. I also worked at a garage and was assisting in assembling cars, preparing them for painting and so on and so forth. During these Uni years you just look forward to earning your own money here and there so that’s why my CV is a bit random.
Thanks Alexander for our lovely talk! Even though you started your working life in a different way than the ‘usual engineer’ it didn’t stop you from being successful and happy at ToolTime!
Are you also interested in joining the team? We are always on the lookout for new members!
