From a big company to a small startup

As some of you have noticed by viewing my Working Experience page, I’ve changed my job in December 2012. I was a Solutions Consultant at PSTech, a great company from Serbia. A lot of people asked me how I could abandon such a fine position and career promise. This article will be an attempt to answer that question.

For starters, I would like to consider some of the reasons why people change their jobs:

• FInancial benefits (“I should have a bigger salary!”)
• Lousy working atmosphere (“These people annoy me, and that guy has the most idiotic mustache ever!”)
• Poor career development options (“Are they ever going to consider me for that team lead position or what?”)
• An unexpected opportunity (“Oh, my cousin from Sweden just offered me a dream job. So long suckers!”)
• The brief (or not so brief) moment of insanity (“Everything’s great! I’m leaving!”)

People change their jobs for a variety of reasons but with a common motive: we all want a better life and we think we are smart enough to recognize that changing our job would benefit the cause. Yes, a lot of people do it because they don’t have a choice or they are being forced by other people or life itself. Fortunately, I had the freedom of choice.

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Applying for a Software Engineer position straight from college

PSTech has a well-earned reputation in the domestic IT market of Serbia. Naturally, a lot of people apply for software engineering and software testing positions, since many are aware of the advantages of starting their career in a well-established company. HR processes in the company are really good, with an optimal workflow backed up by a good software solution.  Some of us get the pleasure (not always a pleasure though) of conducting interviews for future colleagues.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been conducting technical interviews for future PHP software engineers, juniors, seniors, interns… A lot of different people were called for a talk on their experience, expectations and character. I always enjoy talking to people from different backgrounds, since there is a lot to be learned. Some of them are already employed and come with previous experience in being interviewed, some of them may even be conducting technical interviews themselves. But a fair number of applicants are fresh from college looking for a prospective career. If you belong to this group, here is some honest advice…

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Endorsing skills on LinkedIn, a fail?

On September 24th, LinkedIn announced Skill Endorsements. As they would describe this, the range of your activities in the professional network included an option to “give kudos to people with one click”. In reality, we can now endorse a couple of skills of a certain individual, similar to a ‘Like’ button. And people started giving “professional” kudos like crazy…

So, here I am sitting in my comfortable work chair at 9 AM sharp (it was 10:30, off course), drinking my morning coffee, thinking about what activity should ignite my to work enthusiasm. After a short visit to my Tweet deck timelines (and viewing a couple of X-Factor auditions on YouTube, and talking on the phone for 10 minutes, but who counts), my attention was taken by force to focus on something…absolutely not acceptable…

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Me – a blogger? No way…

I’ll just go ahead and say it: I am not a blogger! Heh…well…yes, this is my personal website, and it clearly says “Blog” in the navigation menu… But no! I am not a blogger! Or am I? Never mind, let’s just go with it for a while and see what happens…

What was that all about, you wonder? Well, I don’t like those standard introductions like: Hey, this is my blog, and I like to write about stuff… Please read my articles, I think I have something to say… You know? Stuff like that? Yeah, I’m sure you’ve seen it at least a dozen times. Why am I different? Read on and see for yourself…

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