Life@Demodesk | FullStack Engineer at Demodesk: Alejandro Guevara Escalera
Alejandro is one of our awesome developers and a fundamental member of the astronauts' squad headquartered in Munich. Originally From Mexico, Alejandro has always wanted to work abroad. After 3 years of experience as a Ruby on Rails developer under his belt, we were lucky to hire Alejandro and successfully helped him relocate all the way to Germany.
We had the chance to catch up with Alejandro this week and talk about his journey at @Demodesk!
How did you come across Demodesk?
When I was living in Mexico, I always wanted to seize the opportunity to move abroad. I started browsing through possible positions in the US and Canada and some in Europe. Soon after I stumbled upon this position at Demodesk through LinkedIn and it immediately sounded very interesting! At the time, I was working for an agency, specifically for a client in the USA and I was already working fully remotely. Though the fully remote set-up wasn’t for me and I didn’t really like being the outsider — the “agency dude” from Mexico. So I decided to jump aboard this new Munich-based startup and sign on to Demodesk’s offer: first 6 months remote, with the promise of relocation to Germany.
“The relocation experience with Localyze was so smooth and easy. I’m very grateful for the financial and emotional support Demodesk showed me along the way„
What do I think of Germany now after one year? Jawohl! When I first arrived in Germany, I clearly had to adapt a bit and learned my way through this very efficient country. Surely, the several company events throughout the year made it very easy to blend in. Having an office in the city also helped me a lot to meet my colleagues from inside and outside the Devs team. The company offsite in Lisbon though sealed the deal for me! That was so much fun to see everyone coming together, mingling, and creating strong bonds.
What’s the most rewarding part of being a Full-Stack Engineer?
Building things and seeing them being used! I really appreciate how engineers at Demodesk are part of the conversation. Because of the product we sell and the industry we work in (SaaS), I get to learn a lot about the business, what the applications or vendors we rely on do for us, and why the end users need our product. It feels like a very holistic experience — it is not just about coding! On the contrary of working in an agency, where I was simply being moved from project to project without ever having the opportunity to learn about anything deep. Moreover, as we are the second-level responders when an issue or a new feature request comes our way, I feel very involved in figuring out what the scope will be, and thus how to best handle the development of it. From my personal experience, it is not so common for developers to get the big-picture view of what we are developing — and I love this!
Being part of a small team, I get to explore specific topics in depth — digging into a specific topic for a mission and orbiting around the topic to find a solution allows me to learn so much. Though, I suppose the most rewarding part comes from learning new things, solving new challenges, and then sharing that knowledge with the rest of my team.
There are also great benefits from the new framework that Demodesk implemented this year, as discovering new bits and tricks of technology has become very organic and part of our day-to-day life. In fact, with our missions, we get involved from the very beginning during the planning phase and are also asked to deliver something that makes up for the solution concept. Whereas, I always felt like that with standard agile frameworks, what usually happens is that developers only work on executing the projects while the leaders do the actual negotiations and strategizing. This is all very exciting and allows me to grow a lot!
What are some of the technical skills you learned at Demodesk?
I mostly work with Ruby and Javascript at Demodesk. We use Ruby on Rails and VueJS respectively as frameworks. I’m very excited about our tech stack, mainly because I’ve been able to continue developing my skills in the two technologies that I already had an interest in before joining the team. But also because I’ve gained a deeper knowledge of the internals while getting to solve more complex problems, such as creating new features and tweaking our internal processes to improve our lives as developers.
What’s the best part of working with your team?
Respect and receiving support are defaults in our team. The whole team is so welcoming and willing to help. I am proud to say that I can perceive this kind of respect on a daily basis, as being able to share my ideas and opinions has now become my highest priority. Having people take your opinions into account and also proactively listen is something that you can expect at Demodesk and I will always look for it in my career.
“We have a safe space to exchange new ideas„
- What’s your secret talent that no one knows about?
I play guitar and I try to sing!
What is the most important thing in your life outside of work?
Having a good community around me — family, and friends.
