Behind the Blog: Zdeněk Brabec

What brought you to Omio?

I joined Omio to work with colleagues I already knew from a previous job. We were a good team — we just lacked a great product to work on. That locked in at Omio.

Did you have an interest in travel prior?

Exploring the world is (and always has been) essential for me. It allows me to examine my life from new perspectives, which is probably what most millennials say. More than anything, I like to take multi-day hiking trips, away from civilization.

An outdoorsman! And what a contrast with your work life! That sort of raises a question about your recent piece on the blog. Your argument for working with language stacks is, in large part, about balancing efficiency and versatility — which seems like exactly the sort of attention you’d bring to, say… packing to hike in the wild for days at a time. Is there some correspondence there, for you?

I can see the similarities there, but it’s not something I think about, honestly. Hiking for me is about an adventure separate from what I do at a computer. I can, of course, spend days at a stretch immersed in personal projects, self-education, or other computer related activities. And I love doing that! But then I need to step back from it from time to time, slow down, and spend some time away from technology.

What were you working on or passionate about before you joined?

I was a backend developer in a web application agency. I was always passionate about the web, the architecture of backend systems, and databases. But none of the projects I worked on was ever the size of Omio.

So, what prompted your shift from strictly backend into more overall tech?

Oh, I haven’t moved away from doing backend, to be clear. My current role is more about looking at all the systems we have, holistically, from a sort of overhead view, rather than just implementing small APIs. That still involves a lot of backend development.

What sorts of things did you want to have an impact on when you came on board?

I joined the B2B team. It was a new initiative at Omio back then. We had a lot of opportunities to develop new products that target B2B customers, and starting projects from scratch is always exciting for an engineer.

Do you feel like you’ve been able to do that? Or have things taken shape in a way you didn’t expect?

For sure! We’ve launched several B2B products like APIs, Whitelabel, Search Widget, and Partnership dashboard in under 3 years. I’ve also learned that creating a microservice is not just about launching MVP. There are server phases of a product. Once you know that the solution is going to stay, you need to maintain that solution. Personally, that’s something I love doing: setting up monitoring, alerting, debugging scalability problems, and so on.

What’s most exciting to you in the tech landscape, at present?

That has to be Bitcoin. I was blown away when I got familiar with it. I’m interested in economics and the flaws in our monetary system are pretty clear. I think there’s a lot to learn from how Bitcoin works and what problems it solves. I could talk about it forever, really.

Interested in teaming up with Zdeněk and joining the Omio team? There’s very likely a role for you. Check out our Jobs page!