Bros Before Corporate!

This is my goodbye letter to RebelDot and to my Design Team, including its former and current members.

Botond Palkó
Sep 7, 2018 · 5 min read
The Design Team (mid-2016)

The Roots

Back in late-2013, when I was at my previous job, a high-school colleague of mine told me that the company she’s working for, needs a Designer. Five days later, I had my contract signed with them. Thanks, Ildi! :-)

The company was a small software development firm in Cluj (Romania), with 25 employees, working almost exclusively for the US market.

I took over the position from Mircea, the previous Designer who had been running a one-man show for the past 4 years. He was the only designer for almost the entire time, until he left the company and gave me the magic relay baton of the design “department”.

Well, it was exaggerated to be called a department, but we quickly became one as the team grew. A junior Designer had been hired 2 months before my arrival and a junior UI Developer joined us shortly afterwards.

Scaling Up

As time went by and new colleagues joined the team, the projects we were involved in became more and more complex. We were given the opportunity to create our own processes and methodology, to be in the first line of client facing and to test and implement new design tools.

We decided that UI Developers and some of the Front End Developers should be part of the Design Team as they were working almost exclusively on implementing UI, without coding backend related elements. This gave us a solid strength because client requests, user experience development, visual design and interface implementation were happening in the same blended environment.

We grew up together within this friendly little group. Our style of interacting with the customers and our way of performing the daily work evolved as time passed by. We started to successfully manage bigger projects and there was clearly a sign that we enjoy working together; we even came to have our own way of greeting each other, when we met. Thanks Mónika for bringing this tradition to our group!

Wind of Change

My time has come to switch companies, and I’m doing this with mixed feelings. I have cool friends and projects close to my heart on the old side. The new one is about different challenging projects, lots of people to get to know and as the new company is much larger, there are neat scaling opportunities.

I feel like I’m leaving something behind, but I’m proud it’s not an empty space! It’s filled with quality content: the processes we developed and my work but foremost a team of good specialists.

Gain from The Team

Each and every individual who was or is part of the Design Team offered me something particularly unique to take away and chew on my upcoming experiences. Some words below will sound like clichés, but clichés are inspired from reality.

— the list is chronological ordered by the hiring dates

Mircea — former UI/UX Designer, The previous one
Although we’ve only had a couple of days of working together, you taught me that mainstream design software is not always the ultimate one to do your job with. Also, you enforced a rock-solid user-centric vision in me.

Sergiu former UI/UX Designer
Your attitude towards the aesthetic side of digital products is always inspiring. I admire your love for beautiful. Besides, I’ve learned from you that one-on-one meetings are an important and invaluable tool that facilitates communication with your team members in a different format.

Eli — UI Developer
Your extreme concern for details and tireless dedication to your work are an uplifting lesson for me. There is no UI implementation related challenge you wouldn’t jump into. You taught me that humbleness is not a nice-to-have trait, it is a must!

Dan former UI/UX Designer
You take your love for UI & UX to new levels. You are certainly one of the fastest “design gun machines” I’ve met so far! Probably the most valuable lesson from you is to keep the dots connected inside your team.

Mónika Front-End Developer
I’ve learned from you that whatever you want to achieve, you need to put passion and hard work in it! Doing so, there are no possible boundaries you could encounter.

Ale former UI Developer
You gave us the cleanest working code that our department has ever received from a technical interview. Your perseverance led you to a very low defect escape rate and this trait is my inspirational lesson from you.

Paul G. — former Front-End Developer
Meme king. Also, you’re the living example that man can still master his work while being a trickster joker at the office. You taught me that life is too short to be too serious.

Mihai former Delivery Manager
I really enjoyed your caring and patient way of working with the teams. Given by the nature of your work, you led your own analytic side to new heights. I will always ask one more question because of you.

Radu former UI/UX Designer
You managed to graciously switch from freelancing to corporate. Regardless of how much you struggle to put logic ahead of emotions, we are bros before corporate, so, thank you! A team of several members is a after all a single unibody.

Alex — UI/UX Designer
You continue to inspire me that no matter how much you know today, without ongoing learning you won’t be able to handle the day of tomorrow. Never settle to expand and deepen my set of know-hows, is my takeaway from you.

Paul C. former UI/UX Designer
You inspired me to pursue my dreams! A job’s position label may tell the wrong message sometimes… Yes, you should try alternative paths in life but don’t divert too much from your ultimate passion!

Cosmin UI/UX Designer
I learned from you that strong determination can open doors in life. Career switch is not impossible if you’re willing to work for it enough.

Lorant — UI Developer
Mr. Wordporn. Although formally you were not part of our team, we were glad to help you ramping up on the basics of front-end, which turned out to be one of the best success stories about career change. Your willpower is a strong source of inspiration for me.

Tudi (CEO), special thanks to you for putting your trust in me for this period!


I am deeply thankful that I was part of RebelDot for almost 5 years. I had the chance to learn, to evolve, to work my ass off, swear, yell, laugh and make friends. I’ve had the opportunity to get some shit done and to fail at some other shit. There were catharsis and cold showers as well, during my stay.

It was a hell of a journey with a big impact on my professional career. If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t change a thing!

These experiences made me who I am today! I will carry on this bag of know-how and capitalize it as the foundation of my upcoming actions.

We were bros first, then corporate!

Muchas gracias, Team!

RebelDot

Turning technology into an asset for every business

Botond Palkó

Written by

Senior UI/UX Designer at Softvision. Carefully handcrafting experiences since we were called Web Designers.

RebelDot

RebelDot

Turning technology into an asset for every business

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