Meet the Techie | A Day in the Life of Volodymyr, a Frontend Project Lead

sclable Frontend Project Lead Volodymyr Samoilenko didn’t really have a clear idea of what he wanted to be growing up, other than being successful. “That’s all,” he says. After finishing his studies in political science in Kyiv, he found that promising and interesting career opportunities were sparse, so he made the transition to Austria in 2014 in pursuit of better opportunities.

For the next several years Volodymyr studied. Hard. First, German, to get the B2 level necessary to go to university. After befriending a Ukrainian developer in his German class, he decided to take a chance and switch from political science to informatics, starting his studies from scratch at the University of Vienna. For six months, he even travelled by bus to and from Kyiv every weekend to attend an “IT bootcamp”. Eventually, through the local Ukrainian community, he got a job lead: “One guy knew a guy who worked at this company called sclable. I was interested in IOS development, but sclable didn’t need that. They asked if I wanted to be a Frontend Developer and I’m like, ‘Yeah, sure, why not?’ It’s still development, and I had a lot of motivation and eagerness for challenges.”

7AM

Nowadays, Volodymyr’s day-to-day is a little more predictable. Thanks in part to his dog Millie. Because of her, he wakes up at 7AM and takes her for the first of three daily walks. It lasts 15 to 60 minutes depending on the day’s workload. “The way I work, I cannot always guarantee her a consistent duration of walk, but I can guarantee her a consistent number of walks.”

8AM

For Millie, 8AM is the most important time of the day, because it’s breakfast. Volodymyr will also have a coffee and breakfast himself at this time (sometimes just coffee).

Once he’s ready, Volodymyr posts up at his home office workstation. As Volodymyr says, “I have a nice working space and have created a nice routine around it. Plus, Millie is a ‘Covid puppy’, so she likes having someone around.”

9AM

Though work may start before 9AM, Volodymyr lets the sclable team know he’s officially ready for chatting, texting and calls by posting “Good morning” to the relevant project channels. “One time, I accidentally did this on the public sclable channel. Ten minutes later I realized what I did and went to delete the message, but everyone started replying. It was so nice! Maybe I should start doing it more often?”

After this social start, Volodymyr’s mornings are dedicated to tasks that require lots of focus, as well as training and mentoring other people on his team. Leadership has been an unexpected — but welcome — responsibility for Volodymyr at sclable and started during a long-term project that had a team changeover. Suddenly, he started interviewing, hiring and onboarding people. “What I really like is to share knowledge and to teach people,” says Volodymyr. “So for me that’s been one of the coolest things about sclable.”

12PM

After lunch, Volodymyr attends his daily meetings, and the afternoon is dedicated to finishing up his tasks, which are always evolving at sclable. As a Frontend Developer, Volodymyr primarily works with Angular and occasionally Vue, but his role has expanded beyond just the frontend. “At sclable, there is no micromanaging. I’m given a task, and how I approach it is up to me. I can make mistakes as long as I’m transparent about them so it can be quickly rectified. Everyone here is open and supportive. There’s a strong sense of trust and freedom, which gives you the time to prove yourself.” His work in the meantime has evolved and now he handles backend development with tech like Spring Boot, Docker, RabbitMQ, and PostgreSQL.

5PM

The time at which Volodymyr finishes his workday is changing with experience. As he says, “I’m proud of my work and really like to make a good output. In the past, I would work until 7PM or 8PM without stopping. Now, I’m setting my own boundaries and trying to stop work at 5PM.”

The brain doesn’t slow down however, and Volodymyr’s interests currently include 3D design and 3D printing. “I already had a background in 3D technology from my studies in media informatics. I really enjoyed it, so I started learning Blender to explore how 3D design can be integrated with web development. With the rise of affordable 3D printers, I couldn’t resist getting a few for myself, so I could bring my ideas to life. Since then I’ve dived into Fusion 360, creating fun projects that engage me in my downtime.”

Can’t wait to see what you come up with, Volodymyr.

#frontenddeveloper #dayinthelife @sclable

Want to meet more people from our dev and tech team? Check out the profile of Frontend Developer, Marko Mlinaric and Software QA Manager Veit Poigner.

This article was written for Sclable by our copywriter, Liz Hendriksen. Check out our website to see the work we do at Sclable!

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