It’s 8 am and Ivan is drinking his first coffee. He checks through his e-mails and YT messages before joining his team for their daily meeting. Sounds familiar?
Ivan, we are very interested in learning more about you…
Thank you, I really didn’t expect this.
As you all probably already know, I’m from Croatia. For the last 6 months, I’ve been living in Osijek, the fourth largest city in Croatia. Osijek is a lively university city in eastern Croatia, close to Serbia. During the college year a lot of young people live here and so many cultural events are held. Croatia is a very popular tourist destination, especially during June, July, August (the Osijek Summer Nights) when many open-air events are organized the most important being the Tambura Music Festival.
By far the largest traditional folk festival is held every autumn in Vinkovci which is about an hour’s drive away.
In 2017 our OTGS annual meeting will be held in Split so the entire company will be able to get to know Croatia better and perhaps enjoy our locally brewed Osječko beer.
In my free time, I try to spend as much time as possible somewhere outside. I especially enjoy riding my bike, but also drinking long coffees with friends :) I try to travel as much as possible, discovering new places and different cultures. In the past few years, I have been playing the guitar as a hobby.
Have you always worked as a developer?
Before OTGS I worked as a developer in an Australian marketing company. I was there I think for almost 6 years. It was a great experience for me and I learned a lot, but at one point I realized I had reached as far as I could go there. It was a marketing company and there was no more room for improvement for me as a programmer. In the end, I decided to quit. I was already looking for new opportunities when I noticed in one Facebook group about WordPress programming that OTGS was looking for developers. After contacting Dario (he posted that in the Facebook group) I decided to apply, and here I am :).
Officially I started working at OTGS on Aug 24th 2015. My initial interview was with Laura, followed by a tech interview with Juan. My training began with Denise. Mladen was my mentor for WPML support and George for WPML 2nd tier support. Then, I was helped by Waqas when I moved on to Toolset support. In a short while, I joined the Toolset Dev team
What are you actually doing here at OTGS?
My current role is a developer in the Toolset team and most of the time I’m working with Riccardo on the Layouts plugin. To work on Layouts, good PHP and JavaScript knowledge is necessary. I feel that in just one year, which is how long I’ve been here, I have improved my knowledge in those fields tremendously. I’m working with great developers and everyday I learn something new. Even before joining OTGS I had some experience with developing WordPress plugins, but this now is on a completely new level.
How did this role challenge you?
As I mentioned earlier, I already had good knowledge in several fields even before joining the OTGS, but to work on Toolset I had to improve my skills in some fields. The Toolset codebase is huge; it took me some time to learn how everything works. Also, my JavaScript knowledge was very basic, and a big part of the Layouts code is actually JavaScript, so I was essentially forced to learn it. My biggest challenge was to become independent and self-confident in my work, but I have a great mentor (thanks Riccardo) so I believe today I am much more confident than I was at the beginning. The major advantage here is that you are surrounded with great people who are always ready to lend a hand, from helping if you are stuck with coding to standing by you even in personal matters. Just like a second family :)
So after enjoying your first coffee and checking your messages, what happens next?
Usually, I spent first half hour, sometimes even more on code reviews, answering YT tickets and emails. After that I start with coding. Around 10am we have our daily Layouts meeting, where we exchange important information about our progress, plan our next steps and help each other in case someone is stuck with a complex issue. The rest of the day I again devote more time to coding. Before closing my day I try to do more code reviews if necessary. After work, almost every day I like to go out somewhere, sometimes to the gym, sometimes to visit friends or go to the cinema to watch a movie. After 9 hours in front of my PC it’s time to stretch my legs a bit :)
Have you given much thought to future plans?
As regards my career, I aim to keep to a high standard of work and of course to continue improving myself in various fields. In this job learning is everything. To be honest, I’m not the kind of person who plans a lot ahead, I usually make decisions and plans as I go along. The only plan I have for next year is to move with my girlfriend to a smaller city to some nice house with a backyard! Right now, we are in Osijek which is a big city, and this is not really for me!
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