I don’t usually write these career update posts. I usually prefer to just update my profile on Linkedin, add the related skills, some additional text and move on.
Maybe I shouldn’t be writing this one either? While writing this I am getting a feeling in my stomach telling me that I might somehow jinx everything if I share stuff. I guess this is just part of the whole coming out of the comfort zone schtick.
Nevertheless, here it goes!
tl;dr I joined a new company and took a chance on myself.
Long version
Lately, I have been on a journey of sorts.
In 2021 I got married and moved to Vienna to start a family. That’s when I joined Meister, where I had agreed to work 4 days a week so I can focus on completing the master studies I had started that year as well.
This happened just as the IT bubble started to break and the job market started to collapse. Suddenly, huge layoffs were a thing in every IT company in the world. While this was already suboptimal, the fact that it started happening at the same time when my visa became directly tied to the company, the same visa my wife’s legal status was now tied to as well, didn’t help.
I wish I could tell you how, since then, I have completed the two master programs I started at Technische Universität Wien. Unfortunately, this is still something I hope to do.
At the time, my brain went into survival mode and I just focused on surviving at the company and providing value. For my first 2 years in Austria that was the top priority and, however small of an achievement this may seem, thank God, I was able to do it and secure a better legal status for my family.
If you’ve ever left your country to live somewhere else, you will understand what it means to go through the journey. The image above is of a sculpture by artist Bruno Catalano which symbolizes the hole created by leaving your country, your people, your life, everything you know. I see myself in this sculpture as well.
I had a successful life in Bosnia where I invested a lot of effort and time into building a good network, into building my career… and still, moving to Austria meant starting from zero again. New country, new job market, no comfort of home and family, legal obstacles, language barrier, cultural shift, etc… It took me a few years to accommodate this change and start fresh in this next chapter of my life.
The EuRuKo revolution
Fast forward to 2023 and my attending of EuRuKo in Vilnius, Lithuania.
The 2 years went by and the legal barrier of working in Austria was removed, freeing me up to do work for others or for myself in the country. Some angel must have watched over me, because I was able to survive the layoffs and keep my job. Joined the raffle for EuRuKo tickets at Meister and was selected. This would be my first time attending a Ruby conference.
I can’t tell you exactly why I did it… maybe because I finally felt that I can or my nostalgia for Bosnia and my life there kicked in and was just too strong to ignore, I guess that’s the best way I can explain it… but I pitched to host the 2024 edition of EuRuKo and I won, with support from my teammates from Meister of course.
Just look at the vibe on this picture. As much as I knocked it out of the park with the pitch, my socially awkward persona, especially at the time, could never have won the vote without the support from them (and others that attended).
Honestly, I had no idea what I was doing. It just felt great to do something fresh at the time and to feel alive after the pandemic. Then… the realization kicked in… I didn’t know anything about organizing a conference or about the Ruby conference scene. The 100.000 EUR financial risk joined the year long journey, navigating partners, speakers, Bosnian politicians and racketeers, etc…
With the words of Sergey (2023 organizer) being on repeat in my head. “This is your problem now.”, he said as he handed me the EuRuKo gong that year. It truly was like that. Everyone else moved on, the gong and the responsibility of organizing the conference is left with you.
Which I sometimes translated in my head as “Good luck, sucker! Figure it out”.
I felt yanked out of my comfort zone by my own foolish actions, in order to step up and do the job which was required of me, which eventually led to me learning about starting my own small company which is something I always thought I wanted to do for myself, but never collected enough courage to actually do it.
By the end of the educational journey, I was first and foremost just very happy that it ended with everyone financially settled. The bonus was that the thing actually took place and happened in real life (!), since there were so many times when I felt it might not even materialize.
I took it way too far as well. Out of fear of failure, I guess, I converted a 2 day, single track event, into a 3 day, 3 track event which ended up being one of the biggest productions for a Ruby conference in the world that year.
At the end of it, I can say that I was really lucky to have had such an amazing team to support me through it.
Later, it would turn out, I made one of the most disruptive decisions in my life thus far.
After EuRuKo
Keep in mind, I organized EuRuKo while still employed at Meister. We had some ups and downs that year, but if I look back at it, it’s really amazing how they went all in to support me with the conference.
I am truly grateful for their support, as it wouldn’t have been possible to do without them.
When the conference ended I was completely exhausted. I probably carried a bit of burnout from the past year of worrying my heart out and needed time to take it slowly and to build myself back up into a world after the conference.
I had a new feeling I carried with myself now: it actually felt great to be a part of the Ruby community.
I remember shortly after the conference, we had a Vienna.rb meetup at the Meister office. Attending the meetup and having it feel natural to be there, like I earned my place in the community somehow, was amazing. It also felt great to be on the other end of organizing such an event, as a participant, without worrying about stuff such as a package of waffles from a sponsor being stuck on the border and having to figure out a way to get it to the venue while the second day of the conference is very much taking place.
After the project was completed and the baton was passed to the next person, while recovering from the experience, I started to look back on things with efforts to sum it all up for myself and to try and explain how I felt about it and how it affected me.
I tried to write a blog post about it, but I couldn’t find the right words or just wasn’t able to grasp it yet.
So, I decided to let it go and move on.
Then… my wife shared some news with me.
Staying outside the comfort zone
At the time of writing this blog post, I’m just a few months away from becoming a dad for the first time in my life.
I am not sure what folks usually go through when they find out they will become a parent, but I can tell you that I freaked out. I was and still am very happy about it, don’t get me wrong. However, the type of person I am, I immediately started analyzing everything in my life to see if it was stable enough to support and raise a small human being, where I could almost hear Sergey’s words again echoing in my head “This is your problem now.”
Behold, the beautiful image that petrified me.
Thankfully, the EuRuKo experience, as stressful as it was, also helped prepare me for this moment. I was now completely used to being outside of my comfort zone and taking on huge amounts of financial risk.
I was now comfortable with owning a small company and, after developing the relationship with the folks at Recrubo (now Carv) for the duration of the year I was organizing EuRuKo, I felt ready to take the jump and make a calculated bet on myself.
After a bit more than 3 (really good) years at Meister, I joined Recrubo (now Carv) in January of this year as a Technical Lead, which is my first self employed engagement of this sort. I haven’t done something like this since my time at Experfy, which is the last time I took on some sort of responsibility for leading a software project in a corporate environment.
The vision for the project at Recrubo and Carv looks amazing and I truly believe in the potential of the market offering this company can produce. I’m really happy to be a small part of this story. The founders of both companies did an amazing job thus far.
Honestly, on a personal level, it was a huge leap of faith for me. Everything could have went completely south and it still can. For the past year and a half, I’ve taken on more risk than I could have ever imagined.
But that’s not all folks! In a few months, if all goes well hopefully, I will also announce the first edition of my own Ruby conference to the world.
How did I become this person? Moving forward with enthusiasm, having no idea what is next to come and when everything is going to fall apart. It’s sort of becoming the new normal for me, if that makes sense. I’m hooked!
I guess I was so used to hiding in my cave, being comfortable within the crowd of software engineers in a company and not taking a chance on myself to try something new, that this comes as a huge shift right now.
Anyways, that’s the story for now. Here I am, navigating this thing and moving forward one step at a time. Here’s to the next chapter in my life. I’m looking forward to see where it takes me.
Hopefully I haven’t jinxed it.