3 months ago
Teams of Scale: .NET
The Scalefocus .NET is full of creative technical energy. They are masters in their field and work on some of the biggest and most exciting projects within the company. Even though the team is dispersed, their love for what they do, and the culture of open communication helps them stay connected and deliver truly impressive business results. They are convinced that what makes people productive and really good at their jobs is very simple: being happy. Find out what else the .NET team believe in, how they like to spend their after-work time together and why they never get bored.
Introduce us to your team – how many specialists are there and what do you do?
The Scalefocus .NET team consists of 60 professionals, from near-beginners to veterans who have had the opportunity to explore the darkest corners of programming and product development. We like to have fun, have some beer and other refreshing drinks, travel to beautiful destinations around the world, indulge in our various hobbies, and occasionally to write software to unwind.
What technologies do you use?
In order to be maximally productive and achieve the high results expected of us, we use a wide range of technologies. Often .NET programming is associated with the products and services provided by Microsoft. As inaccurate as this assumption is, there is some truth to it. A case in point are low code platforms that are gaining in popularity, such as Microsoft Power Apps which we also have experience with.
In our practice as .NET specialists, we don’t limit ourselves to just the .NET stack. Our team has expertise in databases, Messaging brokers, CI/CD provisioning, and container orchestration. We’re not afraid of JavaScript either! 😊 Whatever the weather forecast, cloud services are an inseparable part of our day and our programmers are certified Microsoft Azure and AWS experts. Of course, we never apply everything mentioned all at once. The technologies we select depend entirely on the project.
What projects are you working on?
The industries in which we have expertise include banking and financial services, insurance, healthcare, telecommunications, energy, sales, and more. Many of our customers are global industry leaders and you have certainly used their products or services. Currently, for example, our teams are developing software solutions for a best-selling car brand.
Besides from a business standpoint, our projects are also interesting technologically. They pose technical challenges for our engineers and motivate them to test and upgrade their skills. Solving technical problems often reminds us of high school when we were trying to understand what the author of the code on which we had to build new functionality meant. 😊
How do you work and how often do you go to the office?
Our work environment today is different from before COVID. Scalefocus kept the Work from Everywhere model even after the world returned to its normal rhythm and quite a few colleagues still opt for the peace and quiet of their homes. This naturally transformed our offices into social hubs where we get together on project-related occasions, to exchange knowledge and experience, or simply to have some beer and play a foosball table game.
The rest of the time we connect virtually, especially given that our colleagues mostly work in distributed teams. For people from the same location, however, get-togethers are by no means limited to the office. We like to test our knowledge and teamwork skills in different ways. It’s not unusual to see us at a quiz, and sometimes we get our adrenaline going with escape rooms that almost all of us have managed to get out of in one way or another.
How does a typical workday look like for people in your team?
I will answer the question slightly differently and tell you instead how our day doesn’t look like—slow and boring. These are words we never use. Our schedules are filled with tasks related to client projects, as well as internal and professional development initiatives. Our agendas are meaningful and leave no room for boredom.
What other teams and departments do you collaborate with most frequently?
We love cross-team collaboration. It’s not that we can’t write the user interface ourselves, come up with the database schema, or automate the processes of updating various environments. 😊 Of course, who the teams are depends on the project. We work most closely with QE, Front-end, DevOps, Data, Mobile, as well as the PM and BA teams.
Tell us about something your team is proud of.
We can’t name just one or two things that we are most proud of. As we have already said, we work on diverse projects and each of them brings its own challenges. The important thing for us is that so far, we haven’t faced any that we couldn’t handle as a team. We have built an environment in which our people feel free to share both the problems they have and the experiences that can help a colleague in a similar situation. At the end of the day, this is what we are proud of — our sense of community and the fact that there is no unsolvable case or a taboo work topic.
What do you like doing together outside of work?
Any setting or situation that includes 1.) good conversations, 2.) delicious food 3.) quality drinks, 4.) fresh air and 5.) sunshine is perfect for us. The details are not that important because being together is enough. We love team buildings, informal get-togethers, and impromptu celebrations. There’s nothing better than a shared laugh after a hard day’s work. 😊
What brings your team closer together?
I’ve heard that people bond the most when they overcome hardships together. I agree and have noticed that’s also true for work relationships. The more complex a technical problem we are trying to solve, the more connected and satisfied we feel when we succeed. We love our work, and we love doing it together precisely because we share this belief.
How do new people fit into your team?
At Scalefocus, one of the fundamentals we deeply believe in is that great results come from happy people. It is our culture of acceptance and open communication that allows new colleagues to feel integrated very quickly. When a person feels accepted, they develop their full potential; this is the ultimate goal and how we achieve excellent results for our clients.
How would you answer the question, “If you are…….…, come join our team”?
If you have the sense of humor of a stand-up comedian, make the most delicious rakia, if you don’t need any friends other than your colleagues, if you like baking apple pies, and you relax with .NET programming, come join our team!
Denis studied Industrial Management and worked as a quality specialist for 3 years. At a certain point, however, he felt he wanted to take a different professional path. He stepped out of his comfort zone and enrolled in Scalefocus Academy. By putting in a lot of effort, he managed to enter the IT field within a year, and he now has knowledge in Java, .NET, DevOps, and databases.
In addition to his .NET work, Denis also teaches Java object-oriented programming to students in the 11th grade of the Professional High School for Computer Programming and Innovation in Burgas. He tries to fuel his students’ passion for technology and teach them how best to look for solutions to the problems they face.
Denis loves his colleagues and says that some of them are true role models — he admires their ambition and their drive. In his spare time, he likes to be active by going to the gym or playing football and his favorite volleyball. What brings him the greatest satisfaction is knowing that he learned something new at the end of each day and is better than yesterday.
Fjolla loves her job. You can see it in her eyes when she is talking about her colleagues, the friendly environment, the freedom to choose whether to work from home or the office, the opportunity to grow professionally. She says she was always an anxious person, especially when being interviewed or when talking to clients. With the experience she gained, and thanks to the support from her team, and especially her team lead, Fjolla is now more confident during such communication.
She started her career with Microsoft Dynamics NAV, but later switched to .NET and has been part of the Scalefocus team for nearly 3 years. Fjolla is grateful that the very first project she worked on in the company allowed her to build on her skillset. She likes .NET because it gives her the opportunity to experiment and express her technical creativity in the form of code.
Outside of work, Fjolla prefers walking instead of driving, especially as a way to get to the office. A day doesn’t go by without her doing between 15,000 and 20,000 steps. Her greatest passion, however, has always been tennis. She has been practicing it since she was 10 and is now passing on her skills by training children, including her little daughter
Lora has been part of the Scalefocus .NET team for a year now, after getting her training at Scalefocus Academy. At the moment, she is balancing work with her studies because she is a final year Informatics student at NBU. What she likes most about the company is the culture of free communication and her team mates who she describes as calm and well-intentioned. To cope with her busy daily life, Lora discovered yoga, which became her greatest passion. She chooses a different practice every day according to her body and mind’s needs.
Her advice for people with busy schedules is to find some sort of after-work passion because it’s through hobbies that they will get re-energized. Lora believes that when you do something with love, it rewards you emotionally instead of draining you. For her, inspiration is the key to coping with routine and the challenges life throws at us. She says that after each yoga session she feels completely recharged.
Lora is convinced that yoga has changed her as a person because she applies the mindset adopted through the practice in her everyday life. In this way anxiety gives way to acceptance of the world as it is, and her thoughts become less chaotic. When she’s not solving tech problems or doing yoga, Lora loves to go for long walks with her dog, Ayra.
Finally, how would you describe your team?
It’s challenging to describe such a diverse group of people in just one word, but as it’s already become obvious the .NET team doesn’t shy away from challenges. The word that best describes us best is unbreakable. 😊
