People @ Proxiad: Kalin Koychev, Web Developer
Meet Kalin Koychev, Web Developer at Proxiad! He became a remote team member before the pandemic started and probably had one of the mildest transitions to WFH. See what he is up to now in the latest People @ Proxiad article!
Let’s start with your first steps into coding. How did you get hooked on software development?
To me, it feels like I’ve always been debugging some piece of software. I had the fortune of PC access from a young age. The first time accessing the World Wide Web was probably when I was between four and six years old. It only felt natural to start programming and developing software when I did.
My real start with software was with HTML when I was in eighth grade when I could finally “make my own website”. We learned C++ in school, but I was paying more attention to the games on the PCs than to the teacher. I did still want to learn, but my teenage mind chose C, instead of C++. It was the predecessor to C++ so why not learn that and then learn C++? Well… I only ended up with a rudimentary knowledge of both languages and to this day I don’t consider them part of my skill set.
In my free time, I continued with HTML and CSS. I could finally make my web pages look prettier. Then it was time for JavaScript. There was no escaping it – a web page without JavaScript is not capable of much besides being a digital brochure.
At that point, I was still in school and my plans for life didn’t involve programming as a career. I knew it was a hobby – more forced on me than chosen, really – but that was it: just a hobby.
I’m glad you mentioned that since the next question is related to this. I know that you studied abroad before coming back to Bulgaria and starting your degree in Computer Science. What made you return?
Yes, the grand plan for my higher education was related to a different field altogether. After high school, I went to Scotland to study Psychology as an undergraduate.
In short, what made me return was a sudden realization that life was overall not what I had imagined. One of the factors that counted towards coming back was that Bulgaria is my home – and home is nice. We tend to always find reasons why Bulgaria isn’t a good place to live in but my experience abroad showed me that some of those – maybe even most of those – aren’t actually specific to our country.
You were actually working remotely long before the pandemic began. Did anything change for you once everyone else started working from home as well?
Yes and no. Nothing changed in my personal life in the sense that I had no adjustment period – I didn’t have to get used to remote work or to having my office at home. I was already “living online”. What did change, however, were people’s attitudes. Finally, I wasn’t met with weird looks or confused stares when I said I prefer to work from home.
What are the main technologies and coding languages you work with? Did you choose them or did they choose you?
As I already mentioned, I started with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I am currently exploring Rust as a back-end language because JavaScript should know its place and that place is in the frontend: it should stay there and stop trying to escape its given domain.
Could you share what you think people should know about Proxiad?
The most important thing for me is the people. And I don’t mean anyone specifically, I mean our collective as a whole. No matter what happens, I always feel like my colleagues are understanding and offer their best help when someone’s in need. I’ve had less-than-ideal days where nothing seems to go right, but the feeling I get from the team and from my manager is that I am always understood and that there’s a way to fix everything if you work together. I don’t feel like just a cog in the machine or just a part of the process. I can definitely say that Proxiad does follow its slogan – the technology we build is empowered by people.
And finally, tell us who Kalin is outside of work.
I’ll keep this short. I like to believe I’m an ordinary human that’s just making the most of the one life I’ve been given.
To finish off, I’ll just add a thousand words compressed in a single image:
