Kada govorimo o tome šta je magnet koji zadržava zaposlene u kompaniji, na pamet prvo padaju vrhunska plata, odličan tim i izazovni projekti. Uglavnom se kao bitni faktori pridodaju i menadžment koji ima viziju, stabilnost kompanije, savremene tehnologije i atraktivni benefiti.

Ono što često nije dovoljno u fokusu je karijerni razvoj u kompaniji. U FishingBooker-u smatramo da je on podjednako bitan aspekt koji jedna kompanija treba da pruži. Jasna trajektorija po kojoj zaposleni može da se kreće i razvija je u direktnoj korelaciji sa njegovim zadovoljstvom — samim tim i sa vremenom koje će provesti u firmi.

Tina i Nino su 2016. još kao studenti ETF-a, odlučili da se pridruže startapu koji je je u tom trenutku imao samo jednog inženjera, osnivača i CEO-a kompanije, Vukana. Njih dvoje su skoro šest godina u FishingBooker-u, prošavši izazovan put do seniorskih pozicija.

Oni su taj put uz pomoć ličnog entuzijazma i truda uglavnom sami krčili, stvorivši tako temelje za jasan i strukturisan razvoj karijere koji danas stoji pred svakim zaposlenim u kompaniji. Zato su baš ova dva seniora bila logičan izbor kada smo rešili da vam približimo karijerni razvoj u FishingBooker-u.

Posao + Studije = Dobitna Kombinacija

Priču započinje Nino vraćanjem na fakultetske dane kada mu se ispunila tadašnja želja – da nađe prvi posao i primeni stečeno znanje.

“Na faksu smo znali otprilike kako sve funkcioniše, ali nismo imali nista opipljivo, niti smo imali ideju kako bi razvoj softvera za realnu upotrebu zapravo izgledao. Trebalo mi je nešto konkretno — posao. Onda mi je na trećoj godini drugar rekao da je upoznao nekoga kome je potreban inženjer i prosledio mi je vizit kartu. U jednoj pauzi od učenja rešio sam da pozovem Vukana.”

Dalje objašnjava kako je izgledao intervju proces 2016. godine:

“Vukan mi je poslao zadatke koje je trebalo da uradim u PHP-u s kojim se do tada nisam susretao. Ipak, uz malo truda i istraživanja, uradio sam sve. Usledio je intervju i samo par dana kasnije dogovorili smo se da se pridružim odmah nakon ispitnog roka, što sam i uradio. Ubrzo smo shvatili da nam je potrebno još inženjera, pa sam pozvao Tinu.”

Tinina glavna briga oko prilike da se pridruži FishingBooker-u bila je činjenica da mora da kombinuje posao i fakultet koji je bio apsolutni prioritet. Iako skeptična po tom pitanju, odlučila je da aplicira. Vrlo brzo se ispostavilo da nije pogrešila.

“Fakultet nam je bolje krenuo od kada smo počeli da radimo. Davali smo ispite u prvim rokovima. Imali smo mnogo manje vremena, samim tim smo morali bolje da se organizujemo. Posao daje samopouzdanje, pogotovo dok si na fakultetu. Jednostavno si siguran da je tvoje znanje primenjivo.”

Ipak, za balansiranje fakulteta ne bi bilo moguće da nije postojala maksimalna fleksibilnost i razumevanje. Tina tvrdi da su to jedne od najvećih vrednosti koje je dobila u FishingBooker-u.

“Fleksibilnost se i danas održava. Nije bitno da li je u pitanju fakultet ili porodica, svako u timu ima potpunu podršku da organizuje svoje vreme kako mu odgovara.”

Izazovni Počeci i Unapređenja Procesa

Današnji i nekadašnji FishingBooker su nebo i zemlja u mnogim aspektima. Od male sobe gde su svi zajedno radili, za pet godina se izgradilo nešto potpuno drugačije. Mnoge operacije koje se danas izvode na klik su u to doba bile izvor stresa. Ipak, to nije smetalo Ninu da se odmah oseti kao deo tima.

“Na samom početku, Vukan i ja smo pravili dosta grešaka i često nam je padao sajt. Ali bez obzira na to, bio sam jako uzbuđen. Osećao sam hype i energiju koju je on prenosio. Pravili smo proizvod koji je iz dana u dan koristio sve veći broj ljudi i sve mi je bilo jako interesantno.”

Dobra hemija u kolektivu, entuzijazam i mogućnost da se zaposleni razvijaju doveli su do toga da se i sami procesi u kompaniji konstantno unapređuju. Tina objašnjava koliko je bitno da se svakom zaposlenom pomogne da se na najbolji način prilagodi sistemu u koji ulazi:

“Danas se postepeno ide ka tome da se svako odlično upozna sa sistemom. Krećeš sa sitnim izmenama dok ne dođeš do većih i postaneš samostalan. Uz to, svaka osoba prolazi kroz višednevnu orijentaciju sa HR timom gde se pokrije detaljna istorija firme, biznis model i radi se testiranje svih funkcionalnosti proizvoda pre nego što se pređe na onboarding vezan za konkretan posao koji će neko raditi. Na taj način svi stičemo osnovno znanje o samoj firmi i proizvodu.”

Vatreno Krštenje – Prvi Projekti

Njih dvoje su vrlo brzo dobili da rade na vrlo ozbiljnim i zahtevnim projektima. Toliko bitnim za FishingBooker da su i posle mnogo vremena deo sistema. Jedan od prvih feature-a koje je Nino pravio je bio user activity tracking sistem gde su kreirali arhivu izmena koje su korisnici (kapetani) pravili na svojim profilima.

Za Tinu je prvi veći projekat došao od ideje da se prikaže vremenska prognoza na samom sajtu kako bi pomogla pri odabiru datuma za rezervaciju.

“Vukan je uvek bio uzbuđen oko novih ideja, i u ovom slučaju nam je pričao kako nema smisla da neko bukira pecanje a da ne može da vidi vremensku prognozu na toj lokaciji. Dobila sam API za ‘weather’ i trebalo je da integrišem sa sajtom. Nikad nisam radila na tome da treba da se integriše neki drugi sistem u tvoj i da se napravi infrastruktura da te podatke kod nas smeštamo. Taj feature i dalje postoji i dosta se unapredio.”

Kako se kompanija polako razvijala tako su Nino i Tina radili na sve složenijim zadacima. Ninov naredni veliki projekat jeste bilo izgradnja interne infrastrukture za a/b testiranje koja se i danas koristi aktivno.

Kad Hoćeš da Napreduješ, Gledaj Seniora

S obzirom na mali tim inženjera i da je Vukan bio jedini iskusniji član, Nino i Tina su imali uloge full-stack developera. Dodatno, kao jedini inženjeri morali su da rade i QA i neretko UI dizajn, što je znalo da bude stresno. Za razliku od danas kada kompanija ima zaseban QA tim, kada se rade code review-ovi, kada postoje monitoring sistemi i gde se u roku od par minuta sazna kad se greška provuče, Nino objašnjava kako je bilo pre nekoliko godina.

“Bilo je zanimljivo raditi na svemu jer je to najbolji način da skapiraš kako ceo sistem funkcioniše. Ipak, kada radiš sve po malo i proizvod raste, ne možeš dugo da budeš fokusiran na sve delove jednako, samim tim lako pogrešiš. 2016. nismo imali nikakav monitoring sistem; s vremena na vreme uđemo u serverske logove pa gledamo “zadnjih 200 grešaka” i prioritizujuemo šta da rešavamo.”

Ipak, nakon više od 7 meseci rada, kako je biznis rastao, bilo je neophodno da se dovede senior inženjer. Tada se pridružio Čedo, koji je doneo dosta znanja i pokazao nam dobre prakse. Uz to, pridruživanje senior inženjera sa iskustvom znači da postoji i potpuno druga perspektiva kada dođe do rešavanja biznis problema.

Iskustvo, koje je tada nedostajalo Tini i Ninu je značilo da često nisu mogli da prelome kada dođe do nekog feature-a. Tina napominje da uvek postoji neki trade-off u zavisnosti od konteksta problema koji se rešava. Za rešenja takvih problema, neophodno je iskustvo.

“Dolazak seniora u tim nam je značilo pri donošenju odluka u razvoju. Naveo nas je da razmišljamo i o tome kako će određena funkcionalnost biti korisćena, a ne samo osnovu toga šta je tehnički najispravnije.”

Takođe, dolazak seniora u tim je doveo do toga da se 2018. tim konačno podeli na frontend, backend i kasnije mobile. Nino se odlučio za frontend, a Tina se pridružila Čedu na bekendu. Ona smatra da je to donelo veliki napredak u radu.

“Kako je tim rastao, grupisali su se ljudi koji su više zainteresovani za frontend, backend i mobile. Postali smo bolji u tehnologijama i bili srećniji jer radimo ono što volimo, a ne ono što moramo. Tako nam je i znanje raslo.”

Mentori, Seniori i Team Leadovi

A onda je za Nina i Tinu usledio sledeći korak. Budući da su bili najduže u firmi i da su imali najveće domensko znanje, liderstvo je došlo prirodno. Mogli su da utiču na način rada, planiranje, ali i na one koji tek dolaze u tim.

Kako se tim širio, dobijali su sve veću odgovornost da prenesu iskustvo, da ukažu na greške koje su oni pravili, probleme sa kojima su se susretali, itd. Radili su i na uvođenju procedura kao što je code review, automatizovano testiranje i continous integration kako bi se smanjila verovatnoća za ponavljanje grešaka. Nino opisuje role tim lead-a i seniora kao izuzetno odgovoran posao.

“Vođenje tima je preraslo iz mentorstva jer su nam dolazili relativno neiskusni ljudi koje smo mi uvodili u biznis i način rada. Danas mentorstvo nije vezano za jednog menadžera, već se prenosi na članove tima uz podršku njihovih supervizora. Kao senior i team lead utičeš na karijerni put druge osobe. S obzirom na podelu tima, imamo mogućnost da držimo osobu u jednom domenu koji želi dok nije spremna ili dok ne poželi da ide dalje. Imamo priliku da slušamo osobu i reakcije na projekte, kao i u kom pravcu želi da se razvija dalje. Ono što je posebno u FishingBooker-u je da se i dalje oseća taj ‘ownership’ nad ciljevima i proizvodom.”

Tina na to dodaje:

“Stalo nam je do dobre organizacije i raspodele posla. Mentorisali smo ljude i znamo šta vole da rade i u čemu su dobri. Trudimo se da prenesemo tu energiju koju mi imamo kad dođe do samog proizvoda. Tu smo da saslušamo tim, i ako postoje neki problemi da, ako ništa drugo, podelimo naše iskustvo. Ovo mnogo znači jer smo i mi sami imali isti pristup kada smo došli u FishingBooker.”

Inženjering tim u FishingBooker-u trenutno broji 25 ljudi, ali se i dalje širi. Dobro organizovan proces zapošljavanja obezbeđuje da dolaze kvalitetni ljudi u intervalima gde je moguće i dalje održavati kulturu firme. Konkretno oko kulture u firmi Tina kaže da nije bitno da li si senior ili početnik, svi imaju slobodu i osećaju se komforno da podele mišljenje i predlože poboljšanja. Ako primetiš da nešto ne štima, kažeš – i to se stvarno promeni.

“Ovo je glavni razlog zašto smo mi ostali u firmi toliko dugo. To nije neki benefit koji postoji u većini firmi. Pored atmosfere i transparentnosti ovde ljudi ostaju zato što im je podržan razvoj i napredak. Odabirom projekata u jednom domenu imaš priliku da akumuliraš znanje i da se specijalizuješ za taj domen. Kako proizvod raste, tako se javlja i potreba za skaliranjem već implementiranih funkcionalnosti što uvodi nove izazove u sam rad i gomilu novih tema za učenje i razvoj.

Za kraj, Tina govori o onom što u FishingBooker-u tek predstoji i čemu se veoma raduje.

“Radimo na tome da sa funkcionalnih, pređemo na autonomne produkt timove gde svaki tim ima par inženjera, QA, dizajnera i produkt menadžera. Pri tome, svaki tim je fokusiran na jedan deo proizvoda ili korisnički segment. Verujemo da će na taj način razvoj biti fleksibilniji i brži. Želimo da decentralizujemo odluke, ali ne da odustajemo od pripadnosti matičnim timovima (backend, frontend, mobile), gde želimo da nastavimo da delimo dobre prakse razvoja i radimo na poboljšanju infrasukture i procesa.”

Razvoj Karijere - Naš X Faktor

Potrudili smo se da vam približimo karijerni put dva inženjera, od početničkih do liderskih dana. Tina i Nino su prošli brojne izazove, ali su nemerljivo doprineli da FishingBooker danas bude kompanija koja ulaže i razvija svoje zaposlene sa istom strašću kojom razvija i svoj proizvod.

Od perioda kada se napredak ostvarivao isključivo snagom volje uz mnogo odricanja, FishingBooker se transformisao do nivoa u kom je razvoj karijere potpuno uređena struktura. Na osnovu Radford sistema određuju se karijerne putanje za svaki tim i definišu se kriterijumi za napredak.

Od prvog dana u kompaniji svaki zaposleni dobija jasne smernice u cilju dostizanja sledećeg nivoa u njihovoj karijeri. Na “jedan na jedan” sastancima sa menadžerom prati se napredak i ispravljaju se svi potencijalni nedostaci. Ovim se dobija da svaki zaposleni postaje “vlasnik” svoje karijere i odlučuje o sopstvenom razvoju. Samo na taj način, smatramo, dugoročno profitiraju i zaposleni i kompanija.

Ako vas je Tinina i Ninova priča zaintrigirala i ako vam je važno da neko brine o vašem karijernom razvoju, prijavite se na neke od otvorenih pozicija. Jedva čekamo da se upoznamo!

Posetite profil kompanije FishingBooker.

Menjanje posla je jedan od stresnijih događaja u životu, pogotovo ako imate malo dete kod kuće i prelazite u firmu koja postoji svega nekoliko godina. Tada, kao senior inženjer i novopečeni tata, napustio sam stabilnu i uspešnu firmu i pridružio se mladim ljudima sa vizijom i željom da zajedno rastemo. Danas, sa gotovo 10 puta većim timom i 25 puta većim prihodima, FishingBooker je izrastao u mesto koje je prevazišlo sva moja očekivanja.

Tako je Čedo ukratko opisao svoje iskustvo u FishingBooker-u, od šestomesečnog otkaznog roka pre dolaska, do više od pet godina sa nama i Lead Engineer role.

Sa željom da vam približimo kako je to biti inženjer u FishingBooker-u, razgovarali smo sa gotovo najiskusnijim članom koji nam se pridružio 2016. i značajno doprineo izgradnji softvera koji danas koristi desetine miliona korisnika.

Kako i zašto si odlučio da dođeš u FishingBooker?

Moram priznati da nisam imao visoka očekivanja pred sam intervju. Malo sam pogledao sajt, video neke fotografije i pomislio to je samo još jedna američka firma sa development centrom u Beogradu. Iskreno, nisam ljubitelj outsource-a i ako bih prelazio u drugu firmu, to je morala da bude neka sa svojim proizvodom. Nisam imao šta da izgubim, pa sam ipak došao da se bolje upoznamo. Kada sam došao, bila je to potpuno druga priča.

Firma ima svoj proizvod, a što je još zanimljivije, ljudi mlađi od mene su ga stvorili, i to bez investicije. Tu sam shvatio da je energija ljudi na drugom nivou, ali i da ako se pridružim timu, moći ću lično i profesionalno da rastem, i na sve to, imam direktan uticaj na dalji rast firme.

FishingBooker je bio sušta suprotnost okruženju u kojem sam bio. Tamo sam se osećao, ne kao programer, već kao prevodilac. Na prethodnom poslu sam dobijao polu-definisana biznis rešenja, a nekad i polu-definisana tehnička rešenja od biznis osobe, dok je moj posao bio da praktično prekucam izdiktirano i to ne kvalitetno, već što brže. Sa druge strane, u FishingBooker-u mi je postavljeno očekivanje da zapravo ja budem taj koji će predlagati kvalitetna rešenja, učestovati u donošenju odluka i definisati tehinčke, a ponekad i biznis zahteve.

Iako sada nemam mnogo vremena da se bavim biznisom, tada mi je proširilo vidike i omogućilo da se dalje razvijam. Danas se biznisom više bave product manager-i i to mi pruža šansu da se značajnije posvetim tehničkom planiranju.

Pomenuo si da ti je lični i profesionalni razvoj bio važan faktor pri prelasku u FishingBooker. Kako si znao da će ti FishingBooker to pružiti?

Na intervjuu smo poprilično vremena posvetili upravo tome kako funkcioniše učenje, a zatim sam i u praksi imao šta da vidim.

Učenje se provlači kako kroz očekivanja i ciljeve, tako i kroz svakodnevno ponašanje. Nije kao da se kreiraju ciljevi zarad ispunjenja forme, već to učenje suštinski ima uticaj na tvoj razvoj. Npr. sa svojim tim liderom imaš definisan karijerni put, kao i predložene resurse koji će ti pomoći da ga ostvariš. Nekada se radi o kursevima, nekada o knjigama, ili uživo treninzima. Taj plan se onda razbije po kvartalima, a na tebi je da učiš i ispuniš te ciljeve. To mi je u samom startu bilo zanimljivo (i ozbiljno) jer su firmu vodili momci koji su do juče bili na faksu.

Mimo postavljanja ciljeva, postoji i ta kultura učenja kada rešavamo određene probleme. U prethodnim firmama nisam imao prilike da vidim taj pristup. Jednostavno, relativno bazično se pristupalo analizi rešenja problema na koje nisu postojali laki odgovori.

U FishingBooker-u mi je oduvek bilo zanimljivo da vidim Vukana ili Dina kako preko vikenda pročitaju koju knjigu, ili pogledaju kurseve i generalno se informišu na temu problema koji pokušavamo da rešimo, dođu sa par konkretnih opcija, a zatim i izmerimo uticaj onog rešenja za koje smo se opredelili. Tako je bilo gotovo od prvih par nedelja kada sam došao (2016.) pa do danas.

Taj pristup mi uliva poverenje jer se donošenje odluka ne bazira na ličnim stavovima i mišljenjima, već na podacima i znanju. Takav pristup vas gura da i sami preispitujete svoje odluke i postupke, ali i da se stalno razvijate, kako lično, tako i profesionalno.

Kako se firma promenila u prethodnih pet godina?

Malo je nezgodno da sagledaš promenu kada si deo nje, jer se dešava postepeno. Izvan rasta u broju zaposlenih, prihoda i profita, struktura razvojnih timova je potpuno drugačija, kao i odgovornosti.

Počeli smo od malog tima bez mnogo organizacije. Platforma je bila značajno siromašnija i bilo je neophodno što pre napraviti neke osnovne funkcionalnosti. Jednostavno, kvalitet nije bio presudan, bilo je bitno da radi.

Sada, kada firma broji gotovo 100 ljudi, a razvojni tim se bliži 40, imamo strukturu i organizaciju, a ne anarhiju.

Inženjerski timovi su podeljeni na Backend, Frontend i Mobile, kvalitet je imperativ, a produkt i dizajnerski timovi obezbeđuju da su rešenja izuzetno dobro istražena i usaglašena sa biznis potrebama. Na kraju, QA tim obezbeđuje kroz automatske testove i manuelne provere da ne pustimo na produkciju nešto što ne bi trebalo.

Jednostavno, sve je na mnogo ozbiljnijem nivou, valjda zato što i svaka greška ima mnogo veće posledice po biznis. Ne gajimo osuđivačku kulturu, ali ne volimo da pravimo greške koje su se lako mogle izbeći.

Infrastruktura nam je rasla vremenom, pa smo osnovali i odvojeni DevOps tim.

Trenutno je u toku reorganizacija na krosfunkcionalne timove za reševanje problema po tipovima korisnika, a ne samo tehnologiji koju koriste. Da bismo to ostvarili, širimo tim, uskoro ulazimo u nove, ambiciozne projekte, a zatim i, nadam se, u mikroservise.

Pošto pretežno radiš u PHP-u, a kolege/koleginice i u React-u i ReactNative-u, koliko podržavaš sveopšti stav da su to pomalo dosadne tehnologije?

Programiranje je mnogo više od programskog jezika. Principi programiranja su univerzalni i ne zavise od programskog jezika. Mnogo je važnije kako rešavaš problem i da li primenjuješ neke dobre prakse i dizajn šablone koji omogućavaju da sistem koji praviš bude brz, stabilan i lak za nadogradnju od toga da li koristiš, u datom mementu, najpopularaniji jezik.

Odlično je kombinovati programske jezike sa tipom problema koji rešavaš jer su određeni jezici podobniji za određene skupove problema, ali svakako smatram da nijedan od pomenutih jezika/biblioteka ne ograničava kvalitetan razvoj i dobra rešenja u kojima će krajnji korisnici uživati.

PHP je u zadnje vreme dosta napredovao, prati strogo tipiziranje (što neki ne vole, meni se lično sviđa taj pravac), standardizuje stvari i aktivno se razvija u skladu sa zahtevima tržišta. Ima veliki community što je jako bitno za razvoj i ima odličan ekosistem za biblioteke.

Sa druge strane, iza React-a i React Native-a stoji Facebook, što dovoljno govori samo za sebe. Mi smo ih dosta rano primenili, i u startu se možda malo namučili, ali sada kada su biblioteke sazrele ima sve više dobrih open source paketa koje ljudi održavaju i olakšavaju nam svima da ne pišemo stvari od nule.

Samo bih napomenuo da mimo ovih jezika koristimo i Python, NodeJS i druge, jer se trudimo da različite probleme rešavamo koristeći najkompatibilnije tehnologije. Sa prelaskom na mikroservise, siguran sam da će nam se fleksibilnost povećati i da ćemo po potrebi uvećati broj tehnologija koje koristimo, a time možda i malo začiniti stvari u FishingBooker-u.

Čime se to bavi Lead Engineer u FishingBooker-u? Kako izgleda tvoj prosečan dan?

Lead Engineers imaju jako važnu ulogu u planiranju tehničkih stvari. Način na koji nešto implementiraš će ti ili pomoći, ili odmoći (tehnički dug). Moj zadatak je da obezbedim da je kvalitet koda na odličnom nivou i da se primenjuju što bolje (ili najbolje) prakse u razvoju softvera, kao i da dam svoj doprinos tehničkom roadmap-u.

Lead Engineer rola je individual contributor rola i to je pravac koji mi više prija od upravljanja. Mimo tehničkog roadmap-a, učestvujem i u planiranju šestonedeljnih ciklusa, ali izvan toga, trudim se da je moj doprinos direktan, što kroz rešavanje konkretnih problema koje korisnici imaju, tako i kroz code reviews koje radim i mentorisanje nešto manje iskusnih kolega i koleginica.

Jedan od skorijih projekata koji mi je bio jako zanimljiv je prelazak na MySQL Enterprise klaster. Imao sam izazov pred sobom da obezbedim neometan i brz rad sajta uz iznenadna otkazivanja serverske infrastrukture i konstantan rast količine podataka koje procesiramo i smeštamo u bazu podataka. Pre toga, rešavao sam pitanje ranking algoritma koji obezbeđuje da se najbolji listinzi prikazuju korisnicima u zavisnosti od relevatnih faktora, a da uz sve to, obratim pažnju da je brzina sajta na visokom nivou pogotovo što ponuda svakodnevno raste, baš kao i broj posetilaca.

Ne mogu da kažem da imam neku 100% predvidivu rutinu, ali kada se jednom uđe u šestonedeljni ciklus, tada sam u fokusu i trudim se da moja rešenja, saveti ili predlozi, budu na odličnom nivou.

U više navrata si pomenuo kvalitet. Kako izgleda balans između razvoja novih funkcionalnosti i unapređivanja infrastrukture?

Slagao bih ako bih rekao da je oduvek bilo ovako. Prethodno sam pomenuo da smo imali sajt sa manjim brojem funkcionalnosti i da ih je bilo neophodno razviti po svaku cenu, jer su te stvari garantovale rast, a rast je bio jedini način da izgradimo uspešan biznis bez spoljnih investitora. Iako sada imam ovakvo mišljenje, znam da je svojevremeno bilo jako izazovno razumeti prioritizaciju i da sam teška srca prihvatao tu realnost.

Danas smo otprilike na 30:70 u korist funkcionalnosti (feature-a), sa čime sam jako zadovoljan. Svest je oduvek postojala jer je Vukan inženjer koji veruje u kvalitet, međutim, realnost biznisa je bila drugačija. Smatram da smo sada značajno zreliji i da se i sam pristup u radu pobošljava sa svakim novim razvojnim ciklusom.

Sa nama si već pet godina. Šta te i dalje motiviše da daješ svoj maksimum?

U FishingBooker-u volim fleksibilnost i što ne postoji lažni pritisak. Niko ti ne stoji nad glavom. Ciljeve dogovorimo i dajemo svoj maksimum da ih ispunimo, međutim, ako smo se precenili, ne znači da treba svi da radimo prekovremeno da bi cilj bio ispunjen po svaku cenu. Jednostavno, postoji taj zdravi balans između cimanja za firmu i privatnog života.

Mimo toga, zvuči kao kliše, ali ljudi su super i oni te na neki način guraju napred. Uvek znaš da imaš nekoga sa kim možeš da se posavetuješ kako oko tehničkih, biznis, pa i privatnih problema. Dopada mi se što smo relativno mlada ekipa i to sa sobom nosi neku pozitivnu energiju i zdravu ambiciju. Ponekad odemo na pivo svi skupa. Ima par ekipa koje i putuju zajedno. Bukvalno su obišli pola sveta zajedno. Ja imam porodicu i sa njima najviše provodim vremena, tako da se ne mogu pohvaliti tim pustolovinama, ali mi ovako prija i drago mi je što nema usiljenog druženja, već ko kada želi i može.

Izdvojio bih opcije na akcije (stock options) kao jednu stvar koja nije karakteristična za srpske firme, ali je možda i najbolji pokazatelj mog rada i rasta firme i nešto što me dodatno motiviše. Za 5 godina je vrednost mojih opcija porasla više od 30 puta. Nisam previše vešt sa finansijama, ali to vidim kao jedan izvor koji ne mogu da potrošim jer nije unovčen, a mogu direktno da utičem da mu vrednost stalno raste.

Naravno, nije sve u mojim rukama, međutim, daje jednu posebnu notu i osećaj vlasništva nad delom firme. Ja firmu posmatram kao jedan brod koji plovi i konstantno se gradi, sa ciljem da uplovi u neku manju ili veću luku (uspešno posluje ili se proda). Verujem da imamo dobrog kapetana i posadu i cimam se zajedno sa njima da luka u koju uplovimo bude što veća i da se iskrcamo srećni i zadovoljni.

Na samom kraju, podstiče me i činjenica da radim na opipljivom proizvodu i rešavam realne probleme korisnika i vidim uticaj mojih rešenja. U prethodnoj firmi je znalo da me demotiviše što sam radio na projektima koji su znali da traju dugo, a da rešenja ne odu na produkciju i više od godinu dana. Meni je bitno da ili učim, ili da rešavam tehnički zahtevne probleme. Za sada sam u FishingBooker-u imao jedno, drugo ili oba i to mi je sjajno.

Šta misliš o remote postavci? Šta ona znači za tebe i privatni život?

Za mene je ona presudna. Ja sam mimo korone planirao da se selim iz Beograda u toku 2020. jer mi kvalitet života nije bio onakav kakav sam želeo da bude. Tu mi je izuzetan stres stvarao saobraćaj i problem sa parkingom kada dođem nazad kući. Srećom pa sam u kancelariji makar imao obezbeđen parking.

Izvan toga, odlična je povoljnost jer ti odmor više nije 20 dana godišnje, već ti možeš otići 40-50 dana godisnje bilo gde i raditi deo remote, a deo uzeti odmor i uživati sa svojim bližnjima. Ne mora čak ni da to bude neko daleko putovanje, ali sam beg iz grada i gužve u neko okolno selo ili na planinu, je dovoljno dobro za mozak.

Izvan remote-a, rekao bih da mi je fleksibilnost generalno jedan od značajnijih faktora u firmi. Činjenica da ne moram da sedim od 9 do 5 je olakšavajuća. Sve institucije rade u tako neko doba, pa kada iskrsne neki lični problem ili potreba, olakšavajuće je što možeš da završiš šta god treba i nastaviš nesmetano da radiš.

Nešto za kraj?

Radujem se poduhvatima i projektima koji predstoje, širenju tima i svemu što budućnost nosi. Slobodno me cimnite preko Linkedin-a, rado ću odgovoriti na pitanja.

Ako vam je Čedina priča bila zanimljiva i razmišljate da se priključite FishingBooker-u, pogledajte otvorene pozicije u Engineering i Product timovima.

Posetite profil kompanije FishingBooker.

Walk the corridors of FishingBooker’s offices, and one thing you’ll notice is the mixture of people around you. We base our operations in Serbia, and our employees come from as far afield as Russia, Peru, Australia, just to name a few.

When it comes to the distribution of men and women, it can look like some departments are even intentionally counteracting the “typical” gender balance for that field. Nowhere more so than in the Engineering Team.

Let’s start with the basics. In the crossover of two notoriously male-dominated sectors – tech and fishing – the ratio of female to male employees is very close to 50:50. That’s pretty surprising in itself.

It gets even more unusual when you get to the really “tech-y” part of the business. Only about a fifth of the technical (i.e. coding) jobs at large Silicon Valley companies are done by women. At FishingBooker, it’s 42%!

At the crossroads of two stereotypically male-oriented worlds, women are making a serious impact.

I spoke to some of FishingBooker’s female engineers to find out what it is about the company – and the country it’s based in – that has created such a balanced workplace where you would least expect it.

Small Country, Big Reach

Serbia’s unusual. In many ways, it’s a relatively traditional society, with quite traditional gender roles. According to UN Women, “women are under-represented in decision-making in all spheres of Serbia’s social, economic and political life.” But when it comes to technical education, it seems to be forging ahead.

In the US, less than 20% of recent computer science degrees have gone to women. In Serbia, classes are more equally balanced, with women making up 33% of the students entering Belgrade University’s Electrical Engineering Faculty this year.

Katarina Milosavljević, a software engineer at FishingBooker who graduated this year, said there was a roughly equal number of women and men in her classes.

And her colleague Kristina (Tina) Vasić says that there’s no place for stereotypes in the classroom. “I didn’t notice any barrier in my school time and on my job. I’ve had all the chances the same as my friends who are boys. My projects were graded according to my work, not my gender.”

Serbia’s also unusual because of the impact it’s having on the tech world at the moment. Just 20 years ago, the country was reeling from the painful breakup of Yugoslavia. Now, its homegrown companies are becoming market leaders in mobile gaming, biomedical research, and booking experiences for traveling anglers.

Olga Babić at work making it easier for people to book fishing trips with FishingBooker

Serbian engineers hit the headlines recently when Jelena Kovačević became the first female dean of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering in the United States. She recently spoke about how her early schooling and support from her parents gave her a resilience to gender bias as she progressed in her career. This background resonates with what some of FishingBooker’s female engineers described.

“Programming in Serbia is very popular since there are very intelligent people who are open to learning new things and sharing knowledge through the internet,” says Tina. “With all the resources available online and great faculties, the sky’s the limit. Nowadays, you can live in a small country in the central Balkans and, through the internet, provide a service that the whole world can use.”

That’s key to getting people into the field. Engineering offers a level playing field to people of all backgrounds. It provides the opportunity to break out of the limitations of your own country and compete on a global level.

For a small country with a big brain drain like Serbia, this means a lot. Engineering is one of the few career paths young Serbs can take that will reliably let them earn an international salary without having to relocate to another country. And Serbia’s growing number of startups and successful tech firms makes the appeal to stay even stronger.

Tina explained that learning programming in primary and secondary education makes this career path accessible to everyone. Add to that the multiple faculties with programming departments here, and the choice to learn coding at university becomes even more attractive, whatever your gender.

This early education makes a difference. I only recently found out that while I was sitting in my dark IT classroom in the UK, listening to someone talking about Excel, Nataša Ćirković, a software QA specialist at FishingBooker, was spending her general IT classes learning Pascal and HTML. This was in the early 2000s, and her main field of study was languages and social studies.

Teaching computer languages is standard in high schools and there’s significant funding in the field from the Serbian state. So perhaps it’s not so surprising after all that young Serbs are informed and attracted to a career in engineering, no matter their gender.

An Engineering Team with Women at Its Core

But what makes FishingBooker different, even in the Serbian context? Firstly, the fact that it’s developed with women in key positions in the team. Secondly, its strong emphasis on communicating ideas and suggestions openly, in a supportive environment.

Tina started working at FishingBooker nearly four years ago. When she arrived, she was one of two interns who worked alongside Vukan Simić, the CEO, on the entirety of FishingBooker’s product. She’s now one of the most senior team members and is one of the go-to people for questions about FishingBooker’s backend services and infrastructure planning.

With the team being mixed for, well, about as long as it’s been a “team,” there simply wasn’t the opportunity for it to develop the type of “bro-culture” that’s been discussed recently in international tech firms. Instead, it grew with a tradition of female mentors and role models, starting with Tina and expanding as the team grew. This has created an environment where, as corny as it may seem, people who know their stuff are respected because of the work they do, regardless of their gender.

Katarina, who joined the team two years ago, is now in charge of mentoring incoming interns. While she doesn’t notice any divide between men and women at work, she did point out how much FishingBooker values being open to communication, especially in the Engineering Team.

As she puts it, “Whatever your gender, you’re expected to give and receive criticism and praise openly, helping other people just as they’re there to help you.” This emphasis on helping and challenging others may explain why the team is so appealing to and respectful of people of all genders.

Tina agrees with Katarina, and adds that the girls in the team are often the most forthcoming. With their voices being heard on a daily basis, our female engineers are not only strongly represented, they’re also highly regarded as pioneers in adding new technology to our stack.

Weekly product demos contribute to this. These Friday afternoon gatherings allow anyone in the Product and Engineering teams to showcase the projects they’ve been working on that week. Both women and men are pushed to speak up and demonstrate the work they’ve been doing. As they get used to doing this on a weekly basis, they learn to speak with confidence about the work they’re producing, so no one on the team (male or female) gets to shrink back to the sidelines.

As Tina puts it: “Your opinion really matters here, however long you’ve been in the team. You’re expected to have ideas and share them!”

The Outcome

Everyone in the team works on a variety of different projects. But as people get involved in developing products, they tend to become the go-to person for that part of the website. This is what happened with Tina with Instant Messaging, and Katarina with internal dashboards.

Tina explained that when she started at FishingBooker, she worked on full-stack projects and learned about the whole process of implementing a feature. Nowhere was this more challenging – and more rewarding – than her work on creating an Instant Messaging platform for our users.

Leading the project all the way from making a Minimum Viable Product to a platform that sends tens of thousands of messages per week in high season, she coordinated its development from scratch.

While she’s now gravitating towards infrastructure and software architecture, she’s still involved in the ever-evolving messaging tool and is currently working on archiving conversations as well as making constant improvements based on feedback from its users.

Meanwhile, one of Katarina’s first projects as a software intern was building upon our internal CRMs and dashboards. When she started, these were fairly basic, newly implemented features that were just about letting our various teams communicate with each other properly. As the company grew, these dashboards needed to grow too, and Katarina’s been instrumental in making this happen. This is one of the projects she’s most proud of, as she can see how her work building good tools has made other teams happier and more efficient.

Strong female role models working on influential projects, combined with a heavy focus on open communication and mentorship, added to a background of increasing numbers of Serbian girls taking up programming at university… when you look closely, maybe the gender balance in FishingBooker’s Engineering Team isn’t so surprising after all.

Know how to code? If you’re able to think on your feet, give and receive criticism, and ready to get even better than you are right now, take a look at our open positions. We’d love to meet you!

Visit the company profile 

Sometimes, the best way to solve a problem is to take everything apart and start again.

Usually, we go for the alternative. With a large inventory and endless growth ideas, we use our engineering resources very carefully. That means building on what we have or, if we’re introducing a new way of doing things, starting with a minimum viable product, testing, and iterrating. This helps us make smart decisions without letting individual projects spiral out of control.

But when we set out to improve the way our calendar works for scheduling fishing trips, we realized that the single best course of action was to go back to the drawing board. Here’s why, and what our engineers did next.

A Fatal Flaw

How long is a fishing trip? Well, about as long as a piece of string.

Our business is based on booking excursions that are a set length in time. What that length is depends on the captain, the part of the world they operate in, and the ambitions of the customer. Working with thousands of businesses that run several of these trips in a day, we need to provide a viable way to organize this. At the same time, in order for customers to use FishingBooker to plan their vacation, they need to know that when we say a trip is available, it is.

Despite this, until recently FishingBooker’s booking system wasn’t tailored to scheduling individual trips. Instead, it looked at availability in terms of half day blocks of time. Captains could list packages of any duration, with any start time, but they could only block out a half day or a full day on their calendar.

If their trips happened to last less than a whole day but spanned both the morning (am) and afternoon (pm), this couldn’t be logged properly. The result? We were sending captains overlapping bookings.

We always knew that addressing this would be a big project – both for infrastructure and for design. And with the calendar underpinning our whole business, the stakes were high. So we gathered a small team of a senior backend, frontend, and mobile engineer, and a designer, to unpick the problem of availability and propose a new solution that would last as our product continues to grow.

There were four main problems that we wanted to address:

Once our team got together and unpicked the current calendar setup, they realised that this would need a fresh start. Here are three of the biggest challenges that they faced.

Challenge #1: Solving Overlaps Without Overloading our Servers or our Users

The team quickly established that the best way to solve the problem of overlapping trips was to look at the trips themselves, rather than dividing the day into two. But there’s a reason our calendar used to work the way it did. From the server’s standpoint, it’s more viable to log availability of a few thousand listings twice a day than it is to keep track of tens of thousands of individual trips for every single moment.

In order to minimize the pressure on the server and prevent slow loading speeds, we developed a new way of caching our availability data. This involves collecting availability data per trip per day, and only updating this after significant changes, such as when a captain gets a new booking or updates their availability settings.

Approaching data structure this way lets us provide a fast page load time as well as accurate results. Indispensable when we need to show data for multiple listings fast, for instance when someone is performing a search for a destination. Then, when it’s essential to have 100% accurate data, such as when someone is about to reserve and pay for their trip, we can calculate that listing’s specific data on the fly and provide a smooth experience.

On the front end, we needed to keep our calendar simple and easy to use, despite adding a more sophisticated set of functionalities. A particular challenge in our business is that we work with fishing captains who pull long hours and for the most part don’t have much time for apps and technology. Whatever we create needs to be friendly and understandable to anyone, including technophobes with outdated devices.

Here’s what we created:

Each date has three potential settings: completely available, completely unavailable (blocked), or “custom” availability, where captains can select individual trips and block them as desired. Each time a booking request gets sent through our system, that trip’s duration is automatically blocked on the listing’s calendar.

This calendar update page extracts information about the duration, start time, and guest capacity of each trip associated with the listing. Captains can change their package details at any time, so each time they load this page, it gets updated dynamically.

In order to keep all this information accessible at the click of a button without overloading the server with multiple requests, we created a single page application (SPA) with React. We usually use Redux for state management, and this solved our problem neatly.

Challenge #2: Managing Short-Notice Bookings with Custom Availability Settings

Up until recently, short notice bookings were a headache for us, and for our partners. Many captains required a certain amount of time to prepare for a trip – either to get their boat and gear ready or because they needed to travel to the marina or meeting point. However, the only way they could avoid getting a booking request for the very near future was manually blocking upcoming dates on a daily basis. For most busy captains, this just wasn’t feasible.

So, we created a custom availability setting for each individual listing, linked directly to its calendar. This lets each captain set their minimum short notice period (anything from the same day to a week in advance) and their booking window. Here, they can also let us know if they are unavailable by default, note how far in advance they are happy to get bookings for, or set a custom date range when they can be booked.

Our captains operate in different time zones and trips can depart at any time of day. So, in order for our advance notice tool to function correctly, we realized we would need to update our availability cache every single hour. This had potential to slow our site down considerably – something we obviously wanted to avoid.

To solve this, we integrated the advance notice settings themselves into our cache’s calculation. If the listing’s notice period is set to one day, we’ll recalculate the data for the next 48 hours. If it’s set to 7 days, we’ll recalculate the data for 6-7 days from today. This way, we’re only looking at what could have changed since the last calculation, but we’re still maintaining accurate data.

Challenge #3: Taking all this…And Multiplying it By 10

We’d solved the challenge of not overloading the server when dealing with a single listing. But catering to fleets of boats was a challenge of its own.

Some of our captains operate well over 10 boats, with each one requiring its own listing. As each listing has multiple packages, and as the calendar needs to display availability for the full year ahead and a few months in the past, creating a tool that let users manage all their calendars side by side was a challenge of its own. It had potential to send an overwhelming number of requests to the server any time the tool was even opened, simply rendering it unusable.

Solving this needed two approaches:

1. Cutting out any part of the app that wasn’t strictly needed.
2. Enabling an infinite slider without compromising on the information that was.

Firstly, we decided to enable captains to only block out full days when updating more than one listing at a time, rather than setting package-specific availability. This way, we could avoid overloading the server with requests to get each listing’s package info. They could still update finer details in each listing’s individual calendar, so this was an element that we could compromise on without negatively affecting the user experience.

But despite slimming down the functionalities, we still needed to log a huge amount of data. This simply wasn’t workable on the average user platform. Lazy loading was the obvious solution, but would this still work if the user is curious and starts looking around the whole multicalendar?

Probably not. You can imagine how many simple react components are rendered and re-rendered with every store update! We needed to let users access their information without risking browsers crashing.

So, we opted to render only the part of the view that is visible on the screen, using React Virtualized. After all, why render something that the user can’t see, and probably won’t ever see unless they’re “curious”? Combining this with lazy loading kept browsers happy while solving performance issues.

Rollout and Adoption

As changing the calendar was a high-stakes project, we rolled it out gradually to manage the risks as much as possible. We wanted to gather feedback from a select group of captains while tweaking the product and preparing it for full-scale launch. This meant we had to support both calendars at once for some time, with a shared, legacy mode infrastructure.

In order to make this work, we did a silent launch of the backend in July, enabling package-by-package scheduling through our booking system to avoid overlapping trips. Once we’d done this, we invited captains to try the new calendar and manage their own availability on a trip-by-trip basis.

After several months of gradual release and education about how to use the new calendar, we finally switched all listings over in November. This lengthy release meant our end users had a smooth experience throughout the changeover. After all, it was a complete rework of the very basis of our business – it was important it happened without a hiccup!

A small, cross-functional team and good product management let us solve one of our biggest business headaches with trip-specific availability. If you want to be part of thinking our way through our next challenge, get in touch!

Visit the company profile

Nobody – and nothing – is perfect. Anyone who deals with the inner workings of a website knows all too well that bugs are a fact of life. But managing a site that’s used by thousands of people and processes hundreds of bookings in a day means we need to be quick to identify these issues and act on them.

This is something we’ve worked on intensively over the last few years. It’s been a steep learning curve, but we’ve reached a point where we’re able to effectively prioritize and handle issues that come our way in a timely fashion – while, miraculously, also maintaining a work-life balance.

This post outlines the fundamental ways that we put out fires and lay fertile ground for future development.

Perfecting the Release

In the early days of FishingBooker, our product wasn’t stable and we didn’t have a mandatory process for reviewing code before it went live on production. Unsurprisingly, this quickly became an issue.

To be completely honest, we have a lot of trauma from those early days. Back then, our system was really unstable. We simply didn’t have the manpower to ensure quality and stability – we just focused on shipping enough features to have a complete product.

Now that we do have the resources and the team to make sure that things are made and released at high quality, we actually use the trauma from the early days to our advantage.

Once our team grew to about 5 engineers, we introduced code reviews as a mandatory part of feature development. And, as time progressed, we moved from a system with virtually no testing to covering every single deployment with continuous integration, including automatic testing with GitHub Actions, manual QA, and code review.

This is a completely different setup to how it used to be. Now, before anything even reaches a human to review, it needs to pass through Github’s ESLint, PHPUnit, PHPStan, and PHPCodeSniffer Actions. This may sound simple, but it’s a huge leap from the early days’ practice of merging first and asking questions later.

QA is covered by our dedicated testers who look for issues in the user flow, and everyone in the engineering team is involved in code reviews. The process is headed by the team members who have the most in-depth knowledge of FishingBooker’s product, but everyone participates. Who and how much depends on the complexity of the problem and the part of the system that’s being reviewed.

Having everyone involved means that the team’s capacity to review each other’s code is constantly scaling. Regardless of seniority, everyone is able to test out new things that are going onto production, staying familiar with the product as it evolves and continuously learning about different areas of the system.

As well as keeping everyone on board with our ever-growing codebase, this has become a safe space for seniors and juniors alike to challenge how things are done – and then to have that challenge challenged in return! Looking beyond the basic functionalities of new features or bug fixes, the code review process has become cemented into the team’s culture.

Monitoring and On-call

This involvement in reviewing other people’s work empowers everyone to jump into a wide range of projects in any given cycle – and enables them to get involved in fixing whichever problems might come up.

Our dev team operates with a 24/7 rotating on-call schedule, with everyone joining the rotation for one week in every 4-5 weeks. Just like code reviews, this is manned by a mixture of both senior and junior developers: both in order to allow us to react to potential issues as effectively as possible, and to allow our newer team members to master all parts of the product, fast.

As well as allowing people to learn the product effectively, this on-call structure also makes people within the team accountable for creating quality products. As Vukan Simic, FishingBooker’s founder and CEO put it, “Being on the on call rotation gives you that responsibility to make your code work. If you mess it up, the fact that there’s no fixed dev-ops team but that you might be the one whose phone rings in the middle of the night, really gives you that extra responsibility.”

On-call is an important part of our monitoring system, which, like code reviews and testing, has been perfected over the years as we moulded our site into a reliable and stable platform. Using various logs on our servers, auditing user activity, and constant tweaking of alerting policies with New Relic, we’re constantly running automated and semi-automated monitoring processes that our on-call team can keep track of.

Just like code reviews, this comprehensive system emerged as a result of learning the importance of stability the hard way!

In the early days of FishingBooker, a problem on production meant long periods offline and considerable frustration for internal teams and users.

We tackled that by funnelling the data our monitors pick up into New Relic, reaching our on-call team via PagerDuty and setting off a chain reaction.

Then, we swarm the issue. With on-call engineers taking the lead, we try to fix it as quickly as possible. This is followed by a mandatory, publicly shared post mortem on how we fixed it, what the issue was, and how we’ll make sure the issue doesn’t happen again.

And as we integrated our company wide chat tool with New Relic, our customer facing teams also immediately know when there’s a problem – and when it’s been fixed.

Reporting and Bug Fixing

But of course all this doesn’t make us flawless. Once features make it to production, we monitor them closely to keep track of how they’re performing and catch any problems that might occur. We also encourage everyone in the company to report any bugs they find in one centralised place.

Our QA team project manages bugs, prioritising and reacting to them on a daily basis. This is a huge change from our early days, when bugs would pile up and only the most urgent would get seen to – if the engineer wasn’t working on something else at the time.

Once bugs are triaged and reproduced by the QA team, they’re classified according to the section of the product they affect and the priority, and shared with the appropriate engineer. This prioritization system allows us to address critical issues quickly without causing unnecessary loss of attention.

High priority bugs such as issues with payment processing or core infrastructure get fixed right away, while smaller issues get prioritized like any other product work, potentially being included in future release cycles. But, crucially, the person who reported the bug will be informed throughout the process. This means we can set realistic expectations both to them and to any users being affected by the issue.

We still have a lot of ideas for developing our stability practices in the future. But now that we’re in our seventh year of building a platform for booking fishing experiences, we’re happy to have reached a stage where we can sleep soundly before – and after – releases. That is, until the on-call phone rings!

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