The Love for Tech Prevailing: The Story of our Jovica Krstevski 

My passion for computers and technology goes back to when I was in school, specifically in 1997, when I decided to study Computer Technology & Automation in high school. It was a new course, with exciting new subjects in high school. Here, I had my first contact with coding (Pascal and Delphi), and their usage in automation. But technology wasn’t my only passion at the time – I also dreamt of joining the military, so in college, I joined and finished the military academy. As things developed and changed politically and society-wise and I grew, I decided that going back to software development is a better choice, as I’ll have a better chance to grow and develop – I just picked up where I left off in high school, and the rest – as they say – is history.

Software engineering allows you to solve challenging problems by using or developing tools – the only thing that’s required is a computer and a determination to solve the problem. This way, you can end up solving big problems in society, improve the day-to-day lives of people, or improve efficiency. I love helping people, and I believe that tech is the way that I can do my due.

I joined IT Labs in August 2008 as a Java intern, starting off with Java desktop apps and working on them for the first three months, after that I spent three more months as a C# web developer. I got a job offer from IT Labs, and the chance to start as a junior web developer in an experienced team. The team had just started work on a project from scratch, and this gave me a much-needed boost as I learned a lot about the software development process, as well as honed my skills as a coder. From a technical side of things, it went like this: At the time, I had the chance to move to another project, this time as an intermediate, and work on a legacy product – on this project I learned a lot about refactoring, migrations, deployments, team coordination, and loads of other things. I was climbing up and performing well, and in the next chapter of my career growth, I was working on a different project where I was tasked with leading the team and getting in touch with different technologies.

As for the environment and my colleagues, you can reread the part above – all of the things I’ve achieved were in no small part thanks to the teams I was in – they all helped me develop as a techie. I had great mentors to learn from when I started out, and there are still many things I need to master.

Right now, I feel as if I have a pretty good knowledge of the tools I need on a daily basis, so I’m more focused on experimenting, keeping up with the newest trends and findings in the world of software development – from the programming languages and tools, all the way to new processes, services, etc.

Improve your skills every day! Trying to learn something with each passing day will help you a great deal in becoming a professional!