Dive into our latest employee interview and meet Mateo, our Frontend Developer. From how he started this career, what he loves about it, to some advice for younger generations, explore what his work life is like.

Tell us who you are and what you do in Deegloo.

I’m Mateo, a Frontend Developer at Deegloo. In short, my role involves working on the development of the frontend for the Mobile Manifest app. This encompasses tasks such as implementing new features, addressing potential issues, conducting testing, and managing app builds and deployments.

What does your typical day look like?

I begin my day around 8 AM by making myself a cup of coffee. Following that, I gather with my colleagues during the coffee break to hang out. After our coffee break, I start to work on my work obligations. This involves reviewing my Jira tickets, Slack messages, and emails. Next, I tackle the tasks assigned to me until we have our team’s daily standup meeting. During this meeting, we discuss our progress and address any potential issues or blockers. Following the standup, I continue my work until the lunch break. After lunch, I hang out a bit more with my colleagues before resuming my tasks until around 4 PM, when we hold our standup meeting with our colleagues in the US. Once the meeting with our American colleagues concludes, I wrap up my work for the day and sign off.

What made you decide to develop your career in this field?

Since I was very young I loved everything related to computers, I always fiddled around so I learned a lot by myself. Once I got into college and started learning software development and getting to know different programming languages, my love for coding really took off. And you know what? That passion is still going strong. 🙂

What drives you in your work?

I love to work on myself and gain new knowledge. Also, technologies evolve constantly so keeping up is sometimes challenging. That’s part of what pushes me to keep improving myself.

What’s the best part about your position?

Being a frontend developer is something I love because I love to see what I am working on and I really love visually appealing applications. It’s rewarding to receive recognition for my work on the visual front, and it’s nice to share what I do with my family and friends. Also, the chance to work remotely is a real blessing, as it allows me to visit my hometown more frequently.

What don’t you like about your job?

Work might get a bit dull when you’re dealing with big chunks of repetitive tasks, but I think that’s something normal in every company in one way or another.

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in your career or what ups moment you had?

I didn’t have any crucial mistakes which could destroy the company I worked in :D, but I had one time-consuming mistake while I was working on one WordPress project. I knew the basics of WordPress from my own side projects, but nobody else at the company had any knowledge about it. So, when my team lead asked if I could handle it, I said yes, and suddenly I was the only one carrying the whole project on my shoulders.

The project was a webshop WP project which additionally required integrating React code in WordPress. While this was a bit tricky, I managed to implement that code into the project, but the biggest time-consuming issue was translating the text which was imported into the project. I spent a few days translating the whole site manually because there was no free appropriate plugin that would translate integrated React code in WordPress and the company was too cheap to pay for that plugin, so there I was the unpaid human translation plugin 😀.

What drives you crazy about your job or your daily activities?

There is a time when unexpected issues arise and you need to find a way to solve those issues. For example, some time ago, on the project we needed to update all npm packages, and  “untangling” those dependencies can be tricky and drive you crazy.

Which technology/tech stack do you like the most?

I have had the opportunity to work with different frontend frameworks throughout my career, all built on JavaScript. This experience has allowed me to develop proficiency in Javascript and various frontend technologies, especially React.

What advice would you give to someone entering this field?

Never stop learning and always push hard because in challenging fast evolving areas you have to keep up and you can develop yourself quickly.

Do you have any funny or interesting stories that happened here in the company?

I enjoyed bowling team building last year. This was a fun get-together and a great opportunity to get to know colleagues better and in a new light. It would be a great experience to repeat.

Your favorite person to work with?

I can say that I like working with all my colleagues, but if I had to pick someone, Franjo is definitely the person I’ve clicked with the most.

If you can compare your job/work to one movie or show, what would it be?

Maybe a mashup between The Office and Silicon Valley would compare the best. 😂

If you can choose one song to go along with your job or which would make you be really in the zone while working, what would it be?

Since I like to listen to various artists and I am open to different genres, the song I usually pick depends on the day and my current playlist. But if I had to choose one it would be “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley, because it is a great song representing positivity and it is one of my favorites.