Hi Diana! Thank you for agreeing to be the first to answer these questions.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share your role at BinarCode? How long have you been working here? 💻

Hi! You're welcome! 😊 I’m Diana, I’m a PHP Backend Developer and a 3rd year Psychology student. I’ve been working in the industry for about 6 years and this July I’ll celebrate my second year at BinarCode.

What has been your most significant learning experience or professional growth while being a developer at BinarCode? How has it shaped your skills and expertise? 🚀

I feel that I’ve grown professionally quite a lot in these 2 years, mainly because people at BinarCode trusted me and my skills, so I’ve been given responsibilities while also feeling supported. One significant learning experience was launching one of our projects in production together with the team. It was a moment when I could look back and see all the steps I had to take in order to make all our work production ready, but also cherish everything I learnt along the way. Besides the technical aspect, my soft skills have also improved significantly. Communicating directly with customers, brainstorming ideas and debating on what should be done helped me become more people-oriented and patient. Software development is so much about people and understanding their business needs, so I’m glad to get to translate their wishes into lines of code. 🖥️

What do you appreciate the most about working at BinarCode? Are there any particular aspects of the company culture, team collaboration, or leadership that have made a positive impact on your experience? ✨

The thing I like the most here is the way people work together and share their knowledge. You can count on any of your colleagues to help you or to give a second opinion when you’re in doubt and what’s great about that is that you don’t feel judged for asking. I feel that we built a strong team and company culture because people feel safe, seen and empowered. I won’t use the “we’re just a big family cliche”, but I honestly feel like this company is more than a workplace simply because everyone is valued and appreciated. 🫶🏻

Have you encountered any unique challenges or opportunities at BinarCode that have helped you enhance your problem-solving abilities or think differently about your work? If so, please elaborate. 💡

To be completely honest, I think my personality makes me look at a lot of situations as being challenging 😅. Jokes aside, from a technical point of view, I sometimes encounter challenging situations because the business logic in some projects is very custom, so I have to come up with the best and most efficient way to translate it into code. What I’m continuously learning is that there is a solution for everything, as long as you take advantage of all the available resources you have.

What are your weapons of choice when it comes to coding?

My main work focus is the backend, I’m currently using Laravel framework, which was my first love 😃, because I learned it while working on my college diploma project. Depending on the project, I dealt with both SQL and NoSQL databases, I find it interesting choosing the best way to store your data based on your unique use case. In the past I also did a bit of frontend development with React, but I fell more comfortable dealing with data and business logic on the backend side.

As you reflect on your time at BinarCode, what advice would you give to other developers who are considering joining the company? What makes BinarCode a great place to grow as a developer? 🌐

I would definitely encourage them to go for it, no matter if they’re beginners or experienced people, once they feel that they identify with our values and the culture we’ve built, they will for sure fit in. In my opinion, the most important thing about your workplace is how much you identify with what it stands for and how much you help each other grow. BinarCode is definitely a place where people are encouraged to grow without judgement, So, if you're as passionate about personal and professional growth as we are, I invite you to join our team! 😃