Mišo, our first colleague, was still at school when he was helping Marek Barta with the creation of simple websites in the beginnings of B-Art. The great foodie and lover of the sea told us about his beginnings and experiences, which today seem unbelievable. And how does he perceive his work and the projects he is working on today? This is what this conversation will be about as well.
What were your beginnings like?
Hard, of course (laughs). I remember not everyone had the Internet back then. I lived in Kysak and brought the work I did at home on a CD. What a finding it was when the CD was burned badly and I ran to the station and took the train home and back to Košice with a repaired CD. At that time, we were working on a catalogue for a furniture website.
These days it sounds unbelievable.
I have the most beautiful experiences from school times, because I have already been working at bart.sk during school. At that time it was still B-Art ? Interesting projects that were seen were what I appreciated the most. When I was walking around town and showing my friends what company we were working for. I was especially proud of that.
And the experience that stuck in my memory the most is when Marek asked me what I planned to buy with my paycheck. I said I was looking for a hiking backpack. At that time, we were creating websites for a sports shop and its other activities. To my surprise, Marek brought me a Patagonia backpack the next day – 80-liter one that was of higher value than I was supposed to receive as a payout at the time. I still have it. There’s just less time for camping now.
Do you see a difference between your work then, in the beginning, and today?
Yes. There weren’t that many of us at work then. Actually, at the beginning there were two of us, later three and so it stayed for a while. I had no one to ask. The important thing was that we knew how to do everything. Or at least we told that to the customers and then we had to deal with the requirements. I still remember how I ran to a bookstore after a meeting and returned with a book about PHP3 so that we could fulfill what we promised the customer. And we always made it. And I think we still make it today. Today, I’m still looking for seemingly insurmountable challenges and proposing solutions to help customers grow. That hasn’t really changed, and I hope it won’t.
Is there anything else left to master? Do you still have anything to learn?
Absolutely. And more than ever. Today, new programming languages, procedures, frameworks and technologies are emerging literally daily. Not that I’m learning a new programming language all the time, no, I’ll leave that to the younger ones (haha). But even the technologies I use at work are evolving so fast that if I stopped following them, a technological debt would develop on the project and that is often no longer reversible.
And as the nature of my work changes, so does the need for my knowledge. Moving on from learning the basics, I now try to learn more within the scope of soft skills and technological trends and directions, so that I have a general overview and can apply it to new projects.
You have been working on a multiyear project on a long-term basis. A successful project, of course. Is there still space for work to be done and for improvements?
Always. And I don’t know if it will ever end, maybe only when the customer runs out of funds. I am told that I am the mother of Sportnet and Jano Letko (product owner on the customer’s side) is the father. Our children are individual services provided by the SportNet platform. I stopped counting them at number 18 :-). But this is no longer entirely true. Without colleagues and a great, well-coordinated team, I wouldn’t be able to do it. We can support and fill in for each other and brainstorm together on any major improvements. It’s teamwork.
We all know that you are a great foodie and you cook superbly. When did you discover this passion in yourself?
I like to cook. And I like to eat even more ?. I fell in love with a brand of grills. And since that is not a cheap affair, and my lust for owning this professional grill was greater than for finishing the kitchen in the house we were moving to, we only had a grill at home and I was forced to cook solely on it. Even in winter. I learned a lot from that. But I’m still being drawn to trying new challenges. Similar to programming. For example, I have not yet grilled an octopus, just as I have not yet built a GraphQL server. One day, everything will come.
What do you like to cook on a grill the most?
When I bought the grill, I pinpointed what I wanted to learn to do on it. I already mastered everything I wanted back then – from grilled ribs to pulled pork or pastrami or baking “vianočka” or bread. Some things turned out better, others less so. Now I prefer to grill seafood, fish, I’m still learning to work with high-quality steaks. What’s close to my heart is smoked duck breasts, which I also grilled at a barbecue festival for about 300 people. And I’ll brag – me and my friend from the cooking trade won first place among the pros – we made smoked sturgeon and blueberry crumble.
Congratulations Mišo!
Do you have any other interests?
I like to work with wood, I like to take care of the garden, I grow my own vegetables and herbs. And most recently, I started with traditional archery. I still have to improve in that.
Why archery?
I don’t even know. Like every child, I was making bows, watching movies with Native Americans, it stayed with me ? Besides that, I was looking for a new hobby to fill my time and for a sport activity during those never-ending pandemic lockdowns. I was also impelled to do so by one of our customers, who’s active at it and has a lot of success. When he told me about the so-called 3D archery, where you shoot in nature at life-size models of animals, that was it. It was also one of the few sports that still held competitions during the pandemic.
Top 3 applications that you use in your smartphone most often?
Tiktok for killing time before bed, Facebook for interests and specialized groups about cooking and shooting, E-mail for handling work things even at midnight (I have to stop doing that ?)
Mišo, thank you very much for the time you dedicated to
this interview. And yes, stop with e-mails and dealing with work stuff at midnight! ?
