Humans of CodeChem: Martina Papaliska

Humans of CodeChem: Martina Papaliska

Martina is a Mobile Engineer at CodeChem. As she says: she's patient, ambitious, and a good team player. And we can only add:

✅ Empathetic!

✅ Kind!

✅ An avid learner with a constant drive for personal growth.

✅ Specializes in Xamarin.

✅ She doesn’t hesitate to introduce improvements to herself and to her work environment.

Without further ado, here's a short interview with Martina. Enjoy!

1. What are the three things that are awesome about you?

Well, it appears to be more difficult than it looks like to objectively say three nice things about yourself haha. But, I guess I would say that I’m a really good team player. I love the feeling of working in a team that collaborates, contributes together to accomplish a common goal and helps each other along the way. Also, I’m a very patient person and I approach everything with steadiness and calmness. It’s a very rare occasion to see me being really nervous 😃 And lastly, I would say ambitious. I’ve always set pretty high goals for myself and worked hard to achieve them.

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2. In your opinion, what makes CodeChem - CodeChem?

The people, definitely. There is a generally friendly, welcoming atmosphere that can’t be left unnoticed. It’s a place where we’re genuinely happy for each other’s achievements and eager to help and learn from one another.

3. What is your favourite part about working at CodeChem?

Honestly, there are so many great things but I would separate the feeling of being acknowledged. One thing that you need to know is that in CodeChem your voice is heard and your opinions matter. I have a feeling that I can speak my mind when I feel like I need to, and it won’t be taken for granted. It’s not just the employees that are eager for constant improvement, but also CodeChem as a company is. Another thing is that you never feel like you’re alone. There is a great bunch of people here that will be more than happy to help you with anything you’re struggling with, whether it’s help regarding work stuff or even sharing personal advice.

4. What achievements are you most proud of? Why?

Just seeing the clients happy are the moments when you feel most proud of yourself. There’s no better recognition of your work than that and it makes you feel like all of the hard efforts have paid off.

5. How did you grow inside the company after coming here?

When I think about the person that came in for an internship and the person working here today, the difference is significant. I learned a lot and it made me much more confident. I learned that coming out of your comfort zone is a good idea and that it will only give you a push towards becoming a better self. I also learned that there are ups and downs, but what’s important is how you cope with both of them. Acknowledge and be proud of your ups, but also learn from your downs and realize that they will only make you stronger and more resilient.

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6. What values are important to you in CodeChem?

When I think about a CodeChem product, I know that behind it there is a lot of passion, a great technology with some creative footprints of the people working on it, strong architecture supporting it and a lot of mutual effort with short help sessions while drinking coffee together and an occasional epiphany that came during those talks. I think that this shows all of the values that stand behind CodeChem and all of them are equally important because they truly represent us.

7. If you weren’t in IT, who would you become?

It’s so weird to think about that now because being in the IT field feels natural to me and anything else feels strange at this point 😃 But if I weren’t in IT it would probably be either something else in the science field or something that includes working with people. So, something in the medical field maybe.

8. What are some of your biggest motivators and sources for inspiration in your work?

Deadlines haha 😃 Just kidding, even though being busy with deadlines can be overwhelming sometimes I’m not going to lie. But, what puts things in perspective for me is having occasional internal evaluations. It might sound strange but when you take your time to reflect on yourself and the past period, what was good, what can be improved and what you want to keep doing is really going to help you understand your progress.

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9. What does your typical workday look like?

Depends on the day, whether it’s more of a meetings day or full-on coding day, but if I have to generally sum up this is how it would go:

07:30

  • Wake up, refresh, drink a cup of tea/coffee and get ready to start the day

09:00

  • Let’s start!

09:30

  • Daily scrum meeting, reflect what was done the previous day and what are the goals for today

12:00

  • If there were some meetings they would probably end around now, and it’s lunch break!

14:00

  • Work, work, work (cup of coffee in meantime). Also online calls with the team regarding any task plannings/discussions/issues.

16:30

  • Slowly starting to sum up the work for today, chatting with the rest of the team about any todos for tomorrow. Write down everything that I’ve been working on today in a notebook (always do this, it’s good for focus and time tracking)

17:00

  • Done for today!