#227 Katerina Trajchevska founded her remote workplace

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Katerina Trajchevska 0:00
Well, I just want to encourage everyone to listen to their selves to follow their instincts and to you know, be careful but not be overly cautious when deciding on what career path to take. Because you know, failures are only lessons that you learn that make us better and stronger and I encourage you to, to embrace them.

Tim Bourguignon 0:18
Hello, and welcome to developer's journey to podcast, bringing you the making of stories of successful software developers to help you on your upcoming journey. I'm your host team building your own this episode 227 I receive Katarina trice, JIRA, Katarina is co founder and CEO of attiva, a remote network of tech professionals that aims to enable work without boundaries. She's a remote work advocate and a strong believer that the future of work is not about where you work from, but what you deliver. Caterina stands for equality, inclusion and giving back to the community. She actively takes part in initiatives for women tech, contributes to the local tech community, and volunteers as a mentor, Katarina. Welcome to the journey.

Katerina Trajchevska 1:15
Hi, Tim. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Because that will everyone.

Tim Bourguignon 1:21
You're joining from Macedonia, right? Yes, yeah. But before we come to your story, I want to thank the terrific listeners who support the show every month, you are keeping the dev journey lights up, if you would like to join this fine crew, and help me spend more time on finding phenomenal guests, then editing audio tracks, please go to our website, Dev journey dot info, and click on the Support me on Patreon button. Even the smallest contributions are giant steps toward a sustainable dev journey. journey. Thank you. And now back to today's guest. Getting that as you know, the show exists to help listeners understand what your story look like, and imagine how to shape their own future. So as always, on the show, let's go back to your beginnings. Where would you place to start off your debt journey?

Katerina Trajchevska 2:18
Oh, so I would probably say the start of my studies, but actually last year of high school, because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life back then. And interestingly enough, I didn't know how to power off a computer because they didn't have one at home. So I have the story with my best friend on the IT class. At school, I was just we were sitting together and I was trying to shut down the computer. And then she would walk after me and press just the final button to complete it without me noticing it. So it was like I never would have placed myself in computer studies just because of that, because probably I didn't have the opportunities at home back then. But I liked math I liked you know what logic stuff. And I somehow found the I don't know that connected to my passion in life. And I applied for electrical engineering studies. Back then it was there were so many jokes about women in electrical engineering in my country, it was like a larger scope on the university. And so after I started, I mean, it was like, Yes, this is where I belong. I liked what I was doing. I started, you know, moving through through the studies afterwards with the different kinds of engagements. And after that, you know, the second, I would probably start because it was like, you know, the second points of the milestone in my life would be where I decided to freelance and then found diva, which is a complete shift in what I was doing. Because before I started locally in some local IT companies, but the opportunities were scars in my country, the projects weren't interesting. And so together with my partner, we decided to start freelancing at first and then we found it a devise a way to first provide a more interesting opportunities for us and then do the same for other people who liked remote work and challenging projects without having to relocate or to seek them elsewhere.

Tim Bourguignon 4:15
Wow. Okay, before we talk about remote work, I'm sure we're going to talk a good deal about it. You said this is when you realize this is where I belong. Did you remember when that happened? And what what was what triggered this this feeling?

Katerina Trajchevska 4:30
I don't know. I think I didn't have you know at high school. I didn't feel that belonging that much. And then when I started studies, people around me were pretty similar to to myself, their interests, their likes their behavior, and I don't know everything somehow clicked what I was studying, I was able to do well on exams without much effort because I liked it. And I guess that that was the reason.

Tim Bourguignon 4:59
Okay, so didn't feel like like a chore anymore. It was more of what you liked and oh, okay, that there's this thing. Find find what you want in life and you won't want work a day or something like this. Right? Which is a bit weird in itself, but I guess it applies in there. Okay. ICCRC. So then you said you you started freelancing? Did you start freelancing right away? Or right after after you study? Or did you try and find some jobs before? How did this transition go?

Katerina Trajchevska 5:27
I actually worked at a small company in the city, I was living in Baghdad, and it was just me and the founder, and he was founding finding most of the work on freelancer.com. So I ended up doing most of the work freelance work myself while being employed. And then I just realized, okay, I should do this on my own. Okay, if

Tim Bourguignon 5:48
you're just doing freelancer.com with a proxy. Okay, how long did you did you did you wait with with air quotes before before jumping in and saying, Okay, let me do this on my own.

Katerina Trajchevska 6:01
I think it was around seven months. Pretty fast. Yes.

Tim Bourguignon 6:06
Did you did you feel ready when you when you start new started doing freelancing, or just Okay, let's see what happens.

Katerina Trajchevska 6:12
I think I did back then. But from this perspective, I wasn't ready at all. Well, I was it was very dirty. And a lot of people were telling me that okay, you should, I don't know employ get implement somewhere, learn from more senior people try to understand more about the engineering the technology, work on different projects, I don't know. And I was just annoyed by all these comments. From this perspective, it would probably make sense. But still, I mean, I managed to learn a lot, not only about the tech part, but also the softer skills like managing clients and managing deadlines, understanding what's important when actually says sense of deadline and accountability, which is extremely important when you progress in your career afterwards. So I don't think I was ready. But I think I made the right choice because of everything that came to me over the challenges of the mistakes, failures. It just made me stronger, and what I am today, so

Tim Bourguignon 7:14
what would you answer those people today, knowing what you know?

Katerina Trajchevska 7:21
Well, I would just and I, I've had situations where I don't know other people from my surroundings are facing a similar challenge, not in terms of tech or you know, that kind of fork in life, but still a decision to be made when they don't have when they're not ready. And I don't know, I'm just telling them that you can't share. You can't give advice to people based on your expectations or your life lessons, you can give the advice, but you can't expect them to accept it, or you can't expect them to be better off by doing what you know, you know, everyone needs to make their own mistakes to follow they've got especially when when they're in this fork in life, because I'm guessing that I would regret it not not taking this direction if I had listened to others. And I'm not the person to say I told you so. People who are giving me that advice back then, but still, when when they do give the same advice to others. They just point to that and say, okay, see, I turned out okay.

Tim Bourguignon 8:27
In my past, I actually, I've had a couple of jumps like this, and being honest about it was always the cure. It was always saying, Well, I know I'm doing something crazy. But as long as people who, on the other side of this know that it's the case, then we're fine. If we run into a wall, then it would be only a problem. If I had an I'm making air quotes, again lied to them, If I had pretended to be something I'm not. But if everybody agrees that it's a tryout is something like this, then why not? It feels scary as shit. But it works out sometimes. Sometimes it doesn't. But it's okay. So okay.

Katerina Trajchevska 9:07
And it was easy back then, because I was just, you know, out of college, I didn't have very high expenses, you know, my expectations were lower. And I'm guessing if I was working for two or three years and then got used to this bigger salary or something, it was much harder to make the decision afterwards.

Tim Bourguignon 9:25
That is true when you have mortgages and kids and and the house to pay off or to try it becomes harder. I see. So since you worked out of Freelancer COMM As you said, you went right away remote and international. Right?

Katerina Trajchevska 9:40
Right. But at first it was like small projects like find this alerts in the code and change the text and expenses. I don't know nine hours trying to find where it triggered and just you know change the text message and it was fun. It was projects for $20 $30 You would be would work for a week and then It's a it's something silly, but we did it for the I was working with my colleague now husband, and he became my co founder at a div afterwards. It was interesting, it was challenging. It was new to both of us. We were excited when we got a new review from a client, you know, we were working for the reviews on freelance platforms. That's how you get exposed to better projects. And over time, we will start getting, you know, larger projects and more interesting work.

Tim Bourguignon 10:28
Yeah, that's, that's true. When when I when you say Freelancer comm right away, I imagine, okay, free like a freelance developer going coming in your team and really expanding your team from from five to six people, for instance. But not at all, there's this whole other side of, I don't know somebody with a business somewhere who got a WordPress installed, and they don't have any technical skills, and the person who installed it is not responding anymore. And they got this weird error messages coming up and say, hey, please help me, I say, that's what you meant when, at the beginning, helping here and there and suddenly being a leper catalogue of things you can do and references, and getting bigger or more challenging projects, until you probably come to owning really big pieces of puzzles and creating stuff.

Katerina Trajchevska 11:16
Okay, that's how a diva was born after that. So we started growing too much, both of us, we couldn't handle the all of the projects that were coming up anymore, because existing projects, they would start to grow, they needed new features, then something new would come up. And we started working with another colleague who joined us. And then we decided, okay, we can start a company. It was all very organic, you know, just over time. Yeah. Over time, just learning what the clients needed changing pivoting is startups do. And we came to the remote network model, which we currently have

Tim Bourguignon 11:52
before we come to that again, at which point did you have too much if there is any, any place where using too much too much work to decide from saying well, we have to say no to this to say yes to that. Drum? Did you have this? At some point? I think it was around two years since we started. Yeah. And how did you decide on which direction to take and say, Okay, we're going to say no to this now, although it represents cash, it represents some some money, but we are going to leave this money on the table to focus on something else.

Katerina Trajchevska 12:25
I guess it was mostly, you know, started work and then we don't have time for any new one as opposed to deciding between two different things. Okay. Yeah. So

Tim Bourguignon 12:35
it was less less a decision of direction saying no to some kind of technology or no to some some kind of project. And more. Okay, we started there already. We want to do a good job continuing this. Okay. I see. I see. Okay, so at which point did you decide Okay, now we're going to focus on on remote work.

Katerina Trajchevska 13:39
We started working more and more companies came to us since we founded the company and we started creating teams, and we're doing more serious work now. And we realized that the companies, you know, had problems with kind of outsourced work when they give the whole project to an agency, for example, and then they don't have control over the deadlines, deliveries anything. And that's when we decided, okay, what we need to do is basically help companies extender teams with remote talent instead of getting their projects and working on them ourselves. And that was the first shift that we did as a company, which was what led us in the in the right direction. And right now, there are more companies that offer remote work, but back then it was freelance options only so people, if they wanted to work remotely, they had to bid on projects, then wait for a response then tried to negotiate with clients oftentimes. So it was a whole new, I don't know, business skill set that they had to acquire. And for developers that just want to focus on the engineering work a hassle. So a lot of people even though they wanted the flexibility, they still opted in for local work. So that's how we started connecting the dots and we said, Okay, we should be you know, the platform that helps these people find remote jobs without compromising on what stuff The Origin they get from local companies. That's how we shaped the offering, both for clients and for talent. And at first, we started locally with local teams, but remote, and then we started expanding around 2017. I think it was remotely with people from across the globe.

Tim Bourguignon 15:19
Did you right away find companies who wanted to work with remote teams? Or did you have to kind of sell your services? First, to start with two companies, we're not sold to the remote idea yet?

Katerina Trajchevska 15:32
Yeah, we did have to sell our services actually kind of educate companies on remote work, and that it's not, you know, unproductive work with people. Because when when a client went on Upwork, for example, a freelancer to find a freelance developer and if they worked on the hour, they would force this software on them to count clicks and types, stuff like that. So you wouldn't be able to go grab a water, for example, while working because you wouldn't get paid for it. And that's also one thing that we wanted to solve for freelancers, because we know that solving problems is much more than typing, you know, you can solve your difficult algorithm while walking outside or taking a run and then just come and type it in five minutes. And so clients weren't very familiar with this to them, it was in the nine to five concept is like that you you are in front of your computer, you do your work. So we had to sell it as you say, we had to educate them over writing content about remote remote work. And we started organizing different events, also visiting clients and doing in person presentations about what are the benefits are working remotely or the diversity that you would get and everything. So yes, it did take a lot of work. And then the pandemic did it in an instant for us afterwards. So

Tim Bourguignon 16:53
I wanted to talk about that. Just before. Do you remember what kind of arguments really led led the discussions for the for the customers? That's really the arguments that really unlocked the discussion before the pandemic? That the things were to say, oh, yeah, now I want to try. Was there some kind of arguments?

Katerina Trajchevska 17:11
And nothing specific I can remember. Mostly. It was always like, how do I know that they work? They do work? Right. I think if when you tell them then that okay, for you, it's important that deliver, it's important that what work you have planned your Sprint's are on time, or whatever it is that they measure in the company, if that's done on time, then you don't need to worry about where they did they did it, whether it's in the park or at home.

Tim Bourguignon 17:40
Yeah, that's true. That's that's the only argument that I I've seen so far to really works is saying, Okay, how do you know that we delivered and and make sure that they will continue seeing this, and then at some point, that's fine. So now coming to the pandemic, obviously, your pandemic changed the way the whole world works. And suddenly, that might have been interesting for you, because suddenly the customers might have been receptive for what you were offering. But in the same time, they were instantly 10, more 10 times more companies doing the same thing. How did you handle this?

Katerina Trajchevska 18:13
Well, we actually grew a lot with a pandemic, customers became more aware, they started looking for more people. And we have this different approach to hiring, we are very community focused. So we focus on building local communities in different countries where we work, we focus on creating different value driven initiatives for for the people. And so we had a network of engineers, before the pandemic before everyone else was doing the outreach and trying to hire them. And that's how we we managed to grow basically, with the new opportunities that the new clients presented, or the existing clients, which started to grow much faster now with with remote talent, we, we had a way to offer more interesting opportunities to to our network of people. Right now, it's two years in the pandemic already. And we're starting to notice, you know, the difficulty and the market has changed a lot. There is a lot more competition for talent, not only for for customers. And so we're noticing it, and we're focusing much more on this unconventional methods of approaching and, you know, getting to people because as you mentioned, our purpose is to work without boundaries. So that's how we started, we started with a demo because we didn't have the work we wanted in our country. And that's what we want to provide for engineers across the world. And we use it as a driving force when entering new markets. And when thinking about what what to do, what conferences to support, what activities to do locally, basically, do it driven by the values and then when you do it like that, you will always find people that are valuing the same things you value and it's easier to connect.

Tim Bourguignon 19:53
All the obvious it is yes. I want to come back to one thing you said that you're building communities. I'll see in local communities, so for instance, if you were to go out to Greece, and you would find people in, let's say, Athens, and then in Athens, you would try to connect people in Athens to work together or to at least connect together and network together, even though they're working maybe for customers, one in South Africa, the other one in Russia in the last one in Canada, you're nodding, right?

Katerina Trajchevska 20:25
Yes, that's correct. So we've seen that, especially with the pandemic remote work is very lonely, because everyone is working from home. And when we envision the future of work, it's not work from home, it's remote work, because it gives you flexibility to do it from wherever you want, even even where you want is, if it's an office, right? If you want to go to an office or Motor Co working space, that's, that's okay. Because that's your choice. And that's how you do best work. And so we want to connect people on local level. And not only on local level, we want to connect them on global level as well. We've had now cases in our community where people, they work together, or they connected with each other through a diva one in Brazil, the other one in Serbia, and now they met for I don't know what concert in Slovenia, or they traveled together, there was this one colleague that gave his apartment to someone who was traveling to to his country, even though they never met in person. So it's this global community that tightly knit type connected with each other. They difference, they're not only colleagues, and on local level. So there are some countries where we have more people are some countries where they're less, but where there are some, I don't know, 20 people working to a diva in one city, we try to focus on creating different community events, supportive group connect them, people go hiking together, you know, different to feel what the belonging and what they probably miss from regular jobs from before.

Tim Bourguignon 21:56
Wow, you make it sound like you're 20,000 People company, how big is that right now?

Katerina Trajchevska 22:02
No, we're not that big. So we're around 200 People that are actively working, and around 2000 in the community, which are, they've joined us and said they would potentially work through a diva at some point.

Tim Bourguignon 22:17
Okay, so do they are LDV additional ones are freelancers, we're kind of the in the diva network and working with you on some gigs are just sharing information with you sharing the network, etc.

Katerina Trajchevska 22:30
Right, or people that are working locally, but they want to explore they want to see whether it because our platform, we have options to set your preference sets, the expected salary type of engagement, that kind of things. And then when we have something suitable, we can reach out. So a lot of people that are not actively looking, but they're interested to see whether there is some opportunity that might be a good fit. They also join, they can benefit from all of the other networking opportunities that we provide and get a possible job opportunity. At some point whenever it's, it's a good fit for them.

Tim Bourguignon 23:03
Okay, I see I see it. And so it's been something like a seven year journey for you. Yeah. So what has been the change in your role into seven years? You started as a developer? And are you still coding?

Katerina Trajchevska 23:17
I'm not. Sadly, I'm not. So I started as a developer, I was doing some consulting work myself until I think 2016. And then as we started growing, at first, we were around 10 people, companies. So it was much easier, even though from that perspective, it was still hard, you know, you always have different set of challenges. And you always need to put so much work in you, you're stressed out and you feel like okay, it can get harder than this. And it just does afterwards. But you know, it's also rewarding at every stage of the work into working in a different different way. I started also, and I was a CEO since the beginning. So working as a developer consulting with companies, but also managing the teams coordinating with the people that we're working with client communication, everything I had to evolve in it. I learned a lot about legal stuff, which is not something I was expecting to. I often review contracts as well. And right now I am more on the management side. So focusing a lot on coordinating with the teams. I've been doing the heavy stages in the in the journey where I've been a recruiter as well. So all parts of the of the team work. Right now we're focusing a lot on growing the team, the internal team, the core team at DeVos. So that's something I'm really excited about because we now have a person that's an expert at every role, you know, when you feel like you can do things but not do them quite right and things get out of control. Well, now it's getting better. I've been speaking at conferences a lot developer conferences mostly and that's something I plan on doing now after you know I free up myself from more operational work. So kind of the leadership opportunities, community building, that kind of things are on my radar next,

Tim Bourguignon 25:05
what is your algorithm to say, Okay, now I need an expert in something and I'm not, again, air quotes enough for this. So you could handle legal for a while until it becomes too much legal. But wait, when would you realize it's too much?

Katerina Trajchevska 25:20
Well, for us, I think we were late with realizing so I'm not sure if any tip I give would be suitable one. But I guess when you when you notice that you become you're becoming the bottleneck for any operation in the team, that's when you need someone else to join. And we've also tried with hiring for certain roles. But when you're not an expert in something and you hire a junior, it's even harder because they don't know what to do. You don't know how to mentor them and know how to get them to be good at their job. And so you just suddenly get twice the work that you were doing before. So I guess maybe you shouldn't wait until you become a bottleneck. Maybe you should just evaluate how your performance is going, how the team is working and plan for you know, what roles would be good at what point I forgot

Tim Bourguignon 26:10
to say asking for a friend. It's always it's always the biggest problem that you put your finger on it right away. It's really yet to realize when when it's time and usually it's too late already. And you can't really plan for that. Because you're you're you're counting your your money. You're always saying, Okay, do I really need this role right now? Now I could have a developer role or a technical role or an operative role that would bring some money at the same time, or this one who will just equites Again, cost some money, for sure you do. Maybe I can cope, I can continue. But yeah, coming back to one thing you said, when I asked you, for us to accouting, you said so sadly, I'm not why sadly,

Katerina Trajchevska 26:54
I really enjoy coding. And it's kind of like, you know, very predictive, you sit down, you know that you will code this and you know what to expect. But management, that's unlikely, especially when you're managing people, you know, you you never know what to expect. And it's very stressful. And yeah, that's, that's the main reason why I enjoy coding.

Tim Bourguignon 27:14
Okay, I can relate to that.

Katerina Trajchevska 27:17
I often do it just just for you know, to relax, and get some work and they just

Tim Bourguignon 27:23
code. So work for yourself or work for the company, some things

Katerina Trajchevska 27:26
for the company that are not prioritized for the engineering team, but it could be useful to be done sooner. So those are the things they often pick up.

Tim Bourguignon 27:35
Okay, so just just some work, you can close probably relatively quickly, in a couple of days. So it doesn't, it doesn't stall, and then it's on you. Yeah, okay. See, we did a hackathon not too long ago, and I could code for a week. And it was just fantastic. Oh, good. It felt really. And nowadays, really, whenever I in the morning, set some some targets for the day and say, Okay, today I want to do this and this and that. And if I manage to manage to do that, by the end of the day, without having to to put out three fires and and one or two unexpected things. It's a good day, it's already a little bit of predictability. That's okay. So so you said your your you would like to focus in the next month, going back to conferences, a bit of Dev Rel, etc. Do you intend to talk? So you said a little bit about community building, etc. So only it puts it in a negative way. So mostly on on non technical topics on how to lead a business and creating communities that what do you want to keep a foot in the in tech yourself and talk about that, as

Katerina Trajchevska 28:41
I always just talk about tech because it keeps me connected to what's going on. And I'm usually trying to connect Tech with leadership perspective. Let's put it like that. So when I when I first started speaking at conferences, I felt like I didn't belong. So I was the total imposter. And I actually spoke at Lera con, I'm not sure if you're familiar with them. Yet. It's the biggest conference for Laravel. It was one of my, actually, my first big talk was there. And when I went there, everyone who was speaking in the conference with a Laravel guru, right, they were working with a daily, they knew everything that was going on in the framework. And they were connected with the audience in the sun, because everyone was expecting that from them. It was a tech specific conference. And my talk, I always tried to go with architecture code design, I was talking about solid principles on my first conference talk. And I felt like what am I doing here? I am not even coding daily, how am I going to stand in front of all these people who know much more than me, but then I realized that the perspective that I bring is actually a very unique one, because I'm bringing the perspective of a founder inside a developer role. So when I talked about solid or when I talked about tech debt and stuff like that, and I bring the perspective of context and how you need to feel, how you need to keep the value that you're creating for the customers and the value we're creating for the product together with the urge to follow best practices. And so we do different different types of topics as software, but still check related. And I really enjoyed that. Because I've seen that developers also, like, you know, getting this this fresher perspective and, you know, a unique view of things. So that's what I plan to continue on, I will still be talking about tech topics, trying to incorporate as much as possible, combining the things I'm good at, and the community building more on the side of things that I will focus on within the company. So try to connect with more more developers on the inside to extend our community to create more more value for them and different opportunities that they would find useful. So that's the main idea.

Tim Bourguignon 30:56
I see. I see. I see. You said in your bio, that your mentor, what's what's what's what's like being being with you in a mentoring relationship.

Katerina Trajchevska 31:05
I really enjoy mentoring. I don't know, I've been in different types of mentoring relationships, formal or informal. I've been mentoring it. Hackathons, you mentioned them, we've had a volunteer that women in tech organizations a lot. So they were this organizations that were connecting mentors with people who want to learn coding online, I was mentored to two girls who were trying to learn coding and it was all done on Skype, it was very interesting. Yeah, and also, like people that are less experienced than me, I want to help out, it's, it's something that I enjoy doing. And I don't know, I connected with the conferences, and everything is like sharing knowledge and being there for people it kind of create some sense of purpose for me.

Tim Bourguignon 31:49
Okay, did the pandemic change something in this dynamic?

Katerina Trajchevska 31:54
Well, it did, mostly because I was too busy with work. And then there were not that many opportunities to the attend in person events. So in that sense, yes, it did change. Okay,

Tim Bourguignon 32:07
because I, I remember when so I did a lot of mentoring before, which was mostly mentoring junior colleagues in the project I was working on really finding the people will create knowledge, will react really have this this multiplier effect, and really working with them closely. And when the pandemic hit, a part of me was really happy saying, Oh, no, now I can reach out to even more people. But actually, the opposite, I had less opportunities to find new people. And so finding those people is way harder. And in, in retrospect, I had less of a multiplier effect in there. So it was a bit against what is expected. That's the way it is for

Katerina Trajchevska 32:46
people get tired of visual connection. So you just you want to get outside, everything is done remotely. Now everything is done on Zoom, and you just you just need a break from it.

Tim Bourguignon 32:57
That is true. Hence your local communities on I see, I see. If you you were to meet somebody a bit like you, when you are facing this, should we create a new company decision point? What is the advice you would give this person to say, Hey, should I shouldn't hire? Maybe, maybe not? What what would be the one? Well,

Katerina Trajchevska 33:19
I'm always, you know, a fan of starting lean and not waiting until you actually know, I have been. When I think about it, when I tried to answer the question, I realized that I was always trying to, you know, get perfect at something before I started. But my partner was the one that was rushing us to okay, you know, we need to do this now. And we actually founded the company in the US and we did it remotely in 2017 Without any knowledge about the US system or laws or regulations, anything without any person to advise us on it. And in 2090 We started working through that company. So we moved all of our clients through there again without any advisor so it was the first year when I was trying to learn all this US regulations and trying to get better at it because I couldn't sleep at night basically. And over time, you know, we worked it out. We got to a point where we had to get an accountant we had to get a lawyer and everything worked out for the best

Katerina Trajchevska 34:44
Wow, so we did that. And you know, over time the company grew we started working more we started connecting with more serious companies in the US and it was a turning point as well in the in how we worked, but from this perspective, I will say that I became much looser when it comes to making big decisions like that. And I would advise my younger self to not overthink things that much, because you can just start and then figure out the way as you go forward. And it always things always work out if you're honest. And you're we weren't doing everything to be transparent, and so to to meet all of the regulations if we knew also.

Tim Bourguignon 35:30
Wow, that's a lesson in itself. Thank you very much for that. That's, that's pretty cool. I'm not sure how I would trust myself in doing so. Very good job. Katarina. Thank you very much. It's been a fantastic discussion and knowing what to what took you all the way to today. That's very cool.

Katerina Trajchevska 35:48
Thank you, too.

Tim Bourguignon 35:50
So Katina, where would you the best place to find you online and continue this discussion,

Katerina Trajchevska 35:55
but it would be best my handle is K and my last name, but together so you can find me there and ping me if you have any questions or anything you'd like to discuss.

Tim Bourguignon 36:04
And we'll add this link to the show notes. Anything else you want to plug in before we call it?

Katerina Trajchevska 36:09
No, I just want to encourage everyone to listen to their selves to follow their instincts and to you know, be careful but not be overly cautious when deciding on what career path to take. Because you know, failures are only lessons that you learn that make us better and stronger. And I encourage you to to embrace them.

Tim Bourguignon 36:28
And your example was perfect for that. Thank you very much. Getting out there. Thank you again. And this has been another episode of developer's journey. We see each other next week. Bye. Thanks a lot for tuning in. I hope you have enjoyed this week's episode. If you liked the show, please share rate and review. It helps more listeners discover those stories. You can find the links to all the platforms to show appears on our website, Dev journey dot info slash subscribe. Creating the show every week takes a lot of time, energy, and of course money. Would you please help me continue bringing out those inspiring stories every week by pledging a small monthly donation, you'll find our patreon link at Dev journey dot info slash donate it finally, don't hesitate to reach out and tell me how this week story is shaping your future. You can find me on Twitter at @timothep ti m o t h e p or per email info at Dev journey dot info. Talk to you soon.