From ableneo to Sydney and back

From ableneo to Sydney and back 🇦🇺

Why have I returned?!

I have been working with ableneo since it’s very beginning in 2017. After a year in a project, a great year that thanks to ableneo made me from complete junior developer to a professional one, I decided to bring my other passion — travelling — to the next level by moving to the Country Down Under: Australia.

Recently we had a chance for remote ‘corona’ interview between our Dominka Letkova and me about my motivations of going there and back and becoming the innovation enabler straight after the return 😊.

what was the reason you left ableneo in the first place?

It was my strong taste for exploring and my old dream: life in a completely different country than my homeland Slovakia.

Why have you chosen Australia?

Because of the weather, options for surfing and feeling of a distant, unique place since it’s a developed country in not so developed part of the world. Important factor was also the simplicity of acquiring working visa.

How long have you been living there?

14 months in total with some time spent abroad for travel breaks (New Zealand, Philippines)

‘Snow rainbow’ above Mt. Hutt ski resort, New Zealand

What was your job there?

This was my personal goal before I even got there: to find a job as a software developer and make loads of money 😀. If I would not success in this in few weeks, I was decided to go exploring the country as a backpacker, then pack my stuff and come back home. Reality was that I was able to find the right job in two weeks after my arrival. Later I realized there’s so much work to do, so many interesting IT projects, that I changed my employer 3 times (I was always a short-term contractor) and for about half a year I was doing two jobs at once.

What is the additional value of the experience for you?

The best thing is I’ve learned how to manage my mindset and lifestyle to be able to live alone, taking care about myself and enjoying that without my parents, old friends and my previous habits. More than one year stay also opened my mind and taught me there’re no geographical borders in terms of IT business nowadays and that we can and have to sell our services to our partners and customers abroad. The salary is promising over there too, even in consideration with higher living costs it’s about double the amount software developer can earn in Slovakia 😎💰.

Just me, ultra light aircraft and Sydney skyline. And the pilot 😀

Name some of your best experiences you had there.

Working in high-end skyscrapers with great Sydney skyline views
Commuting to work on a ferry, wind in the hair, sun in the face and with views on famous Sydney Opera and Harbor Bridge
Skiing in August in New Zealand’s Southern Alps and Australia’s Snowy Mountains
Camping, BBQs and road trips in a camper van
Because of the weather I could have overall whole-year outdoor lifestyle, including things you normally do indoors in Slovakia, especially in winter
Petting kangaroo
Vibrant, supportive and surprisingly quite big Czecho-Slovak community
Great new international friends and colleagues
Musical events: DJ Kygo concert, Ultra Australia festival, Sydney Symphonic Orchestra open air concert

What was the reason you started at ableneo right after you came back?

First and important reason is that my working visa has expired 😀. The second is that ableneo always was and still is something more than a job for me. In Sydney and in my previous jobs in Slovakia clients and employers wanted one thing: just to write the code and make it work now, not tomorrow or when requirements will change. I also had very little feedback on my coding abilities. This can be fine for short term projects, but I always want to build something and improve things so this is just not the way to go for too long. Very few technological companies care about quality or saving future customers resources with properly managed codebase. Also, very few consultancies and body shop companies aim to give the customer additional value, like strategical partnership, instead of just providing workforce. And lastly, I struggled to find colleagues, that are, in my opinion, better developers and professionals than me. ableneo provides me with all of this and in addition it supports me to learn something beyond my expertise, such as sales, leadership and brand ambassadorship 😊

Luckily I was able to catch the bus to work that day

What do you do at ableneo at the moment?

I am Software Engineer with focus on Frontend technologies Angular and React. ableneo and me also voluntarily invest our time to my education in sales through our Sales Academy, sales pitching and presentation through our Brand Ambassador Academy and leadership thanks to the chance I can organize workshops for internal ableneo Frontend developers stream.

Harbor Bridge, it’s famous because Sydney New Year’s Eve fireworks are lighted from it. And also because it’s famous 😀

Since when are you with us again?

Started again just one week after I came from Australia, which was 2nd September 2019 😊. That makes it 9 months now, a time slot long enough for a new baby to be born 😛. I don’t mean anything concrete. 😀

Are you satisfied at ableneo now or are you looking forward moving to Australia again?

So far, I feel super great at ableneo. However, Australia became my second home, it matches with my lifestyle preferences and it would be great to regularly spend few months in a year there. The problem is the visa: man can get the one I had once per lifetime only and it’s either harder to get different ones or less convenient to live and work with others. One way I can imagine to make this happen is to find Australian clients, apply for Business Visa and establish local ableneo Australia branch in Sydney 😛.

Whitsundays, the second most photographed natural site in the country. You can guess why.

From ableneo to Sydney and back was originally published in ableneo People on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.