Trade Legend Spotlight with Jasiek Żywczak

"... delivering new functionalities, correcting old bugs, imagining smiles on clients’ faces - that’s what I find most enjoyable."

- Jasiek Żywczak, Principal Software Engineer at Trade Ledger

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As we continue to shine the light on the wonderful people behind Trade Ledger, we'd like to introduce you to Jasiek Żywczak, our Principal Software Engineer. Find out what Jasiek is most excited about in his new role, what his biggest challenge is, what's the best advice has received and more in this blog.

What has been your journey in tech so far?

I’ve been in IT, development in particular, for over 15 years. I’ve worked for a variety of companies, including a B2C and B2B scoring company, the online grocery store Ocado, a performance marketing platform and a medtech… and here I am at Trade Ledger now. I started as a java-focused developer. My whole world was Java and JVM based languages: first Groovy and, eventually, Kotlin. I had an affair with frontend development (Angular) and still have some feelings towards mobile (Flutter). But what makes my heart beat faster (ok, only in the tech area) is working closely with infrastructure.

That’s really interesting, thank you, Jan. What has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced moving into your current role?

Probably what I mentioned above, finding myself in between so many different “realms”: pure development, business context and infrastructure realities. To do my job correctly, not only do I need to be experienced in delivering the product, but I also need to understand the product thoroughly first and be aware of where and how it is going to be handled in the infrastructure. At Trade Ledger, the biggest challenge is to fully grasp how the product should work in a live environment; there is still so much for me to learn.

Can you tell us more about the stack and workflow at Trade Ledger?

The stack is rather typical, JVM-based microservices, some of them written in Java, some in Kotlin. Some with Ratpack, some with Webflux. Most of them use Mongo and Nats. Deployed in k8s on AWS. I think there are still some places for improvement, both in code and infrastructure. At Trade Ledger, we always seek to improve. This is what we are here for and we are thrilled to do it.

And what about your typical day, what does it look like?

I start early, at 6am, check emails, slack channels, catch up with my colleagues from Australia and jump straight into problem solving. Having clients on the other side of the world means we wake up to new challenges every morning. Then I take a break to take my daughter to preschool. After that, I have a typical programmer work: 3-4 coffees, some commits and a few deployments. I usually finish at 3:30pm and go for a walk with the dog - my “first child”.

What’s the best and worst part of your job?

The best is the production deployment. Ok, I’m joking, the process itself is most of the time… surprising, so to speak. But what comes next - delivering new functionalities, correcting old bugs, imagining smiles on clients’ faces - that’s what I find most enjoyable. I also find working with DevOps guys, in particular, to be very exciting. They are so intelligent, I always learn something new from them.

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The most challenging is situations when we have to change some decisions or priorities, moments when it’s not obvious what to do next, but this is where we consult one another and agree a way to lead out of the situation.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve received?

In the moment when you don’t agree with someone or feel frustrated for whatever reason, take a deep breath, think about the situation you are in and respond to it the next day. Of course, this does not apply to children and dogs - they won’t remember what happened the next day - but when working with adults, it helps a lot.

What a great advice! What is your most useful resource (book, blog, newsletter)?

Development: stackoverflow.com and google.com
Other: medium.com

What’s one thing you’d like to learn, develop or work on in 2022?

Although it might be a truism, I really want to learn everything about the Trade Ledger products, use cases (customer needs) and processes. In terms of my immediate role and responsibilities, I would like to work more on infrastructure, trying to help the DevOps team whenever it is possible, to learn.

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In my personal time, I would like to develop a simple mobile game for my daughter.

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Want to find out more about working with us at Trade Ledger? Check out our Careers page.

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