Hi, my name is David and I am 29 years old and living in Sweden, this year (2022) it is ten years since I wrote my first line of code (C#). Since I can remember I have always loved computers and software when my dad introduced the internet to me and that you did not need a phone to talk to someone without seeing there face amazed me.
Today I have made my second day at Novu not located in Sweden or not located anywhere for that matter... But how did a swedish guy end up in a company that are not located in Sweden you may ask? Well my story begins when I had made it through school (remote) and learned the things I needed to get a job as developer at a small company that makes websites for larger companies. I used PHP and JQuery at that place. I had to move to Stockholm, 5 hours away from my family and friends I only stayed 7 months in Stockholm before I moved home to be the first and only remote guy at that company. After a year at home I got tired of being the only remote guy so I did move to another company where I stayed for five years. Five years is a long time so I was developer, senior developer, Scrum master and Product owner during the years. With same stack at this place as the previous, but for me with one new cool thing called React. React was a love at first sight for me but more about that in a later post maybe... So during my years on two different companies I have built things on my free time. First it was PHP and Jquery, then it was React and some Node framework (Nest.js, Feather.js, Express, Apollo, Sails.js...) and all of them needed a way to send an email to reset a password or send a magic link.
So for my last project I needed a way of send an email and thats when I found Notifire (now Novu) in Githubs explorer and thought “wow this is what I have needed for many years now”. Installed it and found out that it could only handle handlebars for templating the html for the email. So I did go into an issue and asked if I could help out.. At this time I was really nervous I had never really contributed to an open source project before... I had made some small spelling corrections but that was basically it. I made my changes and created a pull request and people from Notifire made some really good comments, I adjusted and it got merged the day after.
In five days I did three pull request. All of them got merged, the feedback was huge and very nice, I did not feel like I got criticize on my code, it felt more like they started an open discussion that did lead to better code and made both me and other contributors. When they did merge my first pull request, they also tweeted about my PR and I felt like someone had open a window to the world for me. So one of the founders contacted me on twitter to say thanks for the contribution. At that point I asked if Notifire was a company that I could work at. Back then and it was not. I said I could be interested if they did, to make a point of contact for the future, well that turned out great 😛
So in the days between Christmas and New Year they contacted me, offered to have a Discord call and my first thought was “oops, what bug have I now created 🤦♂️” That was not the case. They liked to hire me. At that point I was very happy but it also sounded to good to be true... After thinking it over the New Year and made up my mind that I like to join Notifire, here comes the first and only bump in the road, the contract.... It was very different from the contracts that we have in Sweden and I did not like everything from the beginning but after a few talks with the founders at Notifire I accepted it. Why did you accepted it you may ask...? Well gut feeling and understanding that the people at Notifire have the same view on life/work balance, open source, programming and that doing programming on you free time is a good thing for the company you work for. Two months (because of swedish contracts) after I had signed the contract am I now a part of Novu 🚀
Like I know it is early to say but I am really happy to work at Novu now, all colleagues are amazing and kind. The technology is exactly what I like to work with very simular to what I use on my free time. Well to be hones everything is just great right now... Thanks Novu for giving me this opportunity, I hope and think we will be together for a long time ❤️