Intervju med Sandra Krle från Svenska Spel

 Hi Sandra! Could you tell us a bit about yourself?

Hi everybody! I am an expat, from Macedonia, living in Stockholm, working in Stockholm and Visby, frontend developer, soon-to-be-a mom, tv addict, music aficionado, foodie. Open and outgoing but prefer the indoors. Still figuring out how to survive Swedish never-ending winters. Hobby: looking at cats on the internet.

What do you work with at Svenska Spel? 

I work as a web developer on our inhouse build CMS (content management system, like WordPress). This includes maintaining and developing new features that make it easier to manage all the content on our web site. I started directly at this position and have been at it for 2 years now. I recently switched offices from Visby to Stockholm.

How does a normal day at the office look like for you?

It really looks quite normal. In the mornings we have a team standup, where we share our daily tasks so we are all on the same page. Then, it is the mandatory morning fika when we fill up our cups with coffee and get to coding. It can get very quiet in the team, with everyone having their headphones on. I really enjoy it actually. When we are not coding we have planning meetings, demos of what we have built or discussions for new features. Oh yes…and we have the afternoon fika as well

When did it first occur to you that you’d like to work with programming?

Well, I am actually a self-thought developer that previously worked in the world of finance. That culture never really clicked with me and I always felt like there is something else I should be doing. Luckily, I had many developer friends as well as my partner who suggested I should try coding. I was immediately drawn. I took a few months of sabbatical and I studied at home every day. Just like in school. I would use online courses, started going to meetups and before I knew it I landed my first internship and then first job as a web developer. Since then I worked at a couple of smaller startups in Stockholm until I settled at Svenska Spel in Visby. Amazing journey so far!

What’s next on your agenda? Any more skills you want to learn?

Yes definitely. Next on my agenda is more focus on backend with Node.js. Eventually I would like to learn a new language besides JavaScript or maybe even try mobile development.

Do you have any advice to someone who’s interested in a career as a software developer?

My advice is go for it! The way to becoming a good developer is putting in a lot of hours of coding, ‘copying’ good code and trying to understand it and a lot of google-ing. No matter which way you choose to go into development, stay curious and code code code. It worked for me!