Looking for a job!

NO LONGER (REALLY) LOOKING FOR A JOB

I’m no longer looking for a job, or at least not really. I decided to go freelancing for now and I have a project until the end of October if nothing fails. So if you’ve got new freelance projects or you have a really great CTO/VP/Head of position still please feel free to contact me 😉

(decision to be explained in more detail in a further post)

Original post for historical reasons:

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It’s that time: I’m looking for a job! You can find my CV and all relevant links over at my website: CV Web, CV PDF

Quick links that might interest you: website, github, twitter and blog

Who am I and why would you want to hire me?

My name is Tobi, but online I’m better known as PragTob. I am a full-stack engineer & leader deeply interested in agile methodologies, web technologies, software crafting and teaching. I love creating products that help people and am fascinated with the human side of software development.

To have a look at some of the technical topics that I’m involved with you can check out this blog but the core technologies I’ve worked with are Ruby, Elixir, PostgreSQL and JavaScript. I enjoy pair programming, mentoring, TDD, naming discussions and clean code bases. I also have a passion for performance and eliminating bottlenecks. I maintain a variety of open source projects mostly in Ruby (f.ex. simplecov) and Elixir (f.ex. benchee).

While I have this technical background, I believe that the so called “soft”/people/social skills are more important for developers as we all work together in teams. That is even more vital when looking at any kind of lead or even management position, as mentoring, communicating and collaborating is at the heart of what people in these positions should do. I’m deeply interested in topics such as motivation and communication. In my last job I was responsible for a team of ~15 people (together with the CTO). We relied on constant feedback through retrospectives to adapt our processes and grow the team through introducing the concept of seasons, going remote first, enhancing our onboarding and many more improvements. I also did regular one-on-ones, interviewed candidates, facilitated retrospectives and other meetings as well as doing knowledge sharing sessions for the whole team.

Other than these I’ve been mentoring at Rails Girls Berlin/code curious for more than 7 years and am coaching my Rails Girls project group, the rubycorns, for more than 6 years. I also run the Ruby User Group Berlin, and give presentations at various conferences.

My CV goes into more detail about what I’ve done.

What am I looking for?

I’m looking for a company where we build something useful together and where I can have an impact on product, people and process. With more concrete points this amounts to:

Position: I’m primarily looking for lead positions with responsibility so CTO/VP of Engineering/Head of Engineering/Team Lead – all depending on company size and culture. In the right circumstances, I can also imagine working as a Senior Developer. I want to be in an environment where my impact goes beyond code as I love to help people and improve processes. I like to be where I can help the team & the company the most, sometimes that’s mentoring and sharing knowledge, sometimes that’s fixing critical performance bugs and sometimes that’s participating in an all day workshop at the headquarters of a potential client.

Location: Berlin or potentially remote. I’m not looking to relocate currently.

Employment/Freelance: I’m looking for full time employment (reduced hours would also be ok) but am also open to freelance work.

Field of Work: I’m looking for a company that helps people solve real problems. I want a purpose I can get behind. For me that means no crypto currencies, advertisement or fintech for the rich. In a similar vein I’m not particularly interested in consultancy/agency work as I don’t like to travel every week and really like to work at a product company where I can really dive into the domain.

Diversity: I believe that the best products and work environments are created by diverse teams. Hence, this should be a core value applied through all levels of an organization. Or at least, the problem should be recognized and active work to counter it be put forth.

Company Culture: I’m looking for a company that trusts its employees and is open. It should also support a sustainable pace. Regular overtime is nothing to be proud of. Knowledge sharing should be key and therefore asking questions should be encouraged.

Time Allocation: I love companies that trust their employees and allow them flexible working hours and locations. Meaning it’s ok to work remotely for a couple of days or from home. Historically, I did some of my best work checking out emails and pull requests at home in the morning and then biking to work afterwards. Beloved refactorings have also emerged while dog sitting.

Benefits: Giving people time and room to grow is important to me. Particularly I usually speak at a couple of conferences during a year and think going there should be work, not vacation time.

Languages: I have expert knowledge of Ruby and Elixir. Working with Elixir would be a plus, but not a must. I also like working with JavaScript and am not afraid to do CSS albeit my CSS has gotten rather rusty sadly. I’m also naturally open to other languages, while I’m certainly most effective in the mentioned language the right company with the right culture and purpose is more important. Particularly Rust would be very interesting to me, granted I’m not too good at it (yet).

Open Source: An employer that values contributing back to open source or sharing their own creations would be a big plus, even more so if it happened to be full OSS work.

I’m aware that it’s hard to tick all of these boxes, and if you did hey we might be a great match. I just wanted to communicate wishes and values clearly as a starting point.

Getting in touch

You can send me an email at pragtob@gmail.com – otherwise my Twitter direct messages are also open.

Please don’t cold call me 🙂