Full Stack Developer Alexandra Vovk

In this article, we want to introduce Alexandra Vovk, our Full Stack Developer. When Alexandra joined our agency in July 2022, we asked her a few questions to get to know her a little better.”

This is Alexandra Vovk

Alexandra lives in a beautiful city named Munich, Germany. It’s a wonderful place close to the mountains. This spring, she moved from another beautiful city, Chernihiv, in North Ukraine.

How would you describe yourself?

I am a creative and active person. I love learning and exploring everything in the world – about life, work, hobbies, and sometimes even routine things.

Do you have a great passion for something? Or a great strength, a strong wish, something that motivates you?

Three things that make me tick: mountains, notebooks, and dogs. I enjoy the mountains every time. It’s a place of power for me. Notebooks help me to slow down, relax and reflect. The dog is a big dream.

How do you spend your spare time?

I have a lot of hobbies. I like traveling to new places, especially to quiet wild locations. I like exploring new cities and villages, but I’m much more into forests and rocky mountains because of their silence and amazing views.

Sometimes, I enjoy sports like stretching or working out. I love taking macro photos of nature, reading non-fiction books, watching educational videos, experimenting with my own recipes in the kitchen, and growing home plants.

However, my biggest passion in life is paper notebooks. I started using my collection of notebooks when I read the Bullet Journal Method book a few years ago. It combines journaling, planning with creative doodling, and making small aesthetic collages, and using watercolors. I’m also a huge fan of aesthetic stationery. My shopping always starts at stationery stores.

What is most important to you?

The most important thing to me is freedom, and I look for that in everything. It’s important because I can limit myself like nobody else ever could.

Taking care of the people closest to me and feeling that their care for me is important.

Living a truthful and mindful life is important.

Alexandra’s way to Syde

I graduated as a computer engineer in 2009. I have great programming knowledge thanks to really wonderful teachers. But, I didn’t see myself as a software engineer using Pascal, C++, Java, or similar languages that we learned. After graduating, I went deeper into web development because I liked that subject in university, and this field needs creativity alongside programming. My career as a freelance developer started during my last year at university. When I created my first website from scratch for a photographer for a symbolic fee, I remember it was five HTML pages with many clickable JPEG images. It makes me smile to remember that now.

I worked with different Content Management Systems for a few years until I got to know WordPress. I liked its flexibility and started developing my own themes and plugins. Later, I published on the official WordPress repository an approximately 100-lines plugin with a simple recursive function. I still like that solution so much.

Once, I understood that I missed the lightweight starter theme that fits my needs best and could be used for every new client. The existing ones seemed too massive for me. After creating my own Basic theme, I also published it in the official WordPress repository. I’m still finding a lot of websites using that theme while googling for something.

The year 2022 changed a lot of lives, including mine. My Ukrainian clients were lost because their businesses stopped. In March, I started searching for new opportunities and got many offers to work as a freelance web developer in different startups or projects. However, I felt I needed a team more now than ever before. Nothing fitted me fully for a long time because I was looking for a WordPress-oriented company. Serendipitously, I got my interview with Syde around the time I wanted to sign a contract with a service company and work as a developer there. I’m happy it happened and can be part of this awesome family now!

Learning new technologies, applying new tools, and improving websites to be easy and friendly for visitors makes me feel fulfilled with work. Incredibly, I have everything working with Syde, including freedom.

Why was Syde interesting for you?

There were two reasons I want to be a part of Syde.

The first is the 100% remote quality of the company. It is only possible to create a fully remote large company by having a culture where relationships are based on truthfulness, respect, tolerance, and professionalism.

The second reason is WordPress. I have spent my whole professional career working happily with this Content Management System. “The WordPress Agency” sounds like a perfect fit for me.

What do you especially like about your new job, or what are you looking forward to?

I am happy I have a choice with regards to what I do, plan a schedule on my own, and communicate with interesting colleagues and great developers from all over the world. There is a big opportunity to learn a lot from others and apply my experience to help the company grow. I feel support at every step. The company not only cares about my daily work routine but how my life is going. I’m happy to have humanity and awesome people here.

Questions to Syder Alexandra

We asked Alexandra a few personal questions to learn more about her:

What was the last book you read?

It is “Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ” by Giulia Enders. An incredible book, and I like the author’s style.

What was the best advice you ever got? Who gave it to you?

“You don’t need to know it. You must know where to find it.” It’s advice from my best university teacher. It’s really suited to everything in my life.

What do you like most about your city?

I’m still discovering Munich. Regarding Chernihiv (the city where I lived 18 years before 2022), I like how beautiful, quiet, historical, and heroic it is. It was founded in the 7th century, and has a lot of small incredible churches, a lot of parks, and a big river the Desna.

What is your favorite smartphone app?

Instagram because I can rest there, find fun or motivation, explore something or get news, buy or sell anything.

What is the best meal you can cook on your own?

I have a top three, that I consider my best. First is the Ukrainian borscht (an ancient sour soup common in Eastern Europe) that I like very much. Second is the very thin pancakes that my husband loves. The third is the roasted river fish that my husband hunted underwater.

You get stuck in the elevator for many hours and there’s a song playing in a continuous loop, what song would that be?

It would be any calm remix, only music without any words.