Hello!
My name’s Darek and this blog will tell you a few things about me.
I'm currently studying the 2nd of 3 semesters of web development at UCL and work part-time at SWAT (Support Warriors And Troubleshooters) at Umbraco.
How I started here
Everything started with a mail I got from a company called Technology Denmark telling me that I was chosen for an MIT(Multimedia & IT) talent program. I was sorta confused at first, as I'd never signed up for anything. I did know what Technology Denmark was since I’ve worked on a project for them while working for UCL (my previous part-time job). I suppose that I got noticed for my work and effort and chosen because of that.
They reached out to me and we spoke about what things I'm interested in and what kind of work I would like to do in the future.
It was also then I got a mail from the director of Umbraco Support, Jim Jensen, that he would like me to come for a talk about a job opportunity, which I gladly said yes to. I started the job shortly after.
What I do at Umbraco
As mentioned earlier, I work here as part of the SWAT team which is short for Support Warrior And Troubleshooter. Currently very much in training. Luckily, I work with a team full of amazing people who are always willing to answer my questions even if I have 5+ of them at once.
Working in SWAT is a great way to learn about how Umbraco works as we have customers reaching out to us about countless different things and learning by helping them is the best way to get into Umbraco. Starting in SWAT also makes it easy to go to other teams in the future, such as documentation or training.
I wouldn't mind joining one of them in the future 😊
A bit about myself
In my free time, I enjoy listening to power metal (Powerwolf and Sabaton are my favorite bands) and playing RPG games. I really enjoy Dungeons and Dragons and topics related to it as I've always had a huge interest in fantasy games and books. That's also how I got into 3D printing and started to print my own figures. I'm not very good at 3D modelling, so I just find models on the internet and maybe tweak them slightly. I would also love to get into painting and treating models, however, that will have to wait until I rent a house (which I'm currently looking for) because I need some space for a workshop.
Here’s a 3D dragon model I printed and painted. It’s now resting proudly on my desk at work. The base has 3 layers on it: texture paint, shade paint, and special oil to make it shiny. The dragon has only 2 layers on it: normal golden paint and special red oil to make the gold paint look more reddish and shiny.
My family lives in Jutland (Jylland), so I have to take a 2+ hours long train trip to visit each time. I spend most of my time with my siblings whenever I visit, a younger sister and brother who are 15 and 16.5 years younger than me respectively.
Aside from the above, I really like computer shortcuts. They just let me do anything faster and more efficiently. I can do most things by only using a keyboard as it's far easier once you know the correct shortcuts.
One of my favorite ones is Ctrl + win + left/right arrow. Use it pretty much every day and it helps me organize my workspace better as I don’t have everything open on one desktop.
I also enjoy talking to people from different countries. It's something that I did a lot as a teenager and it just stuck with me. It's really fun to be able to tell where a person is from just by listening to their accent.
I’m sure that working at Umbraco will allow me to meet and talk with many people from different countries so that I can expand my "accent-knowledge" and get even better at it.
