Behind every seamless ride, there's a team of dedicated individuals working to keep the wheels turning. We want to shine a spotlight on Melany Borean, a rising star in FREENOW's engineering team, whose journey from systems engineering to management is as inspiring as it is insightful!
As a fun fact, I started to work at FREENOW in March 2020. I relocated from another country and arrived in Hamburg just one week before the lockdown started, which meant I had about five days only to see the city freely!
On a happier note, I always wanted to be a math teacher but this was not an option for me when I started college, so my dear uncle suggested I study systems engineering. "It is applied mathematics, after all". So I did, and while in college I discovered that I liked numbers and logic in general and found passion in automation, instrumentation and software engineer paths. When I think about it, I sometimes wonder how different everything would have been had I followed a very different career path.
I'm a systems engineer. Before I started working with software I tried other things, like teaching, automation in industrial engineering and IT roles. Then, I worked as backend and fullstack developer before joining FREENOW. One fun fact is that my previous experience had always been as either a freelancer or as part of a consulting company.
I joined FREENOW almost five years ago (2020) as a software engineer, I moved to senior engineer somewhere after about two years into the role and, more recently about two months ago, I was promoted to Engineering Manager. I'm quite new to my current role and I'm learning as much as I can from my peers and their experiences while trying to form my own. As I see it, my main purpose within my team is to support them whenever possible and bring alignment so we can all reach a common goal and have a positive impact on our users and the business.
As an Engineering Manager there is excitement in helping the team evolve over time and hopefully seeing my peers' growth on a daily basis. Ultimately, the absolute truth is that it goes both ways, because we are all learning as we go. This is at the same time, a challenge! We're talking about other people's expectations and it is a human impact and interaction, which is a challenge in itself.
This is the easiest question of them all. FREENOW's best aspect is the people. I have had the pleasure to work with amazing professionals since I started working in the company and some of them have become good friends outside of work. Here, the tech teams have certain freedom to work with new technologies, try them out and see if they fit our business case. This also boosts ownership, since each tech team owns their codebases.
I would say be prepared to meet some pretty cool people here. Realistically speaking, FREENOW has, as any other company, pros and cons, but ultimately it is about finding a match to our needs and a workplace that allows us to have a good balance in our lives. I personally find it incredibly rewarding to come to work everyday, seeing my team and having a nice collaboration with them.