People of Interact: Olha Makarova, Software Engineer
Olha Makarova, one of our brilliant Software Engineers is next up in our ‘People of Interact’ series!
‘People of Interact’ aims to spotlight our team’s incredible work, celebrating their achievements and showcasing their talent. During January and February, I’ll be releasing weekly interviews with a special focus on our Engineering and Technical teams.
Olha, take it away!
Olha, tell us about your background… ⚙️
I started my programming journey back in school around the age of 13. I was certain that I’ll be making computer games in the future as I was really impressed by the hits of that time like Fallout 3 and Oblivion. My lyceum specialized in preparing students for IT colleges which included coding algorithms in Pascal and BASIC and doing some graphic design.
In university, I became fascinated with computer science. I majored in Software Engineering and worked on some amazing projects in different sectors, from healthcare to retail, and even shipping – making special software for cargo ships.
Working for Interact has allowed me to follow my long-time passion for SQL optimizations. It’s a new and really interesting angle for my career.
What does your day-to-day look like? 💻
My current tasks are a bit unusual; I make sure that things work fast and don’t eat too much of our precious resources.
Most of the time, I get an email from our SQL legend David Crump saying that he noticed a query hitting the server suspiciously or that some procedure is taking an abnormal time to complete. I’m also alerted when a ticket is raised through Zendesk or sent in by email.
Then the fun part begins! I’ll look for potential problems, study execution plans, and carefully start refactoring and rewriting the code trying to preserve all the existing logic.
How would you describe yourself in 3 words? 🤔
Curious, Patient, Optimistic.
What/ who inspires you? 💫
Birds! They’re a rare part of the natural world that still remains accessible to city folk. It melts my heart when birds trust me enough to take treats from my hands.
I’m also forever inspired by my fellow Ukrainian people. I don’t want to get too serious here, but seeing that men on the frontline are sacrificing their lives to keep people like me safe impacted my worldview immensely and fills me with gratitude every day.
What are the best things about your job? 🎉
The best thing is all the amazing and supportive people I’m working with!
Also, the creative freedom. At Interact, I can choose the direction in which I’m going professionally. It’s really inspiring to hear stories from colleagues that did a 180 with switching from CS to Engineering, from Engineering to Information Security, and from QA to automation.
Another thing I enjoy is the complexity of the system: there is always room for growth.
Do you have a favorite project that you’ve worked on? 🌟
I don’t necessarily work on projects but I’m pleased to know that my humble contributions make client experiences smoother and faster. The work I do is similar to solving riddles. I enjoy those “Aha!” moments when putting pieces of the SQL puzzle together after hours of investigation.
Why is Interact a good place to work? 📣
I love that ‘put people first‘ and ‘take pride‘ are not just catchphrases here, they are true values. Interact is no doubt the most comfortable company I’ve worked for and I’ve met such amazing people who are equally as proud of their work as I am.
And finally, what do you enjoy doing when you are not working? 🦜
I like pottery, watching weird indie movies, playing with my cockatiels, birdwatching in the parks and forests, and cooking new things. I also hope to recover from an injury and return to my MMA training soon as it was such a great source of pleasure to me.
At Interact, we’re constantly on the lookout for talented Engineers and Software Developers to join our technical teams.
You can view our live vacancies here.
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Learn more about working at Interact here.
