From Classroom to Collaboration
Hi! My name is Daniël Ducro, you might know me from Daniël’s Tech Thursday 😉 I studied computer science in Haarlem. While I was studying there, one of Pionect’s founders worked there as a teacher for some side income. He was looking for an intern so I applied and it was a good fit, we got along very well and worked on projects together (sometimes late nights as well). Going back to school it was a bit weird but funny that we hung out as friends during our free time but during school hours he was my teacher.
Graduation, Choices and Friendship
During my studies, I also started a small company myself building websites, which helped me learn to code. I stopped after school as I was not keen on spending time on the business side of running a company. Afterwards, I ended up graduating while working at another company but decided to come back to Pionect because I liked the atmosphere of a startup. Meanwhile, at the other company I felt like I had less of a choice or freedom when doing things, tasks just had to be completed. A good friendship with both founders also kept me here. At this point, I started working full-time and focusing on the technical side of the company.
A Dozen Years of Tech
Now, 12 years later I’m still working at Pionect as Chief Technology Officer and taking part in the Management Team. We’ve had some slower years and some better years but it’s been fun to be part of the roller coaster. At the moment, I’m also the lead developer at the Van Iperen project that we have for the upcoming 5 years so I develop myself, do code reviews and talk with my team about how to solve problems we encounter.
Tech Triumphs
My favourite thing about working here is the way I get to spend most of my time on the programming side while in addition teaching others to get better. My biggest accomplishments here are whenever I finish a project and of course growing from starting as an intern to different levels of developer to being able to join the management team. However what I’m most proud of is becoming comfortable enough with laravel to know all its little ins and outs.
Beyond the Keyboard
In my free time, I have phases where I spend some time after work studying a particular tech niche or programming language, although I don’t do it as often as I would like to. What I do spend time on regularly outside of work is Dungeons & Dragons, I play with two different groups of friends. I also have a 7 year old daughter and we love to play board and video games together. I think video games help your brain develop in a way with puzzles, problem-solving and coordination so in a few years I would love to show her more genres in gaming to see what she likes best.