Hi, I’m Remko! As a kid, I went to school in Dordrecht but I lived next to the windmills of Kinderdijk throughout my whole childhood. After a few years of working in the city I moved to Rotterdam for a while. Now I’m 31 years old and I just bought a house together with my girlfriend in Schiedam. Fun fact: I drive an old moped to work sometimes!
Tech master
I studied a more general IT study: System Administrator, in which you learn how to install windows and stuff like that. Then I got more into software development and did a bit of technical computer science which had to do with electronics (actually making little machines, robots, etc). I didn’t finish that study though because I got a job at an e-commerce company. Later on I got another job at a media agency to make marketing websites where there was a lot of advertisement involved. I worked as a software developer for almost 10 years but I wasn’t too happy there, so I started looking for something else.
A new adventure
As a software developer, as soon as I changed my Linkedin status to “open to work” I got thousands of messages from recruiters as it’s a very needed position. Pionect originally attracted me because they were a small company and they were very development focused. I also wanted to experience the growth of a company jumping from small to medium sized, which was going to be Pionect’s next step. I ended up here because once I had the interview we both also clicked together.
Beyond the 9 to 5
Outside of work I like to play with electronics, listen to music and go to concerts. I’m a scouts leader so I spend most of my weekends hanging out with scouts. At the moment I lead a group of girls from 7 to 11 years old every Saturday morning. Besides, I have been working on my Gilwell (a specialized training course for scouts leaders to get to know themselves). I also recently became an organizer for 010 PHP: A Rotterdam-based community for PHP developers. Their meetups take place every month in a different location so my job is to find locations where it can be hosted and speakers who want to talk about a certain related topic.
