I’m Deniz Schmidt. I live in Munich where I build services and products for users around the world.
I've loved making things for as long as I can remember, and changed my first line of code when I was 14 years old. As a teenager I've always fiddled around with code to automate things for myself or build websites for local businesses in my hometown close to Heidelberg.
During those years I've tried out many different programming languages and tech stacks. This helped me to land my first internships and part-time jobs next to school. Thus I was able to have hands-on experience building things like internal sales platforms, integrations for Google Glasses and warehouse management systems.
Looking back I'm happy about what we've reached in most industries these days. The daily struggle from managing devices with low resources tilted towards the daily struggle to deliver the best value to the user, which excites me a lot!
At the age of 18 I also started offering services as a Freelancer on a part-time base, which enabled me to be more flexible and work together with companies on short-term contracts.
My most important learning from these years of experience was that I want to focus on providing the most possible value to users as a developer. Thus I started to focus on web applications built with JavaScript and TypeScript for the server and client-side since I'm most productive in this ecosystem.
In my following jobs, I could transfer this learning into more practical experience and expertise. The most important things I learned before becoming a full-time Freelancer were supporting colleagues so we can unlock all our full potential, leading projects but also people, time management and priority.
During this whole time working on projects for other people and companies, I also had my beloved side projects. These were usually not business-focused but purely on joy or on pain points which I've experienced with my customers. So I've built many simple and focused solutions from a high-level resource management tool for managers to a DJ-Party-App for my welcome party at SinnerSchrader.
During my last year I've learned that I want to focus on building things on my own or with small focused teams. Thus it's now time to ship my side projects also to the public!