intive people : Magdalena Skawinska, ios developer

1. What are the biggest challenges of mobile app development?

There are a lot of technical aspects that are challenges for me: how to implement this, how to do that, why this bug appears, how to use this technology and so forth.... But the most challenging thing at work is communication. I did not realize it before I started working in a team. Maybe it is difficult to imagine... But when you get the feature from a client to implement, each team member has a different vision and idea on how to do it. When we talk about it, the vision gets clearer, but while we are implementing, we realize differences in understanding. In between, we receive some requests for changes from the client and things get even more complicated. This is the biggest challenge, but also a chance to get better at working with people that I like.

2. Which soft skills help mobile developers in their daily work?

There are a few for me. Mainly, being good at clarifying your opinion and point of view. Secondly, negotiation and discussion skills. It comes in handy for every team to find out the best approach for resolving problems, for example, encouraging team members and clients to decide to go for the right solution even if it takes more time. There is one more important thing which I struggle with often – it is expressing my opinion and point of view. I am still learning to do everything I mentioned.

3. At what point in your life did you decide to become a software developer? Why?

I don't think this is an exciting story. It was after graduation in 2012... I got my first job as an iOS Developer. That was a different time than now. It was difficult to get a job as a Junior Developer. So, I started as a Junior iOS Developer, and it turned out to be an interesting technology for me. I still like it.

4. What song would you say best represents you?

There is one song that represents my approach to life. This song is called “I will survive” by Gloria Gaynor. Fortunately, it is not the story of my life, but that is how I think of life. It is not important what people say about me, what opinions they have about my life and what I am doing and how I am doing it. What motivates me? I know who I am, what I should do, how valuable I am for other people with what I have (treasure) in my heart. Sometimes people discourage me, but every time I keep going and never give up... and simply... I’ll survive.

5. What is the most exciting part of working at intive?

It is not always like this but the most exciting part of working at intive is that everything is changing. I can have another project in time, another task, learning new things, technologies etc. Life as a Developer at intive is interesting and (if you want) full of new challenges.