{"id":26373,"date":"2016-08-25T16:38:03","date_gmt":"2016-08-25T14:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/?p=26373"},"modified":"2017-08-25T18:06:03","modified_gmt":"2017-08-25T16:06:03","slug":"two-years-at-qobo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2016\/08\/25\/two-years-at-qobo\/","title":{"rendered":"Two years at Qobo"},"content":{"rendered":"<!-- google_ad_section_start -->\n<p>Today marks the completion of my second year at <a href=\"https:\/\/qobo.biz\">Qobo Ltd<\/a>. \u00a0The <a href=\"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2015\/08\/25\/one-year-at-qobo\/\">first year<\/a> was quite a ride. \u00a0But the second one was even wilder. \u00a0As always, it&#8217;s difficult (and lengthy) to mention everything that happened. \u00a0A lot of that stuff is under the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) terms too. \u00a0But here are a few generic highlights:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Vision and strategy<\/strong> &#8211; most of my first year has been spent in putting out fires, fixing things big and small, left, right, and center. \u00a0The technology boost was necessary across the board, so it didn&#8217;t leave much time for the vision and strategy. \u00a0I feel that we&#8217;ve made a huge progress in this area in the last 12 month. \u00a0We have a clear vision. \u00a0We have all the stakeholders agreeing on all key elements. \u00a0We have worked out a strategy on how to move forward. \u00a0And we&#8217;ve started implementing this strategy (hey, <a href=\"http:\/\/qobrix.com\/\">Qobrix<\/a>!). \u00a0In terms of achievements, I think this was the most important area and I am pretty happy with how things are shaping up.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Team changes<\/strong> &#8211; much like in the first year, we had quite a few changes in the team. \u00a0Some of them were unfortunate, others not so much. \u00a0The team is still smaller than what we want and need, but I think we are making progress here. \u00a0If our World Domination plans will work out to even some degree, we&#8217;ll be in a much better place very soon.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Technology focus<\/strong> &#8211; we&#8217;ve continued with our goal of doing fewer things but doing them better. \u00a0Our expertise in WordPress, CakePHP and SugarCRM grew a lot. \u00a0We&#8217;ve signed and deployed a variety of projects, which resulted in more in-depth knowledge, more networking with people around each technology, more tools and practices that we can reuse in our future work.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Open Source Software<\/strong> &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/QoboLtd\">our GitHub profile<\/a> is growing, with more repositories, pull requests, releases, features, and bug fixes. \u00a0We&#8217;ve also contributed to a variety of Open Source projects. \u00a0Our involvement with Open Source Software will continue to grow &#8211; that&#8217;s one of those things that I am absolutely sure about.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Hosting, continuous integration and delivery (CI\/CD), and quality assurance<\/strong> &#8211; again, the trend continued this year. \u00a0We are using (and understanding) more of the cloud infrastructure in general and <a href=\"https:\/\/aws.amazon.com\">Amazon AWS<\/a> in particular. \u00a0We have a much better <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zabbix.com\/\">Zabbix<\/a> setup. \u00a0And our love and appreciation of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ansible.com\/\">Ansible<\/a> grows steeply. <a href=\"https:\/\/letsencrypt.org\/\">Let&#8217;s Encrypt<\/a> is in use, but we&#8217;ll grow it to cover all our projects soon. \u00a0We are also experimenting with a variety of quality assurance tools. \u00a0We are using <a href=\"https:\/\/travis-ci.org\/\">TravisCI<\/a> for most of our Open Source work. \u00a0And we are on the brink of using recently announced <a href=\"https:\/\/bitbucket.org\/product\/features\/pipelines\">BitBucket Pipelines<\/a> for our private repositories (sorry <a href=\"https:\/\/jenkins.io\/\">Jenkins<\/a>, we&#8217;ve tried you, but &#8230; not yet). \u00a0We&#8217;ve also jumped into ChatOps world with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hipchat.com\/\">HipChat<\/a> and its integrations, to the point that it&#8217;s difficult to imagine how could we have worked without it just a few month ago. \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/codecov.io\">Codecov.io<\/a>\u00a0has also proved to be useful.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Projects, projects, projects<\/strong> &#8211; much like the previous year, we&#8217;ve completed a whole lot of projects (see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qobo.biz\/clients\/\">some of our clients<\/a>). \u00a0Some were simple and straightforward. \u00a0Others were complicated and challenging. And we have more of these in the pipelines. \u00a0Overall, we&#8217;ve learned how to do more with less. \u00a0Our productivity, technical expertise, and confidence grows day-to-day. \u00a0I hope we keep it up for years to come.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Website<\/strong> &#8211; one thing that we wanted to do for ages is to update <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qobo.biz\/\">our website<\/a>. \u00a0Which we did, despite all the crazy things going on. \u00a0It&#8217;s not a complete redesign, but it&#8217;s a nice refreshment. \u00a0And we&#8217;ve also got our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qobo.biz\/blog\/\">blog section<\/a>, which I promised you last year. \u00a0All we need to do now is to use it more. ;)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There are a couple of major updates coming soon, but I am not at liberty to share them right now. \u00a0But they are very, very exciting &#8211; that&#8217;s all I can say today. \u00a0Keep an eye our blog &#8211; we&#8217;ll be definitely sharing.<\/p>\n<p>As I said, it was quite an intense year, with lots of things going on everywhere. \u00a0There were tough times, and there were easy times. \u00a0There were challenges and there were accomplishments. \u00a0There were successes, and there were mistakes and failures. \u00a0But I wouldn&#8217;t have it any other way!<\/p>\n<p>After two years, I am still excited about this company and about my job here. \u00a0(Which, looking at my career so far, is not something that happens often.) \u00a0I hope the next year will continue the adventure and by the end of it I&#8217;ll be able to proudly show you a few more things.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<!-- google_ad_section_end -->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<!-- google_ad_section_start -->\n<p>Today marks the completion of my second year at Qobo Ltd. \u00a0The first year was quite a ride. \u00a0But the second one was even wilder. \u00a0As always, it&#8217;s difficult (and lengthy) to mention everything that happened. \u00a0A lot of that stuff is under the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) terms too. \u00a0But here are a few generic &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2016\/08\/25\/two-years-at-qobo\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Two years at Qobo<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<!-- google_ad_section_end -->\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Two years at Qobo #work #milestone #anniversary #career","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,2,62],"tags":[991,3318,17],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-26373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-personal","category-technology","tag-milestones","tag-qobo","tag-work"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":30990,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2019\/02\/01\/time-for-a-new-adventure\/","url_meta":{"origin":26373,"position":0},"title":"Time for a new adventure","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"February 1, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"This week I've handed in my resignation letter, marking my last working day as February 28, 2019. After 4.5 years as a Chief Technology Officer at Qobo, I feel it's time for a new adventure. Looking back at the last 4.5 years, it feels like there is enough to fill\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":24376,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2015\/06\/17\/qobo-learning-from-past-to-build-the-forex-crm-of-the-present-and-future\/","url_meta":{"origin":26373,"position":1},"title":"Qobo \u2013 Learning from Past to Build the Forex CRM of the Present and Future","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"June 17, 2015","format":"link","excerpt":"Finance Magnates story about us: \"Qobo \u2013 Learning from Past to Build the Forex CRM of the Present and Future\"","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"qobo-crm","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/qobo-crm-500x221.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":29066,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2018\/12\/05\/qobo-christmas\/","url_meta":{"origin":26373,"position":2},"title":"Qobo Christmas","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"December 5, 2018","format":"image","excerpt":"Qobo Christmas","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Instagram&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Instagram","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/photography\/instagram\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/qobo-christmas.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/qobo-christmas.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/qobo-christmas.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/qobo-christmas.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/qobo-christmas.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":28715,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2018\/08\/29\/four-years-at-qobo\/","url_meta":{"origin":26373,"position":3},"title":"Four years at Qobo","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"August 29, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week marked my fourth year at Qobo.\u00a0 Here are the blog posts that cover my first, second, and third years.\u00a0 And with one more now, I think it's starting to fall into a trend of crazy years. Yes, indeed.\u00a0 The last year has been no different.\u00a0 There were all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":27928,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2017\/09\/01\/qobo-nicosia-office\/","url_meta":{"origin":26373,"position":4},"title":"Qobo Nicosia Office","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"September 1, 2017","format":"image","excerpt":"Qobo Nicosia Office","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Instagram&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Instagram","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/photography\/instagram\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/1504262272.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/1504262272.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/1504262272.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/1504262272.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/1504262272.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":22401,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2014\/08\/19\/goodbye-easy-forex-hello-qobo\/","url_meta":{"origin":26373,"position":5},"title":"Goodbye Easy Forex, hello Qobo","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"August 19, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I've spent the last two and a half years working for Easy Forex. \u00a0I went from a consultant through senior web developer, team leader to the director of web development. \u00a0I've worked on a variety of projects and managed several teams. \u00a0I've had great fun and I've learned a lot.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26373"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/keyring_services?post=26373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}