This was my 2019

Departed from Lingvist

I worked three years at Lingvist as a front-end developer on the Lingvist webapp. I enjoyed academic atmosphere and working with talented colleagues there. Unfortunately the company was not growing as quickly as I had hoped, it was struggling to find product/market fit and the tech stack was getting very outdated. Towards the end of 2018, I started to look around.

Joined Outfunnel

Estonian startup scene has been very active recent years. I am constantly struggling to follow, what is happening. People, who have already helped to build very successful tech companies, jump off the mothership and start their own. Andrus Purde had caught my attention with Outfunnel, where he is building a sales focused marketing platform. I joined as front-end developer in mid January. It has been a fun year full of learning new tech, writing and rewriting lots of code, hiring developers, doing company hackathons and learning about marketing in the era of digital noise.

Learned VueJS

One of the exciting things about joining a very young startup is the ability to choose your stack. We chose VueJS together with Vuetify material design component library and this gave us massive productivity boost. I really enjoy working with VueJS ecosystem and going back to React feels a bit like “Mehh”.

Started to learn NodeJS and backend development

Since I already had experience with Javascript and ES6, it was challenging, but fun to move towards backend development. Backend development feels like having a screwdriver and soldering iron in your hand compared to fine-grained UI development. But strong architecture and even stronger infrastructure is key to success.

Enjoyed commuting with Bicycle

My bike route from home to Lift99 coworking space is now 6 kilometers. I figured out a cycling route that avoids heavy car traffic streets as much as possible. I like cycling to work, because it is the fastest way to move around in Tallinn city center area. My official record time getting from home to work with bike was 15 minutes. (Disclaimer: I am an amateur cyclist and I have 4+ bicycles)

Broke personal record at Viljandi Lake run

I have been doing endurance sports like long distance running and cross country cycling for 15+ years. Over the years I have not followed any specific training plan or strategies. I had just followed intuition and feeling and learned from previous workouts and races. But last year I stumbled on a youtube video that explained the effect of interval training on a cellular, molecular and chemical level. I started incorporating intervals into my runs and this has helped be to get my pace to next level. And as a manifestation, I managed to break my Viljandi Lake run personal record 4 years in a row, resulting 53min37sec and place 338.

Cycled from Tallinn To Viljandi (165km)

This had been my dream for several years. I love doing long bicycle rides during the warmest weeks of the summer. I started early morning and I arrived in Viljandi around 14.00. Had few short stops in Rapla and Türi. And bought some strawberries from roadside stall.