Especially for you, Kamil answered as many as 25 questions!
If you missed the first part of the interview, the more technical one, you can find it here.
We invite you to the second part of our Interview with Kamil, where we talk a bit more about his private life and career.
Maciej Sikorski: Do you often feel the need to take a break/be on holiday? Your role seems to be very absorbing.
Kamil Myśliwiec: I try to ensure that my intense working life does not have a negative impact on my personal life.. Taking time for holidays and striking the right work-life balance is very important to me, and I have to admit that this actually has a direct influence on my productivity. I also love to travel and explore the world, so I can’t imagine being able to continue to be productive in the long run without any of it ? .
Do you still live in the same place you lived at the beginning of your career? Does the development of such a large project or career development force you/encourage you to change your place of residence?
Over the last few years, I have changed my place of residence three times, although it was by no means dictated by my professional life. Luckily, with all the clients I work with, we work remotely through a company I co-founded (Trilon, which is the consulting/services extension of NestJS). Before the world came to a standstill, I regularly went to conferences, and unfortunately, all of them have moved online due to the pandemic (or were canceled until further notice). If I remember correctly, I had over 40 plane trips in 2019, and made over 10 lectures at different conferences! So in a way, my job does sometimes require frequent travel, but these are usually short trips, and either way I love sharing knowledge and connecting with the NestJS community in person whenever possible.
It’s not easy to find more information about you on social media. Is it on purpose? Do you mean to prevent your professional success from affecting your private life?
Yes, partly. But I don’t think it’s inherently wrong to publish photos or videos of your trips. However, I just don’t feel the need to do so myself. I keep photos of my trips for myself (and family) ?.
What were your beginnings with programming? What and when convinced you to choose this career path?
I picked up my interest in programming in primary school about 15 years ago, and you could say it was the moment I decided what I wanted to do for a living.. At that time, the easiest way to get to know the world of programming seemed to be creating websites (the basics of C/C++ usually ended with examples in the console, and I wanted to create something “more visually impressive”). So naturally, I started with books about creating applications using PHP (aka Zend framework, which I eventually never learned) and, of course, HTML/CSS.
How did you become a Google Developer Expert?
There were two key reasons & factors: speaking at conferences and my work on the NestJS framework itself. After one of the lectures, I received a recommendation from another GDE, which is a prerequisite for joining the program. The process itself takes several weeks and, after the initial qualification & verification phase, it consists of two separate interviews that resemble typical job interviews.
Does it mean that the opportunity to become a GDE just came at some point, or did you apply for that recommendation?
Correct. After receiving the recommendation, I was obviously thrilled to start the qualification process, although that was never my goal in itself.
In your career history, one can find that you’ve gone into both frontend and backend. NestJS is a backend framework, can it therefore be assumed that you are now devoted to backend? Or do you still come back with sentiment to the world of the frontend?
We currently work with many different companies, and for the vast majority of them we offer help in both the backend and frontend. Naturally, most clients have NestJS-based projects, but I also regularly use Angular and React, it just depends on what the client is using.
What’s the coolest thing for you: creating developer tools, running courses, consulting, or creating final applications?
Out of all of those activities you mentioned, by far the least satisfying for me is running workshops, which I find to be extremely physically and mentally exhausting. Apart from workshops, everything that falls into the category of “creative work” brings me a lot of joy and satisfaction. To be honest it would be very difficult to pick a favorite out of all these options.
What is your professional dream?
I’m genuinely happy to say that all my professional dreams, which I envisioned somewhere when I was younger and hoped might happen one day, have now been fulfilled. Even having reached some of my career goals already, I still have a strong desire to keep growing, learning and becoming better at everything that I do.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
To be honest, I’m not sure. I will certainly continue to devote as much time as I can to continue learning, gaining experience (both in and outside of work), and expanding on the knowledge I currently have. But I don’t have any specific plans at the time being, we’ll just have to wait and see what comes next!
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