Leaving Poeta Digital

After more than 9 years, I’ve decided to leave Poeta Digital. Poeta has been like a second family to me.

It’s decade has been full of growth, challenges, and valuable lessons. These experiences have shaped me not as a developer but also as a leader and a person.

When I joined Poeta, I could only convert PSD and Illustrator files to HTML and CSS. After working with my team for two months, I was able to write efficient JavaScript using StealJS. Everyone on my team was very enthusiastic, especially Mr. Trinh Do, Mr. Tung Big, and Mr. Tuan Nguyen. I am grateful to them.

We are working on an exciting project called LinkIt. The first time I learned about JavaScript MVVM (Model View View-Model). We’re using Knockout to build a system. It will allow teachers to grade and review students’ tests. Knockout’s key concepts include templating and declarative bindings. They also have automatic UI refresh and dependency. They made it easier for me to work with future patterns like MVC, MVP, and MVVM-C.

In the project, I’m not only learning how to code but also how to resolve problems. I remember when I was building the tools for deploying our front end to the server using shell scripts. This helped my team save a lot of time with each deployment. At another time, I wrote a serverless function using AWS Lambda. It autoscales Amazon DynamoDB via Amazon CloudWatch. It saved the client save a lot of money. At that time, Amazon DynamoDB didn’t support autoscaling.

Working with this team for more than 4 years has been fun and memorable. We’ve been working together to build and improve a product. It solves real-world problems. There were even nights when we worked until 2 or 3 a.m. But, we’re always still having fun and never got tired. Mrs. Hanh and Mr. Phong break down tasks for team members’ understanding. Mr. Tung Little always created laughter. Mrs. Tien, Mr. Phuong Boomba were always hard-working for testing. Mr. Tien, Mr. Tin were always ready to fix any trouble. Mrs. Thuy, Mrs. Ngoan Ta, Mr. Tuan Vo, Mr. Vinh, and Mr. Khai always appeared to fix bugs or any issues for each deployment. Until now, although I live in Hue, but I still keep in contact with them.

Over time, I became the leader of the front-end team. I realized I needed to learn new skills. These included time management, project analysis, and work delegation. I especially needed to learn mentoring and guiding other developers. Through training, I learned to know each person’s strengths and weaknesses. So, I can assign work to each person to achieve the most efficiency.

Each week, we’ve always had at least 2 presentations. Here is where we share and discuss new front-end technologies. We also help other developers solve the specific problems of their projects. Besides, I learned from other developers the many ways to approach problems. Mr. Tuan Nguyen persists in seizing opportunities with deliberate, incremental progress. Mr. Hai always has reckless, good ideas. Mrs. Thao suggestion for improvement about HTML, CSS and animation. Mr. Vinh proposes new technologies for new projects. Mr. Vu Bin creativity in design.

That’s how it is at work, and outside of work, we are also very connected. We play football, playstation, and ping pong. In life, we also support and help when someone is in difficulty.

We unwind during team building, feeling completely at ease together. The moments we’ve drunk beers and sang a song until late at night. We sat and talked on the beautiful beaches in Phu Yen, Binh Dinh, or Nam Du. Mr. Phuong, Mr. Phu, Mr. Sinh Hoa Long, Mr Khoa Gau, Mr. Ho, Mrs. Ha, Mrs. Yen, Mrs. Hoa Vuong, Mrs. Thu, and many more. People that I always love.