Introduction
Hi! I’m Gabor Torok. I work as a full stack web developer. I have the most experience in working with Python, TypeScript, and Elm. I also worked extensively with PHP and Emacs Lisp in the past.
Besides programming, I worked as a technical lead, engineering manager, product manager and programming mentor too. I have experience in working with teams across different timezones and locations.
My strongest professional areas are:
-
I enjoy building communities and tools. I tend to look for ways to improve the processes and team work around me. I have kanban, agile and sociocracy in my toolbox.
-
I enjoy mentoring other engineers and I’m curious to learn from others. I’ve been a curious Stack Overflow contributor for more than 10 years.
-
I have experience in working for small startups and bigger organizations too. Therefore I had seen challenges at various levels, and I’d learned how to respond to them in a constructive way.
Notable work experiences
2022-2023 Habyt
I worked for a global co-living provider to enable the expansion of the business world-wide. The tech team was responsible of building a web platform using TypeScript and Next.js to move away from a Salesforce-based, manual task heavy workflow to an automated process. My biggest contribution was developing the contract signature and contract termination flows that enabled the prospects to book rooms and sign their contracts on a web interface, and let tenants cancel their existing contracts respectively. These flows freed up lots of sales and customer service capacity, and enabled the then European company to integrate a recently acquired APAC business. I also introduced Shape Up in the engineering team to improve our delivery capabilities.
2020-2022 Budapest School
I worked for a grassroot, yet state-recognized Hungarian alternative school system that hosts children from kindergarten to high school. We built a school platform from scratch based on Python/Django and Elm that connected teachers, children and parents. The focus of the digital platform was two-fold: provide a forum where teachers can provide individual feedback about the children's performance and progress using rubrics, and satisfy the data supply regulations of the state. The platform especially came handy when Covid broke out and we needed to quickly develop features like school calendar to support online teaching.
2018 Babbel
I designed and managed Babbel Neos, a 6-month software engineering training program. I was teaching and mentoring career changers who wanted to become professional developers. I used sociocratic tools to facilitate the training project.
Key impact: I enabled 9 people to get a full time job as software developers at the company. 8 of them stayed with the company after 1 year. Read how they perceived their first year as a junior developer.
2017 Lettuce Grow
I was the developer partner of the founder of Lettuce Grow, a startup company that wanted to create a digital marketplace to help connect small-scale farmers to local businesses in Portugal. We didn’t manage to raise funds, and eventually launching the product failed.
Key lesson: Make the implicit explicit: vocalize assumptions, put down agreements. Use disposable prototypes as long as possible to facilitate the product conversation and enable fast iterations.