Dora-Michaela Popova
SharePoint Team Lead
Dora-Michaela Popova, aka Dodo, joined Melon in 2015 as part of the SharePoint team.
She believes that people should not limit their learnings to the tasks on their list. They should grow in many ways so that they can become adept with every step of project development. This kind of mindset has helped her become the current SharePoint team lead, while the first team lead is on a maternity leave.
In her previous job, she was again a SharePoint developer, but at Melon she says she’s managed to further her skills and grow her knowledge about system support and project management.
Dodo graduated with Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. “I know it sounds ‘wow’, however much later I realized that it’s more important what you do after graduation,” she says. At that time, she thought of never coming back to Bulgaria and opted for a drastic switch. She enrolled in a master’s program in intellectual property law. But, the plan didn’t work out and she returned home. Now, 4 years later, she doesn’t think of leaving the country any time soon.
At Melon, the most challenging projects to Dodo are “the mysterious” ones, as she calls them. Indeed, she says, that all the projects turn out to be more complicated than expected. But still there are some that qualify for her “mysterious” shelf. What she loves the most is the gratifying feeling after completing such a project.
To her, the biggest challenge is never the technical difficulty level, but the communication with the clients. “If you manage to get along with the clients, even the biggest tech bumps are no problem,” she says.
The perfect client to Dodo is the one with enough IT knowledge and who have pinned down their final goal. In any case, she prefers to work directly with the clients, rather than through a third party.
When asked what she likes the most at Melon, Dodo doesn’t hesitate – the people and the positive environment. She says that Melon has provided her with plenty of challenging projects and the freedom to grow. What she wishes for are more internal soft skills and other company trainings.
Other than software development and project management, Dodo enjoys archery, renovating her apartment, and reading a lot of science fiction. She loves her cat and spending time with her, but she is not sure if the feelings go both ways.
