Milka Ferezliyska-Dimitrova

"I like Melon’s culture and that we are friends working together."

Milka joined Melon in 2014 as part of our internship program. Two months later she accepted a permanent position as a Python developer. 

Her passion for Software development dates way back: “During high school, we had informatics as part of the program and I really liked to create useful systems for everyone. That’s why I perused software development track at the university,” she says. Milka continued her education at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” where she graduated both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Software Engineering.

For the past 9 years since Milka joined Melon, her role evolved. She worked on projects with a variety of team sizes (from 1 to 10-12 people). She had the opportunity to try a few different challenges including project management, clients communication, and preparing test scenarios and documentation. Recently Milka has been promoted to Team Lead of Open Source and we wanted to know what motivated her to transition from a software developer to a leadership role. “With time I started to feel that being helpful to others is making me feel better and writing code is not enough for me. I decided to try a leadership role because it gives me both: I am still assigned to a project where I code every day and at the same time, I can think and apply ideas for making things better for our team and our company.” 

Alongside her position as a Team Lead, Milka is also assigned as a Craft Lead for her team. She collaborates with her colleagues, discusses new ideas, and makes them happen. She believes that everyone has a lot of knowledge and experience and it’s her job, as a leader, to help them apply their expertise. She cooperates and creates internal standards within the team to give them a common ground level and help them integrate new colleagues easily. “Being assigned to each of these roles is a big recognition for me and my knowledge and experience. I believe that building a team is hard and it’s even harder to keep it as it is and make it grow.” 

As a Team Lead, Milka has to balance project standards and goals and encouraging individual creativity and innovation within the team. Project standards are an essential part of software development and she has some tricks up her sleeve. “I can’t hide that not all projects have such standards. When we start a new project it’s easier to introduce them. In other cases, we need to put some extra effort into convincing the client that bringing standards into the project and its workflow will pay out. Probably finding the balance between standards and creativity is easy because we have basic guides that are not strict. This allows everyone to bring order and still have the opportunity to develop their ideas. For example, I can share the initiative we started – it’s called Lightning Talks. Similarly, to conferences, we give a short time slot – 10-15 minutes, for everyone on the team who has seen or read about something interesting and wants to share it with the rest. This is how we already heard about a variety of topics like Hot buttons, Narcissism, and INSAIT.” 

As in every job, software development brings many challenges. Milka has encountered some herself during the past years at Melon. From struggling to find the right way to communicate the client's needs as a Junior developer to giving constructive feedback to her colleagues and building a plan to follow a tight deadline for complex projects. But she overcame them all and became better and better at what she does. “Of course, there are way more instruments and strategies to learn,” she says.

Despite the challenges, Milka finds a lot of interesting things in her job. As she puts it: “Technologies are evolving, people are growing as individuals and professionals. This is why I like my current job at Melon.” Milka stays up to date with the latest technology trends mostly with conferences and events she attends. Her team always shares upcoming technical events and encourages everyone to participate.

At Melon Milka likes the friendly atmosphere, the open communication with the management team, the helpfulness of her teammates and colleagues, and the never-ending opportunities to grow and develop one’s skills. “I like Melon’s culture and that we are friends working together. Whenever you need help, there always would be at least a handful of people who would help and a lot more willing to do so. You can talk with anyone. It’s nice, grounded, and energizing.” 

Milka believes that a positive and inclusive work environment is an essential part of making and keeping the team together. A spirited ecosystem provides opportunities for personal, professional, and career development. Her goal as a Team Lead is to bring people together more often to strengthen bonds. “Organizing internal presentations, projects, knowledge transfer, pair programming, and brainstorming sessions is a huge part of this. It’s important to spend some time outside of the work environment, we encourage and organize mini-team buildings such as green offices, cinema nights, foreign food nights, and many more.” 

Success stories about completed tasks, projects, initiatives, and training inspire Milka the most no matter if they are hers or someone else’s. Small things matter in our every day and she hopes she’ll be able to share this passion with her colleagues. For her career development plans, Milka says: “I see myself as a better and experienced professional leader minding both technology and people. I want to help people grow and provide them with a healthy environment and lots of opportunities and challenges that will bring out the best of them. Maybe forming and becoming part of a coaching society in Melon would help me to do that, who knows?”

Milka learned to balance her work and free time by taking care of herself. She’s devoting part of her time to her family, her development, her hobbies, and to herself. Of course, sometimes this goes out of balance, but she learned how to act in her best interest and always tries to find some time to spare for her well-being.

But it is not all about professional endeavors. Milka is also passionate about folklore dances. She’s been part of many ERASMUS+ projects abroad and met a variety of young people who share the same passion for preserving and spreading national traditions, culture, and folklore. For the last 5 years, she’s been part of a small group of current and ex-dancers in Pazardzhik (small town in Bulgaria) who are willing to organize their own ERASMUS+ project. They invite friends from all around Europe to celebrate the traditions and differences of their nations. She also is learning new languages: “I found out that it’s bringing more “color” using the native language in the communication rather than just English. For now, I’m keen on Spanish and Turkish which I practice almost every day.” My older hobby is photography and recently I’m taking some classes and contests.”