Vratsa Software is a like-minded organisation that runs IT courses and a number of various tech-related activities in the town of Vratsa, Bulgaria, aiming to attract more people to the tech sector and to create job opportunities in the region. We’ve been supporting them through our Giving Programme during the last 7 years as we believe they have greatly contributed to the development of the local IT community.
To tell us more about the effect of their work, we talked with Desislava Nikolova, a last year graduate of their PHP course. Find out more about her journey into the software development world, what challenges she faced and what is she doing after finishing the course.
Tell us a bit about yourself. What’s your educational and professional background?
I am from Vratsa, Bulgaria. I studied at a natural science high school and then moved to Plovdiv to study food technology. After graduating, I returned to my hometown and started working as a food technologist in a dairy company but spent only a year there. After that, I worked for a company distributing constructing elements and parts. While there, I got pregnant and stayed at home looking after my children for around 4 years.
How did you decide to enrol in the programming course of Vratsa Software?
During my maternity leave, I saw the PHP course at Vratsa Software, and even though I had no experience in this area, I decided to try it out. The main reason was that the sector is very dynamic and offers a lot of opportunities.
Also, I have a lot of friends working in the field of Software Development, and they have shared with me many times that they are very happy with their work.
Tell us a bit more about the course. What did you learn?
I’ve learned the fundamentals of the PHP programming language and gained a perspective of the processes happening in the background that are not visible to everyone.
You’ve graduated successfully from this course. What was the most challenging part of it?
The most challenging part was to start thinking in a much different way, to gain a habit. The amount of information was hard to consume for such short periods between lectures because it was all new to me.
The other challenging bit was working with deadlines and in teams.
What changed after the course? Did you continue to study or started a new career?
Once the course was over, I became an Intern Project Manager at a local software company. I continue learning new things, but the PHP course at Vratsa Software gave me a great foundation.