From a Fresh University Graduate to the CTO role for Sentur

By Georgi Atanasov, Chief Technology Officer at Sentur

Exploring Life's Path

I am always curious to learn the personal path in life of a friend, a colleague, or even a person who I do not know. Everyone has their unique way of dealing with challenges in life, in finding what’s motivating, pursuing their dreams and following their mission in life. And I always feel humbled by the honesty of these people and the courage needed to share their personal stories.

In this post I will try to do the same with my personal path in life, where I am today, what my mission is and what I feel as my purpose in life. I’ve been postponing putting this together for quite some time but now I feel it is the right moment for me to do so.

I want to clarify that when I say "personal," I'm referring exclusively to my professional life. My family, wife and son are something which will always be of the greatest importance to me. So, when I say "personal", I mean it in a professional context.

Military Service and Early Career

Let me start with an interesting personal fact - I’ve served in the Bulgarian army for 15 months. Back in 1996 it was obligatory and I decided to fulfill my duty before I go to University. My experience there deserves a separate blog post alone but the bottom line for me is that I learned that life is not only about me and my desires and intentions. Quite the opposite - life is about being connected with other people and respecting them as much as I respect myself.

Straight after I finished with the army, I started my bachelor degree in Math and Informatics at Plovdiv University. And in 2003 I arrived in Sofia, with $100 in my pocket and starting as a junior developer in a small company, called Nevron, founded by two twin brothers. At that time .NET was an emerging, powerful and very promising technology and we were doing .NET primarily. For four years I stayed there, learned a lot from my colleagues and I am grateful to these people - Ivo and Boby, who believed in me and offered me a place in their company without me having any previous experience.

A Shift in Perspective

Those were very peaceful and enjoyable times for me. Retrospectively looking back, today it feels like the time had stopped for four years. Then a very good friend of mine asked me this simple question:

- Jorka, are you gonna retire in this company?

Which basically made an inception to me and I started to ask myself what’s next in my career.

Realizing that I am curious to have the experience of working for a large company, I started to look for such companies not only in Bulgaria but also in Europe. I really wanted to assess my technical knowledge by applying at Microsoft for their Copenhagen office. That said, I applied for a position and I got an on-prem interview invitation with all the expenses - flight tickets and hotel - covered by them. These were two days that I will always remember. I flew to Copenhagen the day before the interview and spent the evening walking the blocks around the hotel and enjoying the beauty of this amazing city. And I was so nervous for the interview that I could barely sleep that night.

Long story short - unfortunately (or better - fortunately) I didn’t get an offer from Microsoft. In all honesty I wasn’t as technically prepared as I thought I was. This lesson alone grounded me and I spent several months going back to the basics with the books of Robert Sedgewick, primarily data structures and algorithms for C and C++. I also spent a decent amount of time covering most of the so-called “Thinker” interview questions that would force the candidate to think out of the box. Like the famous question “How do you move mount Fuji” by Microsoft.

Pursuing New Horizons

Leveled-up my skills and knowledge, I applied at VMware in their Sofia office and got an offer. It was a tough decision but I parted ways with my first company and started at the new place.

Coming from a 5-people company, it was quite shocking to me to start at such a big company. My team was awesome, people were really friendly and kind but it was difficult for me to get used to all the processes and the completely different workflow and environment. After one year I started to look for new opportunities. A growing company but with a startup-like culture seemed to be the ideal place for me.

A 13-Year Journey

At that time Telerik was already a popular company in the IT world and with a team of approximately 150 people it perfectly matched the startup-like environment but fastly growing profile. Frankly, I was kind of hesitant to apply at Telerik primarily because at my first company we thought we were competitors and we didn’t like them. Anyways, I did the step, got an offer and the rest is history! This turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made professionally so far.

I’ve spent 13 years with Telerik and then Progress. It’s a long period of time and this only comes to tell that I felt really well there. There are no words to describe how immensely grateful I am to the founders - Vassil, Zarko, Boyko and Hristo, for not only giving me the opportunity and warm welcoming but also for their openness, positivity, creativity, respectfulness and being easily accessible, instilling the culture in people which led to the huge success of Telerik with the still largest deal in Bulgaria’s IT industry when Progress acquired the company.

There are also no words to describe how immensely grateful I am to all the amazing people I’ve met through those 13 years! Sure, it was not always easy. I’ve been in difficult situations, oftentimes we were at different opinions and positions, we’ve had hard conversations but what’s most important - and I’ve realized that just recently - was the solely fact that every single person was genuinely wanting the best for the company, THEIR company! Not for themselves! Which is truly amazing and this is the foundation where great things happen.

When Progress came, it was a smooth transition, at least from my perspective. Progress is a great company and I simply cannot think of a better successor of Telerik’s success in instilling culture people would admire and want to be part of. It was Progress which taught me and helped me grow my not only technical but business skills as well.

A Moment of Reflection and Change

Everything happens for a reason, they say. I would have never been the person I am today without the immense experience I’ve gained through those 13 years. And I am humbled and grateful for having the chance to do that!

- “That’s great to hear but then why did you leave such a wonderful company?”

you probably wonder. And that’s the most logical question. Believe me, I myself wondered for more than two years. Actually there was a friend of mine who told me “Oh, really, I thought you will retire there” when I shared that I’ve left Progress.

I’ve reached a point in my life where I started to think about my job not only as a tool to make a living. Granted, I was enjoying what I was doing at Progress. But more often than not it was difficult to feel fulfilment. I started to ask myself the “What if” question. I was dreaming of something bigger than me, something which would have an impact on humanity. I am a dreamer for a better future, humanity where people are kind, respectful, happy and united! We are all passengers on the mothership Earth, gravitating around a small yellow star far from the center corner of the Milky Way galaxy. When I zoomed-out at that level I realized that I wanted and needed to find something new to put my energy on.

The Impact of COVID-19

Covid also played its role in my decision. I went through some depressive times during the long quarantine and after that. It was very hard, even shocking for me to realize that with this pandemic situation I was not controlling my life to the extent I was used to. And it hit me mentally. I knew that I needed to do something for myself, something that would help me go through this and heal. Then, all of a sudden, without me planning any of it, my ex-colleague from Progress - Faris Sweis - messaged me and invited me for lunch. He wanted to ask me for technical advice related to the possibility of Virtual Reality being applied to the problem his company - Sentur - is solving. To be able to help I needed to understand what the company is doing, what problem does it solve and what its customers are. This is how I got introduced to IFS - Internal Family Systems, which is a very popular in the US modality for doing psychotherapy. IFS is a unique modality and I quickly understood its core concepts and definition of everyone’s internal world. It is very well structured and my engineering background actually helped me in this process. But that’s a topic for another post - IFS from an engineering perspective 🙂

Embracing a New Mission

Sentur today is a mobile application that supports people doing IFS therapy and helps them organize and keep track of their mental world. But it will be more than just that! Our vision is that Sentur becomes an entire platform with multiple modules, access channels, backend portal for therapists, with AI deeply integrated plus much more and we are gradually but steadily going there. If you are curious you can read more about our broader vision here: https://www.sentur.health/

The mental health space genuinely touched me and resonated with me. Especially having gone through some tough times myself. It was one of those Aha! Moments when everything becomes clear. What better way to help humanity than help people be mentally healthier! So, I asked Faris if they are looking for a technical person to join the company and then here I am today. I was afraid to leave Progress but I knew I needed to do that because Sentur and our mission is larger than me and we can make a positive impact at humanity level.

A Journey of Fulfillment

I cannot tell how happy, motivated and fulfilled I am since I started at Sentur! My team - Faris, Sarah and Christina, are amazing, genuinely good people, firmly dedicated to our mission and purpose, we all share the same values and we strive to make the world a better and more connected place. The experience working in a startup is completely different than working in a corporation but this alone deserves a separate blog post, I cannot summarize it within a paragraph.

In Conclusion

If you are reading this - which I hope so, then hopefully it was an interesting story for you :) I'll emphasize once more that everything in life unfolds for a reason! Besides everything else, today I know myself, my different parts, I understand why I react in a certain way and I can freely talk about that. And one thing I now know for sure - we should never stop chasing our dreams and we should listen to not only our rational parts and thoughts but also to our emotional, loving and caring ones!

Stay tuned for more posts to come!