“I value the friendly environment and flexible working hours. Along with that, at Aspire you have many options when it comes to your career path. Maybe when you first join, you don’t know exactly what you will like. When Aspire realizes that you are good at something and that you try your best, they will encourage you and support moving you to another department. ”
Muzna Sabri
Meet Muzna Sabri, Software Engineer by day, cat lover and Mandala artist by night.
Why did you choose IT?
After high school, I was preparing to study Accounting, but one of my friends was studying Business Information Technology, she told me about the course and I became interested. I ended up deciding to do the same course and after I started university I really enjoyed it. After learning programming, I loved it even more.
What are you particularly passionate about within your industry?
In the current scenario, technology is rapidly evolving, so I think it has a great future. I am in the right place to be. We simply can’t live without technology and gadgets anymore.
Why Aspire?
My best friend actually works here and she was the one who told me to apply. I applied and got the job. Aspire is the first and only company I have worked for. A lot of colleagues from my university are also working here and the environment is fun and comfortable.
What does your typical day look like?
I wake up snoozing my alarm because unfortunately, I am not a morning person, so I struggle every day to wake up. I don’t really have a fixed routine and to be honest I hate routines. So everyday is different than others. Sometimes, I have breakfast, sometimes I don’t, sometimes I prepare lunch and sometimes I order. My mom drops me off work and I start by checking my inbox and seeing what new tickets I have to resolve. At 10 am we have a daily stand-up meeting, after that, I usually continue working on the tickets. During lunch, I eat first and then I play foosball with my friends until our break is over. We continue working afterwards, and sometimes have meetings in the afternoon. After work, I always make sure to have dinner with my family and I play with my cat, Putchi. If I have extra time, sometimes I draw but I always leave time to draw on weekends and spend time with my friends and family too. Everything depends on how much time I have and how tired I am. I am extremely passionate about drawing Mandala and Zentangle images, you can see some of my work here. I am not much of a reader, but another big hobby is searching for motivational quotes to add to my drawings. My favorite writer is R.M. Drake, he has great motivational quotes.
Muzna and her Himalayan cat – Putchi.
What do you value the most about the company?
I value the friendly environment and flexible working hours. Along with that, at Aspire you have many options when it comes to your career path. Maybe when you first join, you don’t know exactly what you will like. When Aspire realizes that you are good at something and that you try your best, they will encourage you and support moving you to another department.
What is your favorite movie/series?
The Lion King is by far one of my favorites, especially because it reminds me a lot of my childhood. When it comes to series: I love Friends and Gilmore Girls, I never get bored of watching repeated episodes.
If you had to choose one programming language to use for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?
According to my interest in web development I would say Javascript because you can use it for front-end and back-end and it’s not too strict like other languages such as Java. With Java, I find it more strict when it comes to declaring the type of variables or in specifying the access modifiers for variables, classes, and interfaces, such as ‘private’, ‘protected’ or ‘public’. While in Javascript you only use keywords like ‘Let’ or ‘Var’ or ‘Const’ for variables, you don’t have access-modifiers, and whatever value you give it, it will be known as its type. Life is easier with Javascript as all you have to do is to name a variable and give it the value, if you want to use the same variable with a different type of value, you can do that too :). Sounds messy but in my opinion it’s way more flexible. Unfortunately, you can’t stick with just one language to do everything you want, it obviously depends on what your interests are. The good thing is that here at Aspire we are encouraged to try out new languages and learn new things.
Any tips for new graduates?
Use websites like hackerrank and codecademy. You can develop your problem-solving skills way more if you use these. Codecademy allows you to learn new technologies and programming languages in a really interesting way.
What is something that will surprise your colleagues?
Not everyone knows about my skills in drawing, so I guess people would be surprised.
A collection of Muzna’s drawings
Have you ever thought about going more into the design side of things due to your talent?
Not really, because Design is actually very different to physically drawing. With drawing, you can be more hands-on and creative. It’s actually easier to draw on an iPad than on paper, but for me drawing on paper is very therapeutic.
You have 10 seconds to impress someone. What do you tell them?
10 seconds!!! That’s a really short time! I would probably just laugh and try to impress them with my laughter.
What is one thing you want to do before it is too late?
Travel as much as I can. I find travelling really impressive. Getting to know other cultures, seeing other places other than just the place you grew up in. Each time I travel, I learn new things. I have been to Syria, UAE and Saudi Arabia. I have a lot on my list, but I would love to go to: The Netherlands, Norway (where I can see the Northern Lights) and Europe in general, it looks really pretty and very different to the Middle East.
What are your ambitions for Aspire?
To develop myself more than a Software Engineer in general. To reach a level where I am 100% comfortable with not having my tasks revised.
What’s your biggest personal achievement?
Improving my drawing skills. I learnt everything on my own and I never took any courses.
What’s your biggest professional accomplishment?
When my team won the 2018 Aspire Smart Hackathon. Our idea was to have a mobile app and desktop app that Service Providers could use offer their employees discounts and offers.
Muzna and her team during the Hackathon with Aspire’s Founder and Managing Director, Kaushal Shah.
What superpower would you like to have?
I would love to have the ability to fly. That way, I could go wherever I want, whenever I want and easily start travelling to countries on my wish list.
If you had to eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Hard question to answer, but it would have to be chocolate, I am a chocoholic!
“It’s True” by creativedc is licensed under CC BY 2.0
What’s your life philosophy?
If you never try, you will never know.
