We talked to Olga Petrova, a Sales Engineer and Developer Advocate at Sencha, a public speaker who’s passionate about JavaScript and React

Olga Petrova has been in the web development business for 15 years. Originally from Russia, she moved to Germany and now works for Sencha, a company producing a JavaScript framework Ext JS and component libraries for React and Angular. In this interview, she talks about her role as a Sales Engineer, the biggest challenges she faced while working with React at Sencha, and recommends a few books for passionate developers. Olga gives a talk at React Advanced in London, Oct 25.

Hello Olga, and welcome to the interview with React Advanced! Please, introduce yourself.

Hi! First of all, I would like to thank you for inviting me to speak at React Advanced. I have been working as a web developer for 14 years. I started working as a desktop developer about 15 years ago when I was still at the university, and shortly after, I have switched to web development. At that time, the web just began to look as “the right way to go” for enterprises. And I was passionate about building large enterprise web apps.

Can you, please briefly describe your previous work experience culminating in your current position?

I am currently working as a sales engineer and developer advocate at Sencha, a company producing a JavaScript framework Ext JS and component libraries for React and Angular. Before joining Sencha, I had been working with Ext JS for 9 years and developed a lot of extensions and custom UI components for it.

How did you emigrate from Russia?

I developed several UI components for a company from Germany while working remotely from my home town. After that, they have asked me to move to Munich and work for them full time.

What do you currently do at Sencha?

I am working with Sencha customers, present Sencha’s products, run demos, trainings, workshops, webinars, develop POC and sample applications, make video courses, everything that customers might need to successfully learn and use our libraries. On the other hand, I collect customer’s requirements, suggestions, ideas and forward them to product managers and engineering teams.

What’s your favorite technology stack and why? What has been your biggest challenge with React so far?

React is definitely my second favorite library after Ext JS :) When React team has introduced Fiber, that was the biggest challenge for us because we needed to completely re-write the core of ExtReact - our component library for React.

Who are your role models and mentors?

I have never thought about this. But when I just started working as a software developer I liked to read books from Martin Fowler.

What are your favorite industry websites, books, or blogs?

I can definitely recommend Design Patterns by Gang of Four, Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture and Refactoring by Martin Fowler.

How would you finish the sentence: Successful female developers should ... ?

Write a clean code :)

Do you have any hobbies? What are they?

Yes, I like rock climbing, hiking, snowboarding, and sailing.

Are you excited about the upcoming conference in London? What are you going to talk about and what are your expectations from the event?

Sure, I am going to talk about “Visual feature engineering for Machine Learning with React”. I think it will be an awesome opportunity to meet a lot of passionate developers.

Reserve a spot at React Advanced Conference in London, Oct 25.*

The interview was prepared with the assistance of Marina Vorontsova, a copywriter from Soshace.com. Soshace is a hiring platform for web developers: hire a developer or apply for a remote job.

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