About

Hi there! 👋

My name is Arunas Skirius, and I'm a freelance developer specialising on Laravel, Vue.js, and TailwindCSS, with a little DevOps sprinkled on the side. I help companies improve their product by making it faster, more reliable, secure, and fully tested.

I have been professionally developing web applications since 2016 after graduating from an intense 12-week bootcamp at the Makers Academy. It has helped tremendously in developing my learning, teamwork, and of course - development skills. I've been creating programs and webpages way before that, but I have never done it at a full-time capacity before 2016 which I consider to be the start of my fantastic career and best-to-come years.

2016 // First job - C#, .Net Core, Angular 1.x

Straight after the bootcamp I've landed a job as a Junior Frontend Developer. A completely new and terrifying environment: C# language, .Net Core and Angular 1.x frameworks, none of which I have ever laid my eyes on before applying for the job. Regardless, I learnt quick and soon became a valuable team member. I have learnt a lot from the experience over there. Shipping real production code which thousands of real people use was a completely different feeling from what I did just just a few weeks ago in the bootcamp.

2017 // Second job - Windows forms, Laravel, Vue.js, Prestashop

Few months passed by and I got invited to join a company my friend was working at. The C# knowledge I had gained proved useful - developing a native Windows app from scratch was my first assignment. New tasks and new challenges! I love learning, and I loved my new job. Later, I was able to jump onto their internal systems and that's the first time I laid my eyes on Laravel. Love at first sight, I'm telling you! From that moment on, I promised myself to stick to it and become the best I can. A lot of Laravel projects are also built with Vue.js as the frontend, which also seemed like a breath of fresh air compared to Angular 1.x or jQuery. They go hand-in-hand very well and so became my choice of frameworks for any future side projects.

2018 // Going remote

Long before I was working as a developer full-time, I dreamed of working remotely on a laptop, sitting in a café somewhere sunny. Well, it happened! A couple of years of working 9-5 in an office has finally paid off and I got myself a full-time job as a freelancer in 2018 at a Danish company called EasyPractice, working on a SaaS product.

Laravel and Vue.js was their choice of frameworks, so I immediately fit in and contributed from day one! Working remotely has been a completely different experience with a brand new set of challenges.

2021 // Becoming Technical Team Lead

In May, 2021, I have worked at EasyPractice for nearly 3 years. I have accumulated a lot of knowledge and responsibilities, and I was already helping my team and the product a lot. That's when I was offered to become a Team Lead for our technical, backend-focused team of developers.

Once again, it brought a whole new set of challenges and skills to learn - project management, interviewing candidates, team meetings, etc.

What is this blog about?

In this blog I share my learnings and experiences from being a Laravel/VueJS developer, as well as some DevOps (server management, operations) which I also do quite a bit of in my daily job. Hopefully, you'll find my content helpful. Don't forget to subscribe below to hear more about my new learnings, tips and tricks.

I am currently building an embedded notification inbox, and a billing portal for Laravel. Check these out and let me know what you think!

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a wonderful journey becoming a better developer yourself!