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About me
Hi! I'm Nicolas Mazzoleni, and I help you to grow your web services.
I started to be interested in computer science in 2016, thanks to a friend - I still remember when he was showing me his web development skills, I was mind-blowed.
My first website was a wordpress e-commerce store that I built in 2015 (unfortunately it's not up anymore). I was working as a store manager in a bicycle repair shop and took the initiative to sell our goods online to bring customers in.
After that, I went on another path and did some more handy jobs that I really enjoyed at that time. I was younger and wild. But I knew in the bottom of my heart that I was seeing myself working on computers later on. At this time, I was playing a lot with Final Cut Pro to make mountain-bikes GoPro edits to share my hobby to the world. And this is when I started to use a Mac as a personal computer.
The experiences above are related to a move I made in 2013 to move to the West Coast of Canada, near Vancouver, BC. A dream came true and I decided to jump into this unknown experience by myself. Leave school and friends to go ride mountain-bikes in the most popular places in the world. A trip that lasted 3 years and changed me in a number aspects of myself.
During my life in Canada I met Zach, a true Canadian citizen that was working as a web developer in a marketing agency. It started to show me his daily tasks an I was amazed by the complexity and the diversity of his job. I started to have a deep interest in what he was doing and was staying with him when he was working from home to learn some basic HTML skills. This is when in 2017 I decided to change the direction of my life.
In 2017 I decided to move back to France, to be closer to my family and long time friends I had around there. I was coming back with no particular degree in the fields I was now interested on (computers) but I was determined to learn and follow a web development course. I finally found a school in Grenoble, FRANCE to learn deeper and be able to find my first job. It was an 18 months course with 6 months as a full time student and 12 months in a company as an intern. I have found an internship at Itris Automation, a software company that trusted me to be part of their small IT team of 3 people.
This school was very intense, imagine being a complete newby in the field and learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Php through multiple frameworks in 6 months, then work in the real world right after. Obviously we learned the basics of each, then each person developed their own preference while using. For myself, I was enjoying working with JavaScript in general with a good sensibility for front-end developments.
After this great experience, I have found a job as a full-stack developer at Propulse-Lab, a Swiss company. I started as a junior. It was also very intense, this company was a start-up at that time and everything needed to be build. We had a ton of work but it was very satisfying.
Thanks to this experience, I have been able to build good skills as a web developer, by using technologies like Node.js and AWS. These two were combined with CI/CD and deployed as AWS lambdas for the back-end.
I worked happily this way for years – and then, the pandemic came along and changed everything. I decided to take some time for myself, take my van and go explore Scandinavia. The trip lasted for 6 months.
You might enjoy this profile if any of the following values resonate with you:
I value autonomy: my time is extremely important to me.
I want to take ownership of the things that I make. I did not get in to creative work just to crank out work for someone else.
I want to learn about the things that I care about the most – not the rigid requirements of what only makes someone else happy.
I want more out of my life than sitting predictably at my office desk every day. I want to push, encounter new situations, and explore.
I want to have input on what I should work on for the day. I don’t want to just rent out my brain space for someone else’s agenda.
I want to collaborate with others who are just as passionate about working as I am.
I believe in listening to my body and my mind. If I’m not feeling like I’m putting out strong work, I should stop and come back when I’m ready. I don’t want to be made to feel bad for taking workdays off.
I believe in the importance of remote work, and I prioritize my work environment over a predictable commute and cubicle.
I enjoy applying all of the ideas and inspiration that surround me to a project of my own.
I believe that the time I spend working is, at best, indirectly related to the value of the things that I create.
