Why Taxsim ?
So why Taxsim it was an interesting journey to get here, and like so many businesses they start through solving problems from personal experience.
I was a Landscape gardner for over 15 years, yes you read that correctly I was in the construction industry, so how did I get to start a tech company. Well I am also a fisherman, sorry stop, this has nothing to do with tech either, I decided to create a fishing app to store my catches with no prior experience with code or much with IT at all other than limited experience with documents and spreadsheets. I set about teaching myself how to code and create an application to download images and store data of my fishing expeditions, Needless to say this took me around 2 years to come up with a website that looked a bit like something from the nineties and although awful it was functional but more importantly it was the catalyst for me to start a new career.
Any job will do.
I just needed a Job, despite being told that my chances where slim by recruiters and friend's I decided to go for it, with my cv out to loads of jobs on indeed, monster to name a few I got a phone interview with a company called Streeva in Guildford.
Great all went well I seemed to hold my own and got a face to face and ultimately landed my first job in my new career as a frontend engineer (this means working on the public facing part of the software ie website).
2 years in and unfortunately I am made redundant due to funding, theres no bad blood I am so glad to have worked here absorbing as much as I could through podcast, blogs and most of all my mentor at streeva, yes at 42 years old you can still have a mentor thanks chris.
November 2019 I now have 2 years experience and when I put out my cv I am bombarded with interview offers, now I know what direction I want to take and cam be a bit choosey. not wanting to waste peoples valuable time I cull this down to 3 immediately and land a job at Infosum still a frontend engineer working on a data platform, lots of data with modern javascript great exactly what I wanted.
Boom February 2020 and Corvid-19 hits and I am furloughed which is great 3 months with my family and time to learn more of the technologies I am now using, but also the fear that this may lead to redundancy.
React is the framework being used at Infosum so I need to build something from scratch to get my head around the fundamentals of React and Taxsim is born. A tax application that would suit sole traders and self employed individuals within the construction industry a fusion of my past jobs.