About
A slightly more personal overview of how I work, what I care about, and the path that brought me from iOS into frontend engineering, independent projects.
I’m Mate Papp, a software engineer, lifelong learner, teacher, home barista, and productivity nerd. I’m originally from Hungary and now living in Barcelona, Spain, with my wife.
During the week, I work as a senior frontend engineer at Glovo. Previously, I was also an iOS developer, and I've co-founded a startup. On weekends, I like to build and iterate on my ideas.
Outside work, I enjoy spending time with my friends and family by traveling together, playing board games, or meeting for great coffee or craft beer. A couple of my hobbies are music, podcasts, visiting conferences and meetups, and playing team sports.
Over the years, I’ve become passionate about coffee. Nowadays, I experiment with different brewing methods at home, mostly espresso, V60, AeroPress, and cold brew.
Timeline
Career
2021
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November
Made my first 17,13$ online by running Historico as a paid app for a month.
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October
Wrote my first blog post about writing (meta-writing).
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July
Transitioned to the Web Platform team within Glovo.
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May
Released my first, indie iOS application, Historico to the App Store.
2020
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September
Moved to Barcelona.
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June
Joined the Content & Partners cluster within Glovo as a senior frontend engineer.
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April
Built the first version of matepapp.com to learn and experiment with Tailwind CSS and Next.js.
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March
Partly, because of the pandemic we decided to shut down Cogito and look for other opportunities.
2019
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September
Mentored a half-day workshop at JSConf BP '19 about the beauty and possibilities of JAMstack.
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July
Left Supercharge in order to focus on Cogito full-time. I've led the development team and helped build the foundations and product of Cogito.
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February
Had my first & second Meetup talks, plus a workshop within the company about GraphQL in general, and for iOS Developers.
2018
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August
Moved to the Web team within Supercharge.
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June
Graduated as a Computer Engineer BSc at Budapest University of Technology and Economics. My final thesis was the very early version of Cogito.
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March
Officially founded our startup, Cogito with 5 friends of mine. Cogito is a community based, collaborative learning management platform mainly for universities. Initially, we participated in an incubator program, StartIT@K&H.
2017
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November
Joined one of the biggest digital agencies in Hungary, Supercharge as an iOS developer. I worked on several client projects, from huge mobile and internet banking systems to small, early-stage startup products.
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April
Held a design principles workshop for new joiners at Simonyi Károly College for Advanced Studies .
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March
Started a new job at Fornax ICT as an iOS developer. As part of a cross-functional team, we were building enterprise-level project and resource management applications.
2016
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December
Joined the organizer team of the XIV. Simonyi Conference .
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July
Started my professional career as an iOS developer intern, later junior, at POSSIBLE CEE.
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April
Participated in UX Studio's practice-oriented UX and UI training program.
2015
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November
Started learning iOS application development in my free time.
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October
Joined Schönherz Design Studio, the design-focused volunteer team within Simonyi Károly College for Advanced Studies.
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June - September
Worked for three months in the US as a summer camp staff member. I had a chance to visit New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Niagara Falls, and Los Angeles.
2014
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August
Moved to Budapest and started university at Budapest University of Technology and Economics as a Computer Engineer.
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June
Finished high school at Nagy Lajos Gimnázium Szombathely.
Life outside work
Hobbies
- spending time with friends & family
- brewing coffee
- listening to podcasts
- reading books & articles
- playing team sports
- attending meetups & conferences
- traveling
- functional training
- cycling
- playing board games
- cooking
- learning new things