Zardosht Hodaie

Zardosht Hodaie

Software Engineer

Welcome

Hello. I am Zardosht Hodaie /zardoʃt hodɑi:/, an enthusiastic software engineer in love with his profession. Donald Knuth says: “Software is hard”; That is probably one of the reasons why I love it :)

Writing code and seeing it work fascinates me: from the first days that I wrote simple GW-BASIC programs as a teenager and still today as I write much more complex software. Through my career, I’ve had the opportunity to build software in various roles in projects from research and the industry and with different technologies ranging from mainframe to deep learning.

Beside programming, I practice Karate and love listening to classical music.

Short Bio

I was born and raised in Iran and currently live in Germany. I started my adventures with computers as a teenager, as my father bought an IBM 286 PC to write his Ph.D. thesis. It had a 12 MHz CPU, 1 MB of RAM and 40 MB of hard disk and a monochrome display (I am laughing as I write this). I upgraded the RAM later to 4 MB and the HDD to 640 MB and added a 33.6 kbps Modem. Through this PC I discovered my passion for computers and learning about them. From that time on, I knew I want to study computer science. My adventures continued with solving computer problems of my dad, friends and relatives, learning MS-DOS, learning programming (GW-BASIC, then Pascal, then C++), and so on.

However as it turned out, I didn’t first study computer science, but agricultural engineering. More specifically, Agricultural Machinery. It is mixture of mechanical engineering and agriculture. During that time though, I earned my money by working in a small consulting company (writing VB 6) and translating articles for a computer monthly and sometimes translating computer books.

In 2007 I came to Germany and started my bachelor studies in computer science in Technical University of Munich (TUM). I continued with my masters in computer science also in TUM. During my studies I also worked as a programmer (working student) in different companies and in the university.

My goal was always to get a Ph.D. in computer science. After my masters I went to University of Hamburg to work on an EU funded research project for my Ph.D. However after about a year I quitted that project – it didn’t make sense to me and I was not happy with what I did. I came back to Munich and worked for a consulting company. In 2015 I started another attempt at Ph.D. in the Chair for Applied Software Engineering at TUM, which I finished in 2020. During my Ph.D. years I worked on many different projects and taught classes on Software Engineering. My Ph.D. thesis is about Human-Computer-Interaction, Interactive Tabletops, and Augmented Reality.

Highlights

I have been lucky to work in many different settings in the software industry and with and many different people. This has allowed me to gather experience and develop valuable non-technical skills. The following points highligh these skills and my work personality:

  • Very strong sense of software solutions, software quality, architectures, and development processes: I have seen so many software development projects in my career.
  • Research Experience: EU projects, university research, literature review, writing papers, supervising student theses.
  • Understanding of technical systems: I have a second bachelor degree in mechanical engineering of agricultural machinery, and had something like a personal maker space as I grew up.
  • Understanding and applying mathematics: Out of personal interest and because of my education I am comfortable in understanding and applying mathematical models behind technical systems.
  • Management skills: During my doctoral studies I had the opportunity to manage teams of students to create software for real customers in a very authentic and challenging settings.
  • Fighter spirit: I don’t give up till I see it work
  • Appreciation for step-by-step improvement: Because of my Karate training I developed a very strong understanding of step-by-step and gradual improvement (Kaizen). Same applies to my experience in iterative approach to software development.
  • Love and passion for what I do: I don’t see my job as a source of money by as source of happiness.
  • Strong inter-cultural and social understanding: I have the privilege of having many friends and working with many people from different nationalities. I have two nationalities myself (German, Iranian). I set a high value on understanding the people and why they do what they do.
  • Friendliness and team spirit: Friendliness, respect, mutual appreciation, and team spirit have the highest value for me.

How to find me

Send me a message on LinkedIn or send me a mail at contact.