The Xata Experience
Tags: webdev, serverless, career, database
Published: 2022-06-16 16:27:53

I’m joining [Xata](https://xata.io/) as their new **Senior Developer Experience Engineer**. Take a minute, grab your poison of choice (ginger ale, sparkling water, whatever), and celebrate it with me! **I made it into Developer Relations!**

This is a culmination of a long, long preparation time, thought, self-doubt, and work. I feel proud, honored, and humbled that such an amazing company like Xata decided to bet on me for this.

## What's Xata? 🦋

The go-to serverless database. If we talked about web dev for 2 minutes or more, you know I'm a big fan of serverless. I believe it enables developers to build performant, reliable, and complete software experiences by removing friction from processes. Xata brings all that to databases and carries a pretty big punch.

Under the surface, Xata combines the best of relational and non-relational databases. Above the surface, it's a REST API. I'll say that again for emphasis: you don't write queries in our Xatabases (I like bad puns, and today I'm celebrating. Deal with it 😏).

It feels like a spreadsheet, Airtable if you will. It scales like a full-fledged database. And it's _fast_ thanks to high availability of the API - we handle distribution. But let me save some of that for later posts. It's too much and I can't pack it all in one. Besides, today we party! 🍻

## Why Xata?!

First and foremost: the people.

![Twitter chat between Tejas and Atila: Tejas inviting Atila for an interview](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/z9bxswxujs8ikl86kvmu.png)
<figcaption>Tejas (finally!) inviting me for a chat </figcaption>



And it was like that from the get-go. Everyone at Xata is passionate about the product, message, and values. For example, Xata doesn't just *talk* about supporting diversity in tech. Instead, from our founder and CEO to the board, it’s all women. We even have inclusive swag, from women’s cut t-shirts to earrings. This is how Xata goes the extra mile in welcoming and recognizing underrepresented groups in tech.

{% embed https://twitter.com/xata_io/status/1527655799652229122 %}

I know we're all sick of the cis-white-man talking about inclusiveness and diversity. And this is one of the only times you'll see me *talking* because as a Xatapillar (that's how we call ourselves 😉) we encourage each other by **doing**.

Now, let's talk about the code. Heck, it was fun getting acquainted with our Developer Experience. If you haven't watched [Tejas' talk at Reactathon](https://youtu.be/0qK2_wi4t3k?t=19584), I encourage you to do so (just finish reading first!). He [says](https://youtu.be/0qK2_wi4t3k?t=20874): “At Xata we work really hard to get you a way to leave. Because we want to have a product so good, you will want to use it”. This view permeates all layers of the company, and this is our take on a kick-ass product and company vision.

Now, for the frontend developers reading this: even if you aren't a TypeScript aficionado, you may agree the self-documentation and auto-completion powered by strong-typing scream "developer experience" the loudest.

TypeScript is a first-class citizen for us. You sync your project with your Xata DB (database)  via the CLI (Command-Line Interface), run one node script task, and everything is strongly typed – the TypeScript client is ready to be instantiated, and you can start fetching.

Notice: I said **fetching**, not **querying**.

In Xata, you can work from end to end without ever writing an SQL query–it's all REST. It's like never leaving home: you know where all the cutlery is.

And it doesn't stop there, though. Things you're not used to getting for free in DBs are there too: instant migrations, branching, etc. We may still be in closed-beta, but our [docs](https://docs.xata.io) and [SDK](https://github.com/xataio/client-ts) are all open for you to see, check them out!

The only thing I am actually sorry for is missing the first offsite.

![Xata team having dinner](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/waj4lsltxfm1muyykyub.jpeg)
<figcaption> My awesome new team having dinner without me</figcaption>


## What's coming?

Integrations. Integrations. Integrations. Let me know what kind of use-case, examples, proof-of-concept, and scenarios you want to see Xata kicking names and taking ass.

![Drax and Mantis in “Avengers: Infinity War”](https://c.tenor.com/THlfTJGB1jgAAAAC/kick-names-take-ass.gif)

There's a [survey](https://atila.io/survey) if you want access where you can tell me what I should work on first. But if you don't feel like filling a form, you can also [tweet](https://atila.io/twitter), no strings attached. I'm really interested in hearing.

## Take this for the trip

Thanks a lot for reading this and celebrating with me. As you may have noticed, I'm quite excited. And I want to share this excitement with you. So I'm collecting information on what people want to do with Xata. [Share](https://atila.io/twitter) your idea with me, which features you'd like to see and use. I promise to share this with the team and it will be a great help for our future decisions.

We need people with good ideas to join in, try it out, and help us shape Developer Experience for Serverless Databases!

## By the way…

If you read all this, and thought “heck, yes!”, I just wanted you to know that we are hiring across the board. We want to hear from you! All backgrounds and all walks of life are more than welcome to join in, especially women and people of color. Piece of advice: don't read the job description as a checklist. If you feel like joining, tell us!

And, because I'm a sentimental old man, I'll close this post with a picture from when Tejas and I decided we would work together:

![Tejas and Atila in Berlin](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/r61t3rqw194jrt1mt3ww.jpeg)
<figcaption>Tejas and Atila, aka DevRel team at Xata.io</figcaption>