Mews R&D Check-In with Petr Bambušek
In this episode of the R&D Check-in at Mews, host Jan Meissner speaks with Petr Bambušek, Senior Staff Frontend Engineer, about how frontend engineering and the Staff Engineer role have evolved in a fast-scaling tech company. Petr reflects on his path from early startup “do-everything” work to frontend specialization and later engineering leadership roles, including […]
Mews R&D Check-In with Markéta Willis
In this episode, Jan Meissner sits down with Markéta Willis, our Software Engineer and content creator, to explore her shift from languages into IT, and what she learned along the way. They discuss how breaking into tech is not just about learning to code, but managing the mental and emotional challenges that come with a […]
Mews R&D Check-In with Alex Ratman
In this episode, our host Jan Meissner sits down with Alex Ratman, Senior Software Engineer at Mews and a self-proclaimed observability enthusiast. Alex shares the story of how a performance gap on the customer side led his team to build the first true observability solution for frontend engineering at Mews—moving from being “blind” to having […]
Mews R&D Check-In with Sofía Santos
In this episode, our host Jan Meissner sits down with Sofía Santos, Staff Service Designer in the Growth Tribe at Mews. Sofía shares her unique perspective on what it means to design for the entire customer journey—from the first interaction with a brand to the complex onboarding and support systems that keep a product running. […]
2025 at Mews: Our R&D community year in review
Annual wrap-up of your favorite R&D community, where you may have met us and what content we produced.
Mews R&D MiniPodcast with Rui Oliveira
In this episode, our host Jan Meissner sits down with Rui Oliveira, Senior Product Manager in Mews Platform Enablement Tribe. Rui shares his unconventional path into product—from studying electrical engineering and building betting automations at his university, to shaping product across industries like e-commerce, agriculture, manufacturing, and now hospitality at Mews. The conversation dives into […]
Mews R&D MiniPodcast with Jiří Vinárek
In this episode, our host Jan Meissner sits down with Jiří Vinárek, our Staff Data Scientist, to demystify the world of data. What’s the real difference between data engineers, analysts, and scientists? How do these roles work together to transform raw information into powerful insights? And why does good data feel a bit like high-octane […]
Mews R&D MiniPodcast with Roger Ribas
In this episode, our host sits down with Roger Ribas, Senior Engineering Manager of Technical Security at Mews, to explore how building a proactive security program can protect both products and customers. Roger shares how his team approaches security beyond development, tackling live threats, phishing, AI risks, and operational resilience, while enabling product teams to […]
When Restaurant Staff Outsmart Your Technology: Lessons from F&B Masters at CoolRooms Hotels
Mews’ product team in charge of our Point of Sales (POS) system—the software restaurants use to take orders and process payments—went to visit one of our hotel clients, CoolRooms Palacio de Atocha, and had follow-up conversations with the team at CoolRooms Palacio de Villapanés in Sevilla.
Mews R&D MiniPodcast with Stephan Delbos
In this episode, our host sits down with Stephan Delbos, Senior Director of Product Knowledge Activation at Mews, to explore how bringing documentation, education, and knowledge management together can transform the user experience. Stephan shares how his team is shaping an AI-first approach to content creation, from internal GPT-powered documentation to smarter onboarding through Mews […]
Mews R&D MiniPodcast with Richard Schäfer
In this episode, our host chats with Richard Schäfer, Director of Developer Experience at Mews, about what it takes to create a seamless experience for engineers and how developer tooling can scale with a growing company. From his journey from engineer to DX leader to why small teams don’t always need dedicated DX, Richard shares […]
Mews R&D MiniPodcast with Richard Valtr
In this episode, our R&D Community Lead, Jan Meissner, goes freestyle with Mews founder Richard Valtr in what might just be our first-ever “mini–maxi” podcast. From what a founder’s day really looks like to why staying connected to customers of all sizes matters, Richard shares candid thoughts on leadership, culture, and the fine balance between […]
Mews R&D MiniPodcast with Vladimír Pinďura
In this episode, Jan Meissner sits down with Vladimír Pinďura, Engineering Manager in Connectivity, to explore the challenges and rewards of leading a distributed team. Vladimír shares how he keeps his team engaged across distances, measures success beyond numbers, and fosters continuous learning through dedicated sessions. They discuss the impact of visiting customers in person […]
Mews and Hey Lou HOTELS Hackathon: A First-of-Its-Kind Collaboration
In a groundbreaking initiative, Mews partnered with our customer Hey Lou HOTELS to host our very first joint hackathon.
Mews R&D MiniPodcast with Magdalena Piątek
In this episode, our R&D Community Lead, Jan Meissner, talks with Magdalena Piątek, Senior Software Engineer at Mews, about her inspiring transition from frontend to backend — and how that shift led her to lead the development of our multicurrency feature in the fintech domain. Magda shares how curiosity, a supportive team, pair coding sessions, […]
Mews R&D MiniPodcast with Adi Tamches
In this episode, our R&D Community Lead, Jan Meissner, talks with Adi Tamches, Senior Product Designer at Mews, who focuses on crafting the guest experience — from check-in to check-out and beyond. Adi dives into what it means to design for B2C users in a predominantly B2B product, and how real guest feedback and close […]
Mews R&D MiniPodcast with Sylvia Tang
In this episode, our R&D Community Lead, Jan Meissner, chats with Sylvia Tang, Product Manager in the Connectivity team at Mews. Sylvia shares her journey—from studying at hotel school to starting in Mews customer support, all the way to her current role in product. With a deep passion for numbers and systems thinking, Sylvia found […]
Mews R&D MiniPodcast with Ondra Heřmánek
In this episode, our R&D Community Lead, Jan Meissner, sits down with Ondra Heřmánek, Staff Backend Engineer and true Mews veteran. Together, they explore Ondra’s fascinating career path — from hands-on backend engineering to leading teams as Head of Backend and Engineering Manager, and ultimately returning to his roots as a Staff Engineer. What drives […]
Mews R&D MiniPodcast with Václav Kučera
In this new episode, our R&D Community Lead, Jan Meissner, chats with Václav Kučera, our Staff Backend Engineer and passionate mechanical keyboard enthusiast. They dive deep into Václav’s love for custom keyboards, his role as a Czech mechanical keyboard meetup organizer, and why this niche hobby resonates so strongly with engineers. Get ready for clicky […]
From Medicine to Mews: How Míša Trčková Changed Her Career and Broke into IT
For Míša Trčková, now a software engineer at Mews, the journey into IT wasn’t paved by a technical degree. In this interview, Míša shares how she broke into the field, landed her first job, and found a company where she finally feels she can grow.
2024 at Mews: Our R&D community year in review
Just as Spotify brings you a Wrapped up of your favorite songs and artists for the year, we present our annual wrap-up of your favorite R&D community, where you may have met us and what blog posts we’ve published. In last year’s recap, we made a “resolution” outlining what you could expect from us in […]
Building strong relationships: Insights from R&D community management
In the world of tech startups, building meaningful relationships inside and outside the company is essential. In this blog post, we’ll explore the joys and challenges of managing the community at Mews, including how we bring people together, boost collaboration, and grow our community in exciting ways. Our internal and external communities Our R&D community […]
Life as a developer on the spectrum 4/4
Chapter 4 This is the fourth and final chapter in my blog post series about being a developer on the spectrum. In this chapter I am exploring what employers and employees are doing and what they can be doing with employees that are on the spectrum. What can employers do? To create an inclusive and […]
Life as a developer on the spectrum 3/4
Chapter 3 This is the third chapter in my life as a developer on the spectrum. In this chapter I am exploring how I thrive as a developer with ASD my nightmares and my coping mechanisms. How do I thrive as a developer with ASD? One of the key things about working with ASD is […]
Life as a developer on the spectrum 2/4
Chapter two This is the second chapter in my life as a developer on the spectrum. In this chapter, I am exploring where I fit into the spectrum after accepting that I am a person on the spectrum. Where do I fit into the spectrum as a person? From an early age, I thrived in […]
Life as a developer on the spectrum 1/4
Chapter one Intro As I am starting this post, my anxiety skyrockets. But it is something I need to do. I will be exploring my experiences as a developer on the spectrum – the beginning, the journey, and now working as a staff engineer at Mews. What I am trying to deliver is a story […]
2023 at Mews: Our R&D community year in review
A story about how we at the Mews approached 2022 (and previous) event booths’ planning, designing, and building. Including tips from our team.
7+1 LinkedIn tips for (not only) juniors in tech
“But I have nothing to share. I don’t have experience, and nobody is interested in me.” Are you a junior in IT or switching careers to tech? Does the sentence above (or its parts) sound familiar? It’s perfectly normal, but also, it’s WRONG! They are interested in you; they just don’t know about you. A […]
Why guest journey and user disengagement matter in modern hospitality
Introduction Why is the tech and hospitality industry discussing the importance of the guest journey and user disengagement today? What it means and why are just a few of the things I will explore in this article. Then, I will take you on my journey in today’s hospitality world and look at some of the […]
Reconnecting, recalibrating, and rediscovering at NDC Oslo 2023
Introduction As I sit here, reminiscing about the whirlwind of experiences from the past week, a smile inadvertently finds its way onto my face. For the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic, I attended a live, in-person event. The NDC Oslo 2023 wasn’t just a conference – it felt like a homecoming, a reunion of […]
Embracing remote work in tech: Employee benefits and tips
Introduction The advent of remote work in the technology sector, combined with the effects of COVID, has revolutionized the way we work and opened doors to a better quality of life for individuals living with chronic diseases such as psoriasis. In addition, the flexibility of remote work allows people to spend time in warmer climates […]
How being a professional athlete helped me move into tech
Why pro athletes are considered good employees? A story about what sport and tech have in common.
Why domain knowledge matters in the tech industry
As a chef with over a decade of experience in the hospitality industry, I found myself wondering: “What can you possibly bring to the table?”
Event booth story: The Mews spirit, WebExpo, and two machines
A story about how we at the Mews approached 2022 (and previous) event booths’ planning, designing, and building. Including tips from our team.
2022 at Mews: Our tech community year in review
This is the overview of our tech team’s contributions to the community last year. It’s also a testament to all the colleagues who were part of it. Thank you!
Microservices: Synchronous communication with gRPC
Describing synchronous communication between microservices using gRPC, discussing highlights and challenges, and showing a simple example written in .NET 6.
Overcoming information overload
Data and information attack us from every angle. Let me guide you through my journey of learning how to work with it and eventually finding a system that works.
How to get Web Summit right: The Mews survival guide
Web Summit is Europe’s biggest tech conference, bringing over 70,000 attendees to Lisbon each year. This is the story of four data analysts traveling to Portugal this November and discovering what all the buzz is about. We’re going to share our tips for nailing the conference, what we liked (and didn’t like), and what we […]
Inside Mews’ buddy system: Stories from our team
Four stories about what it is a buddy system at Mews. You’ll find the responsibilities, benefits, and tips we’ve put together over the last couple of years.
How important are personal relationships and empathy in organizations?
Let’s take a look at how mutual trust, empathy, and openness will help you develop the right relationships within your team, shorten and strengthen the feedback cycle, and eventually bring your organization to a new level.
8 things to expect as a working mom of an infant
There are certain things you can and should expect either as a working mom of an infant or just being surrounded by one (or more). Uncensored.
Get the best out of your candidates in the hiring process
Finding the right talent relies on the efficiency of your interview process. Let’s reveal 6 ways to lead fruitful discussions with your candidates!
MMA, MTG, CS:GO… Lukas’ life in abbreviations
Lukas, another developer, hailing from Matfyz. Why does he enjoy what he does at Mews? What is his most expensive MTG card? And what’s Angel’s Share?
Finding a full-time remote working role
We’ve all had to change our ways of working during the pandemic, but what happens when you liked working from home, and want to continue doing that forever.
Why I implanted an RFID chip in my hand
Adam’s story of one idea, one RFID chip and unlimited opportunities…
Paired Sourcing: Why is it Important?
Recently, I asked my LinkedIn network the question; ‘Is Talent Acquisition / Line Manager paired sourcing a valuable exercise?’. This is the story…
Community management… what’s the point?
This is the story of building, running and constantly improving the technical community at Mews.
We’re all capable of doing good, so let’s do it right
“Everyone can help – not everyone realizes it, though.” Here, I’m quoting myself, Community Manager at Mews. Not because I believe there’s no one more suitable than myself to quote, but because I’ve been able to contribute to the common good as part of my current role, and I’d like to take the opportunity to […]
How has Mews made me a better developer (even before I joined)
“Well, this is interesting!” I silently uttered to myself as I was digging deeper into a topic that now, after the experience, I think anybody who’s serious about software development should learn. Yet, if it wasn’t for my interview at Mews, which incentivized me and inspired me to learn the topic, I probably wouldn’t learn […]
Beaches, Beers, Archaeology, and Changing Careers at 30
If you’re living in Prague and you know an American, they most likely came over to teach English. However, not many of them stick with it for too long, and that’s the story for Tim. Surprisingly, after his short-lived English teaching career, Tim’s passion for archaeology got him interested in programming and computers in general. […]
Work Remotely Like a Pro: Digital nomading your post-pandemic life
When I had the idea to write this blog post, my main mission was to show that working remotely is something that no one should be afraid of, and I want to share some tips and tricks that I have learned throughout the last 6 years of doing it myself. This is not by any […]
Employed-preneur
Recently I celebrated a personal milestone—not only was it my first anniversary with Mews, but also my first anniversary of being an employee. You got that right. I was hired for my first job at 30-years-old. Previously, I was an entrepreneur, running a business in the digital/web sphere and providing contractor jobs for over 15 […]
Standa: fan of Bob Dylan, algorithmic randomness, and Calvin Coolidge
The 30th US president, Calvin Coolidge, was known to be a man of few words. Luckily, that wasn’t the case with Standa during our interview. We covered everything from the hard life of a PhD student and changing musical taste to a recently developed passion for road bikes. Standa gave us some tips about where […]
Code & Tell
Your own colleagues are your most important community. That’s how I see the role of the Community Manager in a technological company. Of course, you need to make sure that the developers talk at conferences, meetups and that they write blog posts. Simply sharing their knowledge and experience. However, even this needs to be done […]
Science in hospitality? Talk to these guys…
Welcome to the second edition of Meet Mews Partner Devs, this time with the guys behind Pace who aren’t just “anyone”. A couple of years ago, when we created an open API for anyone to integrate with our application, Pace helped to shape it, and we’ve seen them grow and push the limits of hospitality […]
Connecting devs & product: Key lessons learned
In early 2020 we decided to kick off a series of events bringing insights from engineering leaders at Czech tech scaleups (as we like to call companies already past the initial startup phase). Up to now, we have organized three TechUncovered panel discussions. The previous two events focused on scaling tech teams and leading tech […]
A different kind of Magic Mike: From hostel reception to teaching coding
Yet another extraordinary life is about to be revealed in our interview series: this time it’s Mike, our QA whiz. Before he turned his life around by finding bugs and making our system better, he gained experience in hospitality by working in hostels and Mews’ customer care. If you’re not afraid of deep conversations, he’s […]
Programmer’s Best Friend: The Mechanical Keyboard
Other professionals use professional tools, yet we spend our whole day in front of a $5 rubber dome keyboard. Investing in a nice mouse for gaming or productivity is nothing new, so why are keyboards neglected? It is the single most touched item of developers (especially Linux nerds with tiling window managers), might as well […]
Joshua, veteran developer who can fix your vintage synthesizer
Fans of our blog already know the Meet MewsDevs interview series where we bring you the extraordinary lives of the people behind our technology. But why stop there? Thanks to our open API the Mews ecosystem is full of interesting companies and tech people behind them. That’s why you’re reading the first Meet Mews Partner […]
Learning is good: no matter if it’s management, piano or F#
I was really looking forward to interviewing Pepa one day. I had observed him for months, almost like David Attenborough observes emperor penguins mating in Antarctica. And, indeed, he is a unique species. Talking to him, you wouldn’t think that he was born after the Czech hockey team won the gold medal at the Nagano […]
Marketa, linguist who found love in SQL and Portugal
Marketa’s first contact with Mews? A rejection email. More than a year later? She’s talking to me for the fifth Meet MewsDevs interview. It was a real pleasure to do this one (again, long distance) because how often do you see a transformation from linguist to data analyst? Not too often… and when you add […]
Amsterdam: the city of… .NET talks
The fear I hate flying. Even though it’s said to be the safest method of transportation, my fear of heights, fear of speed, and claustrophobia don’t really make it feel that way. And if something goes wrong, you’re doomed. Sooner or later, everybody found out about me and flying. Some were a bit surprised, especially […]
Birds, commuting, and Flutter — that’s our App Guy!
Who do we have this time for the fourth edition of Meet MewsDev interview? The Head of Application Development (or, simply, App Guy) Kirill and QA Engineer Natalia (Tasha) have been married for six years and are truly inseparable. Tasha chose not to be the main star of this piece, but during the interview it […]
Scaling tech teams: Key lessons learned
The very first TechUncovered event focused on the challenges of building and scaling engineering teams, career development, and maturing processes. Scaling tech teams is not a simple task, it’s tough work. As we witness the Prague startup scene constantly growing and getting more and more into the scaleup stage, we decided to bring together some […]
Classic cliché: computer nerds. If you thought they were extinct, think again….
For the first time in the short history of the Meet MewsDevs interview series, I decided it would be a good idea to interview two people at once. Alexander (frontend dev) and Vaclav (backend dev) have a lot in common. They both study at Charles University Faculty of Mathematics and Physics (Matfyz), live in the […]
Lunch Automation for Developers: The Story of Kebab Wars
In Mews we often use phrases like bring hotels to the 21st century or join the revolution of the hospitality industry. One of our T-shirts has the catchphrase Automate this!. What differentiates Mews from most other companies is the way we truly mean what we say. Even internally. Hell, mostly internally. We often automate even […]
Automated zero-downtime migrations
Mews is used by hotels all over the world in various time zones leaving us with no room for maintenance downtime. This fact and our aim for continuous deployment left us no other choice than zero downtime deployments, as having even short outages is obviously not an option. However, these non-breaking migrations are executed manually […]
MIT Future Compute 2019
I’m gonna tell you a story,I’m gonna tell you about my townI’m gonna tell you a big fat story, babyAw, it’s all about my town <a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hcq7FaZSQbQ”>The best Boston song of all time</a> I have always been fascinated by MIT and the values it represents. This dates back to my computer science undergraduate years where […]
Meet the MewsDevs – Daria
The second edition of Meet the MewsDevs is here! After Backend dev (and DOTA lover) Jarda, it’s time for Daria and the story of one Russian’s struggle to buy sunflower seeds in Prague and going from chemical engineer to Frontend developer at Mews. Hey, Daria, you’ve been with us for about 2 years, right? No, […]
Path to Continuous Deployment
As our company and (especially) tech teams grow, our need for better deployment processes increases too. We started with tedious, manual tasks and through a process of continuous improvement over the course of the past 6 years, reached full automation. Watch the talk I gave at ReactiveConf about how we have achieved it: You can […]
Mews Challenge
At the latest WebExpo conference we had a mini-game in our booth (or 2 mini-games to be precise – tests for designers and developers). The candidate selects one right answer per question and had only one attempt to pass the test. The ranking was done by the number of correct answers and by the time […]
Meet the MewsDevs – Jarda
Over the years working closely with our development team I’ve realized that I am surrounded by people with such random and extraordinary natures that it would be a shame if we didn’t tell the world about them. You are reading the first piece of what we envision as a series of Meet the MewsDevs interviews. […]
Mews, ČVUT, Stanford and coding
Students first “Today’s students are tomorrow’s future”. How cheesy is this classic statement? Very. However, the core is true and we borrowed the sentence and applied a couple of modifications to define what it means to us at Mews: “Students are Mews’ past, present and future” – because the “founding fathers” of the tech team […]
Monitoring office conditions
The problem Some time ago I noticed that the air in our office gets stale in the evening. After a few minutes of googling I came to the conclusion that the problem might be a high concentration of CO2. The problem with working at high CO2 levels is that you cannot concentrate well and you […]
Our trip to droidCon Berlin 2019
DroidCon Berlin is the Europe’s biggest Android event (held yearly), that draws in mobile development enthusiasts and experts from all over the world. The format is mostly 20-45 minutes talks, or 40 minutes plenary sessions. There are 5 talks held in the same time in different auditoriums. The talks are about everything Android and mobile […]
Sideproject Story: Building Face Authentication in Lisbon
The problem Typing in username and password every time you want to access the system can be tiresome. Ideally, you want to use some password manager. At Mews, we love 1Password! And we wish also our clients would use a similar solution. Unfortunately, we have noticed there are cases of freely accessible unlocked systems in […]
Building a healthy tech team
Mews has grown tremendously over the last couple of months. This time last year the team consisted of 80 people while today we are at 230 (40 are in the tech team, 20 of those hired since January). Of course, we’re not the first nor last company to experience this growth but it’s still pretty […]
Our first hackathon: How did it go?
At Mews, we spend a lot of effort to make our APIs well documented and easily integratable with other solutions. On Friday, we wanted to test it against chatbot implementations, so we gathered a group of developers and technological enthusiasts and challenged them to build chatbots on top of our platform. We have partnered with […]
Into Hospitality’s Future with Chatbots
February 8th, 2019 Microsoft, Vyskočilova 1561/4a, 140 00 Praha 4 We’d like you to invite you to our hackathon! Let’s join forces and come up with some great chatbots for the hospitality industry. We have Azure Bot Service and the Mews property management system right at our fingertips. Not to mention, we’ve invited the team […]