Once upon a time, there was young man named Ivan Kun. He was starting his career in software and came by at that time to youngculture’s door. 15 years later he is one of our most respected senior developers at enjoy.ing and a big inspiration to all of us.
Our HR team had a friendly talk with Ivan in honor of our anniversary, and, after looking back at it, they thought it might be interesting to share the words of this enjoy.ing legend. After all, they could be quite inspirational and useful for all the young people that are just about to start their career.
What we are about to show you is how the conversation, or, let’s call it an interview, looked like. 😊
Enjoy the read!
P.S. His accomplishments are quite inspirational, try not to get too motivated🤪
– You’ve been with us for 15 years! Wow. How did your journey with youngculture and now enjoy.ing look like?
The job in youngculture, which is now enjoy.ing, was actually my first ever professional engagement, so I started as a junior developer. I don’t know if you remember, but I was the first person working with a client and shortly after that the team was enriched with few older, more experienced colleagues. I was so happy, I was just starting my job and I was already doing a very important thing. I’m even more satisfied knowing I’ve been working with the mentioned client to this very day.
As the years went passing by, with unconditional help and support provided by senior colleagues, I continued to learn and grow, and became a mid-level developer, and later progressed into a senior developer. Sounds so easy and common, but when I look back it was an interesting journey. Those were the days I realized the importance of ‘the right people being in the right role’, how important it is for people to love what they do and the place where they’re doing it.
-Was that a period you realized you want to take part in other aspects of development?
Yes, even then I knew I want to support my colleagues and help them grow professionally. Luckily, the company’s management was kind enough to give me a chance to challenge my abilities and gave me a role of team lead, and, by the time, of line manager. Recently, I also became a Head of Department, which is something that makes me particularly proud, since it’s main part is taking care of the satisfaction and professional development of all of my colleagues.
– Ah yes, bravo! That must’ve felt quite good!
Thank you. :D Yes, it definitely was memorable.
– Why did you, 15 years ago, choose youngculture among all other companies?
When I started job hunting, I went on many job interviews. Even though neither of those experiences were bad, youngculture stood out. Its openness and values they cherished bought me straight away. Those same values and goals, enjoy.ing is standing for to this very day.
– Can you tell us more, what values are you talking about?
They’re investing in their employee’s development, strictly respecting all the rights of their employees and, must not forget, keeping a human touch and attentive trust which makes the everyday life easier and makes a good ‘work-life’ balance possible.
Those are just some of the reasons. Friendships I’ve made cannot be forgotten!
– You mentioned that ‘human touch’. Can you explain us, what did you mean by that?
In my opinion, that is something that not many companies can offer you. A lot of IT companies can offer you private medical insurance, gym usage or some similar benefit, but very few of them will make sure you are respected and treated right. enjoy.ing is paying attention to person’s feelings and growth in the direction he desires. The work is pleasurable and HR is always there to help.
In short, I’m talking about respect and collegiality.
– What kind of projects did you work on? Were there any new technologies you got to know or keep up on their development?
Throughout the years, the projects had changed and so have the technologies. When talking about Java, I can proudly say that I’ve learned from EJB to Spring Boot. In frontend, I went from working on XSL templates to React and really advanced usage of JavaScript.
What we are talking about is a few generations of a product on which me and my team have been working on and dozens of upgrading and adjusting projects in various fields meeting various user needs.
– That sounds quite impressive. Also, what about the IT industry, it has changed quite a lot. What happened exactly?
The industry became quite serious.
When I first started my professional journey, the IT industry in Serbia definitely had potential, it was promising. But, in these past 15 years, it went through a complete transformation.
From a strictly technical discipline where the enthusiastic people worked on the “next big thing”, it became an organized industry that considers the needs of business, uses various methodologies to make the projects measurable and predictable and gets a human touch. The HR sector also became an important part of the industry since it became clear that a person’s motivation and satisfaction are the key factor for good performance.
– What’s your opinion on the “boom” that our IT industry has went trough?
Well, I stand by my word when I say that the “boom” in Serbia was absolutely justified. We have many talented, hard-working young people in the industry and accessing the information has never been easier. Plus, we are culturally a great ‘fit’ with people from the areas that are the leaders of the industry’s development.
– What do you think makes people choose programming as their profession?
I will be honest. Besides the passion and interest for programming, people are getting driven by the money they can earn with doing this job.
Despite that, we are still trying to, trough the selection process and professional internships, choose and give a chance to people that truly want to learn new things and prosper, which is then, of course, backed up financially.
– Aside from serious topics, can you share some tea for the end. Was there any nice, or maybe funny situations that you would like to share with us?
It’s hard to choose one. Over the years we’ve grown together as a team and we are actively seeing each other outside of work. There, we share all the beautiful moments from our lives. Birthdays, weddings, child births, first days at school. All of those are our little moments that make us connected in some way.
But, I must say, we can make a good party! Our team-buildings are quite fun too.
We all miss those and we hope that we will be able to organize one of those soon.
