I’m lucky to be doing what I enjoy. Hubert’s 15th anniversary at AUCTANE

Hubert joined us on New Year’s Day 2009, which means that we have already wished each other New Year 15 times. What made him stay at AUCTANE for so long? We invite you to read an interview with Hubert in which he talks about his beginnings, his career and what he is doing now.

Hubert, you have been with AUCTANE for 15 years. During this time, the company has changed and gone through transformations. Has your position been the same?

As the company has evolved, my skills have developed and my role has changed. In the beginning, I was involved in quality control and the administrative side of IT. As the team grew, I took on the position of the manager of the quality control team. Over time, as the company expanded, new projects emerged and with them new development opportunities appeared. I moved into a DevOps position, which evolved into Cloud Engineering. And that’s where I am today.

Do you remember your first day on the job?

I remember it very well because it was very unusual. I started at the beginning of the year, in 2009, and I remember that the owner of the company, Marcin Wójcicki, contacted me and asked if I could start on a Saturday. Some computers needed to be prepared for the new employees. So I started by working overtime (laughs). I remember I was alone in the office because it was the weekend and everyone was off. A nice touch was when Marcin showed up with an offer of pizza, which turned out to be such a small company tradition during the odd hours.

It was indeed an interesting start to a new job and from that memorable first Saturday in 2009 you stayed with us for another 15 years. Are you able to say which of the positions you held during that time was the most interesting for you?

The most interesting id the one I have now, but that’s because of my development. If you had asked me in my previous position, I would have said the same thing. It was just a natural progression. The more I got to know the company, the products, the new technologies, the new things, the toys, the more interesting tasks I wanted to take on. And that’s probably what’s kept me here for so long – this never-ending opportunity to grow.

With 15 years behind you, what are your expectations for the next 15 years? What do you expect in terms of growth for both the IT and e-commerce industries?

The industry itself will continue to evolve, I have no doubt about that. E-commerce is the future, shipments will increase and so will the shops themselves. So I don’t have to worry about the future of the company (laughs). In terms of what I’m doing now, obviously artificial intelligence is going to come into my work more and more. It won’t replace us as engineers, but it will make our job easier, especially in terms of process automation. At AUCTANE, we already have everything embedded in a cloud environment, so we don’t have to move anything and we don’t have to be stationary. We work in the cloud, and what is always a challenge and an aspiration is to automate even more, which will allow us to perform tasks even faster, with better quality and with even more assurance.

We also see this in the tools we use. They evolve, introduce new features and offer more and more possibilities. There are also new ideas that make a big difference to us and help us take on ever more challenging tasks. We are optimistic about this, hoping that AI will help us speed up these more trivial processes and give us the space to focus on other, more complex problems.

Security is another big challenge. We need to provide our systems with the highest level of security against hacking and protection of personal data. We are looking to artificial intelligence to help us develop in this area as well.

Artificial intelligence is a hot topic and it is not only companies that are using it, but also the hackers you mentioned. Do you see a lot of risks in the development of AI?

Any development can go the wrong way, it all depends on how we use the opportunities that the technology offers us. Whether we make it helpful or whether it becomes a form of deception. This is where morality and definitions of right and wrong come into play. My hope is that the majority will still choose the better path and that we will be able to crack down on abuse.

We know that after hours you get on your bike and tackle challenging mountain and forest trails. After 15 years, is it still the hobby that allows you to get away from it all?

Yes, definitely. In fact, I have two hobbies: one is cycling and the other is technology. I’m lucky to be able to do what I like and the bike is a nice escape. It’s nice to work, face professional challenges and then hop on the bike, clear my head, get tired and go back to my desk with a fresh head and do something interesting.

There’s a lot of talk about work-life balance, it’s a popular word these days, but for me it works. There’s work, which is fun, but for balance you need some sort of break and that’s where cycling comes in, an opportunity to relax.

Back to your work, which you say is your passion. What excites you most about it?

Technical issues are the most interesting and that’s what I like to focus on at the moment. I also enjoy learning about and developing new tools, seeing how I can use them to make my work easier or introduce something new, to provide better quality. We use Amazon Web Services, which offers several new possibilities, tools. There is the artificial intelligence that was mentioned, which we are starting to test and see if it will help us with AWS. We’re testing all sorts of tools to create automated infrastructure from code that allows us to create what we’ve pre-programmed with one click. The possibilities are really endless and that’s cool.

Even more so now that we are in contact with new teams. One of them, a team from Spain, is working with Google, for example. It’s fun to listen to what they’re doing and I have to admit that I’d like to jump in there for a while and tinker with something new. Developing old tools is one thing, but learning about new ones is also fascinating.

You talk about your work with great passion. I understand that if the need arose, you would be able to switch to a completely new technology without the slightest problem?

Absolutely. If we had to turn everything upside down and start from scratch, I think we would be ready.

It’s good to hear that and it’s good to know that we have people in our team who are so enthusiastic about what they do. Hubert, thank you very much for this interview and we hope that the next year at AUCTANE will meet your expectations in terms of development and that it will bring you new and interesting challenges.

Thank you very much.