Things change at AUCTANE, but not the climate. An interview with Łukasz on his 15th working anniversary
He started as a software engineer when the company had just twenty employees. How does he find himself at AUCTANE today, with two hundred people in the company and in his role as a team leader? Read the interview with Łukasz, who is celebrating an anniversary, and not just any anniversary, as he has been with the company for 15 years. What keeps him here and how has he grown with us? Find out.
Łukasz, what are you currently doing at AUCTANE?
I have been leading one of the development teams for a number of years. I manage the work of that team and my main job is to remove any obstacles that come up for my team so that they can work as efficiently as possible.
We are talking today because you are celebrating a very special anniversary this year – 15 years with the company. Do you still remember how you got here and how your work started?
When I started, the company was very small, just about twenty people. It was a completely different reality, a completely different time, everything was different. Before AUCTANE, I had been working at a university and I came here through a colleague who happened to be starting work here. And so from conversation to conversation I said I’ll come and see what happens.
And you stayed for 15 years. Joining a company that has developed very dynamically during this time, you must have noticed how it has changed, how it has grown. Has anything remained the same since the beginning?
Definitely. It is the people. There are a handful of people who started around the same time as me who are still here. But even though the team has grown a lot, I really feel the same vibe that was here at the very beginning. I am talking about our relationships with each other. Everyone here helps each other, talks to each other, there is cooperation between us.
Yes, people change, but I can see that we really all create this unique atmosphere that we pass on to the next person. I really appreciate that and that is probably the most constant thing, this atmosphere that we work in here. It doesn’t matter if there are twenty of us or two hundred.
That certainly helps in times when the company is going through big changes, and you’ve experienced a few of those at AUCTANE. How do you deal with them? Do you think they are good for the company?
I try to see every change as an opportunity, and I feel that the stages AUCTANE has gone through confirm this. As they say, when you have smart people at the top, you make smart decisions. I think that’s the case here.
Of course, it always takes a while for these changes to take hold, for everything to fall into place. But each change brings more and more opportunities for our daily work, for our development, and each of us can take advantage of them. These are the ever-increasing training opportunities, the ever-increasing challenges that we face. For example, now that we work with people across the Atlantic, we have a time zone difference and we have to adapt our work to this new situation. These are fascinating challenges. I also meet the leaders of other overseas teams who have a completely different approach to many things. This is very interesting and sometimes it really opens my eyes. Getting to know a completely different perspective and approach is something that broadens your horizons and is very evolving.
So even though you have been with one company for 15 years, you still see challenges ahead. How has your career at AUCTANE progressed and where do you see yourself in the near future?
I have always had multi-year plans. I started as a developer, so at the very bottom, and over the many years of my career I have worked my way up to the management position I have now. I still see myself in that position for now and for the future. Because even though I’ve been here for a while, I’m still learning, and a lot of it is soft skills – like the ones I mentioned earlier, learning new perspectives, respecting a different approach, being able to listen to the other person.
There are really a lot of skills in my position that can be honed over the years, and I think I’ll still have a lot of room to grow in that respect over the next 15 years. Maybe not in the same team, because in addition to that diversity there is sometimes a need to move to a different team. I’ve been through five or six teams in my history at AUCTANE, so I’m no stranger to change.
Do you see changes like moving to a new team as a developmental opportunity?
Yes. It gives me the opportunity to work with different people. I get to know them, I build relationships with them that don’t end when I change teams. I think it’s worth changing teams from time to time, just to get to know more people, to build relationships with them that are different from the ones you have with the people you pass in the corridors. As I said, AUCTANE is known for a very close and supportive working relationship between people, but it is very different with people you have worked closely with in the past.
Also read: Changes are good and stimulationg. Interview with Ela from Customer Support
You talk about soft skills and relationships with people. Tell me, have similar changes extended to tools and technical issues? There is a lot of talk about artificial intelligence and how it will change the world. Is it already in use at AUCTANE? Are you afraid of it in development teams or do you see it as a way to improve performance?
Yes, it’s a very trendy topic at the moment, but it’s not a complete novelty for us. We use automation in our systems, processes that improve our efficiency. But of course we are moving with the times, we are researching, we are always looking for new solutions. We also have the comfort of being able to devote a certain amount of time during working hours to self-improvement, and within that time many people are trying to do new things, to learn the possibilities that AI offers.
As far as the tools are concerned, there has definitely been a big leap forward. At AUCTANE, I worked from the beginning on our product, which we developed for the European market. Now we are also developing a US product. It is a completely different product, we are using completely new tools, so the team had to learn everything, including the procedures. For example, we were used to writing a piece of code, doing a ‘deploy’ to production and that’s it. Now you have to do everything from scratch, slowly, working and learning at the same time. This requires a lot of training, a lot of meetings with different people and, again, learning to communicate efficiently. I can see that the team is having a lot of fun, it gives them a positive kick because they feel they are developing in some area.
You know AUCTANE so well that we have to ask this question. In your experience, who fits best here? What qualities or skills does a person need to have to enjoy working at AUCTANE as much as your team does?
It may not be obvious, but people who are bold will definitely find their way here. We have to keep moving forward, and fear or apprehension cannot hold us back. As I said, people help each other here, so if someone has the courage to try something new, to go in a certain direction, they will certainly be supported.
But what I would say is that people who try to do too much on their own, quietly, just so they don’t have to admit to their manager that they can’t cope with something, are usually not suited to this kind of work. It is important to remember, and this is a beautiful thing, that our managers and leaders are there to help teams. The more openly you ask them to do this, the better for you and your development. If you close yourself off with your problems, you are not allowing yourself to be helped and you are not giving yourself the opportunity to grow.
Łukasz, thank you for this interview and for the last 15 years together. We should wish you, after all you have said, endless opportunities to grow, and we would add for ourselves – a lot of satisfaction in what you do. Thank you.
Thank you as well.
