Saying yes to the job – a career story

I landed at InCrys by chance, while I was still a first year college student. Both I and the company were 9 years younger, when I stumbled into a one month trial period for an IT Service position. I had been passionate about the field ever since I can remember, but I lacked a lot of the practical know-how – with no hands-on experience whatsoever, most of what I was doing felt like a vaguely familiar theoretical concept. I guess I was a bit like someone trying to tango after having read a first-result-in-Google tutorial about it – only my ‘tango partner’ was a company client, and I couldn’t afford to step on their toes.

I guess my manager appreciated my fascination and enthusiasm with the field enough to overlook my lack of hands-on experience, as I soon become a permanent employee. InCrys showed a lot of flexibility, allowing me to organize my own working hours as I saw fit, in order to be able to attend classes and take exams to earn my college degree, while also gaining experience and performing increasingly better at my job.

With IT-Software specialists, the antonym of comfort is progress

By 2009, I had finished college and started pursuing my master’s degree, and was feeling confident in my daily tasks and responsibilities. So what do you do when you’ve mastered the dance and know the music by heart? You change the tune, of course – nothing but routine stems from your comfort zone.

So, when InCrys made me aware of an entry-level opportunity we had in the Software Testing field, I jumped at the chance to develop my skills-set. This plunged me right into a new trial period, with a new world of information to sink in. And I loved it. Learning felt rewarding, progress was non-stressful and gradual, and before I knew it I was working straight from the client’s headquarters. Switching between exciting and radically different projects and products to test, before I ever had a chance to consider even the slightest hint of boredom, I was much enjoying the interactive tasks and the variety.

A short guide to make your vacation more dramatic

With my Testing proficiency now fully established, I was once again in a comfortable place of seniority. I was happy with my job, but also as eager to acquire new skills as ever, so when my project manager suggested I try out for a new Cloud Storage position with InCrys, I was thrilled. Cloud was just beginning to rise and grow into a worldwide trend, and news of it was everywhere, it was the star of the tech-world, with all spotlights on it. So, naturally, I was beyond intrigued, and the conversation with my manager was going great.

Until I found out the date for the interview, only to realize it overlapped with my pre-planned, pre-booked and, most of all, pre-payed vacation in Greece. I thought for a second, then asked if I could take the interview remotely, online.

That’s how I came to take an interview from Greece, with a Japanese team lead, for a position working with state-of-the-art technology – while on vacation. Now there’s a memorable vacation for you!

Up on cloud number – who am I kidding? I’ve lost count many projects ago

Today, I handle on-location Cloud deployment projects (working with the same Japanese team lead I took my initial interview with). My team and I handle the logistic configuration of the Cloud from scratch, according to client needs, and we then proceed to implement the desired solution on location. It sounds simple enough, but it actually isn’t, and that’s precisely one of the things I like about my job: it constantly keeps me on my toes. There’s always some unexpected issue or unforeseen complication, and I need to improvise on-sight, to figure out innovative workarounds to any problems that arise.

Another thing that’s constantly winning me over about my job is the variety, the interactive nature of Cloud deployments: lots of colleagues of different nationalities and all the new business cultures to discover, the constant travelling involved and the unexpected challenges.

And now, on to the ‘big question’

Whenever I tell someone about my career journey, I almost inevitably get asked the same question: How come you’ve stayed with the same company for 9 years, in a field with such huge demand for specialists, where options are so widely available? It’s quite a legitimate question really, it’s natural that people want to know what made me stick around – yet to be honest I hadn’t really even given it that much thought until the first person asked me about it.

As with every relationship, the effort cannot be one-sided, I too had to do my part to ‘keep the fire going’, though at first I was doing it without even realizing: I’ve always been eager to learn and develop my skills. That means all I ever really needed to keep finding the same job new all over again was a company with steady growth and the right mindset, which would constantly provide me with new challenges and opportunities.

The new positions were there and the company presented them to me, and I was the type to not back-off in the face of a fresh start. Of course, feeling comfortable to venture to new places (both literally, with work-related travels, and figuratively, in terms of skills) has always been supported by the emphasis InCrys places on fairness and reliability. With every new position, with every new challenge, I always know I can count on what we’ve agreed.

What makes you stick around and be loyal to your employer? What are your deal breakers? Let’s share some stories.