How did your HeleCloud journey begin?
I met the former CTO of HeleCloud a few years ago when I started visiting and speaking at the AWS User Group in the Hague. I was working for Exact at that time, where we were doing an AWS migration of the main applications. Companies usually don’t do these types of migrations often and I was interested in conducting more migrations. I got offered an opportunity at HeleCloud, where I could do all the migrations I wanted.
Tell us about your role at HeleCloud
I’m a Senior Cloud Infrastructure Consultant which is, next to a mouth full, an honor for me because HeleCloud does not hire senior consultants, you can only be promoted into the role. As a consultant I work directly with the customer to create a technical solution to their business needs.
So far, in the nearly two years I’ve been with HeleCloud, my main successes have been the designing and executing of migrating several companies into AWS as well as designing and supporting the building of a Datalab in AWS for a customer already in AWS.
Next to these projects I support my colleagues by helping with questions and challenges and give pointers on where to look for a solution. Lastly, I speak at IT events sharing technical and personal experiences I think are interesting to share with a larger audience.
What helped you the most in your career development?
I think what’s helped me the most at every stage of my career has been feedback. Both the positive and negative kind. I would even say the negative kind the most because it’s often more unfiltered, direct, and honest.
Because for me, the unknown unknowns are the most frustrating to deal with. Ether from a technical or a soft skills perspective. The feedback I’ve received about ether of those areas have made me the professional I am today.
What do you appreciate most about working in an international company?
I love the different perspective on things. Next to the ‘born and raised’ Brits, Bulgarians, and Dutch people, we have expats from all over the world. All have of us have a different culture and heritage that colors our experiences. Combining these experiences, I feel brings out the best in all of us.
From a personal perspective, I also love how welcoming my Bulgarian colleagues are. I’m the only non-Bulgarian in the team but when I join a meeting, they instantly switch to English, even when I tell them it’s okay to keep going.
What motivates you to go the extra mile when facing challenges daily?
I think the main motivator is my professional pride with a sprinkle of OCD. Taking a bit of extra time to make a diagram with a lot of moving parts ‘perfect’ so it’s instantly understood by the customer to prevent miscommunication makes that extra bit of time worthwhile. I’m also not afraid to throw away already created work when a better solution presents itself. Yes, this involves more work but again, I think the customer will be happier with the end result by doing that.
How has HeleCloud contributed to your professional and personal development?
HeleCloud brings the points above together. HeleCloud places me with customers in all types of different fields and sectors that have challenging cases where I can make and build designs for them that they will be happy with, while at the same time having colleagues that challenge those designs.
Receiving feedback on why changes should be made and then implementing those or standing my ground and give good arguments on why certain design choices have been made is enjoyable for me.
I would hate being the smarted person in the room, and working in HeleCloud that’s certainly not the case, both working with customers who are the masters in their own field and my colleagues with their own experience and world view. They allow me to I learn things every day.
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