- Marko Anić, Director, Engineering & Delivery
- Goran Savić, Director of Technology | Tech Excellence Network
Jelena Damnjanović attentive as ever at the conversation at the leadership gathering
What has been your specific experience entering HTEC while the company was rapidly expanding? I was aware when I entered that the company was growing fast, and I was expecting a lot of change along the way. What I didn’t expect was that I would have a chance to participate in changing my environment. So, I started at HTEC as a project manager, and I held that role for the first six months or so. Throughout this time, the company was restructuring into smaller divisions to support its growth. What surprised me was that there were no fixed directives from upper management, like “this is your organizational structure and this is your role.” We were given the freedom to organize ourselves according to the needs of the division. So, we sat down, considered all aspects of our work and how to cover them in the most efficient manner, and a couple of new roles emerged in that process. Essentially, I was given a blank paper and a pen, and my manager told me to write down my job description the way I see it and we will work from there. And this is something that I always share with the people in my network – I’m not sure if this will ever happen again in my career, being given the freedom to influence and decide where and how you can contribute the most with your background and skill set. All of that is provided by this growth, the opportunities that the company has created for me and for others. Of course, we earn our opportunities through our quality, hard work, and reliability, but some of those opportunities would likely not be there if the company was not growing, because there would simply be no place for everyone to progress at this pace.“We are not running from the fact that there are many unknowns ahead of us. We cannot offer our candidates a firm and fixed structure; we cannot tell them precisely what they will be doing in a year’s time, or even three months’ time. But what we can tell them is that our growth generates countless opportunities, and they should be prepared to maximize them. For people who are proactive, creative, ambitious, and who want a large degree of independence in their day-to-day work, HTEC is now the place to be.”Aside from these opportunities, what other benefits do you see arising from HTEC’s growth? The amount of interest in HTEC within my professional and personal community has made me feel like a bit of a rock star. I’m just kidding, of course, although I can’t deny the buzz around HTEC, where we are not “just another IT company” and everyone wants to know what our plans are and how far we will go. For me, personally, what is cool about this phase of HTEC is that we can really do a lot of things without tedious approval processes, or strict supervision and micromanagement. We get a high-level task, and it is up to us to do it, to define the steps that will result in the desired outcome, and then we just validate it to be sure that we are on the right track, which is something I would always do anyway because I want the benefit of senior expertise and experience. There are a ton of possibilities and room for creativity because things are moving at a crazy pace. And that’s also something we communicate in interviews with candidates because we want to manage expectations – we are not running from the fact that there are many unknowns ahead of us. We cannot offer our candidates a firm and fixed structure; we cannot tell them precisely what they will be doing in a year’s time, or even three months’ time. But what we can tell them is that our growth generates countless opportunities, and they should be prepared to maximize them. I know many people who prefer certainty and structure, and that’s fine. However, for people who are proactive, creative, ambitious, and who want a large degree of independence in their day-to-day work, HTEC is now the place to be.
