How was your time at ERNI? What did you learn/gain there?
In my opinion, one of the defining aspects of ERNI is the fact that it is a Swiss company. Swiss values like perfectionism, discipline, organization, fairness penetrate whole company and together with international expansion create a unique company culture. What was great was to see that the company does not try to convert customers to “revenue streams”. ERNI creates real partnerships and helps others to build their own competencies so that they can sustain themselves in the long run. The best example of this is the founding of the Kistler branch in Bratislava and I’m very glad and proud that I could contribute to the starting phase of this project.
As a Principal, I also expanded my technical profile as the portfolio of ERNI projects is very wide – for me, new areas were Microsoft .NET and mobile applications.
Did the experiences you got at ERNI help you at the next positions after you left ERNI?
The new position I got after ERNI was managerial, not technical. Even so, here I have been able to benefit from what I learned at ERNI.
Compared to a traditional Swiss organization, ERNI is very strong in Agile. Agile software development was nothing new for me, but I had the opportunity to see how it could be adopted in a much wider spectrum of companies – not just technological – than I had experienced before. This variety enabled me to more deeply understand the underlying principles and adapt Agile techniques to the new environment very quickly.
One other aspect I would like to mention is how to listen to your customers. The important thing to do is to not only hear what they are telling you but to help them to understand real needs. Helping them to do so is not always easy, but it is what brings the real value out of their products and services and thus out of your work as well.
