Blog post -
Why working at Systematic matters
Systematic’s best practices and values aren’t just a nice set of sentences written on a wall, they’re alive, part of every employee activity. This is important as people become valuable in more than one place once they get introduced to this way of working.
I started out in Systematic as a Java engineer, back in 2016, in a department called Library & Learning. This department's responsibility was straight-forward: deliver digital tools for managing schools & libraries. Work on the main flagship application was challenging and often required one to get out of his or her comfort zone. It required communication, learning Systematic's way of working, delivering complex features and also maintaining production-quality code. About a year later, I was drawn into the front end world by the means of a new web platform that later became part of the Cicero product suite. It was a great opportunity for me and one that has slowly grown my appetite for developing modern user-facing software. Even though it was not love at first sight, it started to grow on me and today I would not see myself doing anything else. Even today, returning to Systematic, I work on yet another application created to be a learning platform in schools for teachers, students and parents. I have a bigger impact now as I interact with colleagues from other projects as well. From a customer perspective, it feels like we have the closest relationship with the end users when we know that the features we are building are used by people who are involved in the educational system. At the end of the day, making their daily activities a little easier and more pleasant is what pushes us forward. So, writing code that matters? Yeah, I would say so.
Even if the team was focused on creating a set of components, it was very easy to jump and connect with knowledgeable persons from another team, that worked on different products and solutions. What struck me was the openness and the collaboration which had absolutely no ceremony at all. It was like being welcomed to a friendly neighbourhood, exchanging impressions and sharing best practices and inspiration.
Before starting work at Systematic, I was used to feeling a pressure or an urge to show that my efforts and ideas are worth it. Thus, I began my journey in the team with the mindset of constantly proving that my work is valuable.
It was only later that I realized that in Systematic everyone begins as a full member, from day one. There are no “new guys”, but everyone is a partner or a contributor. We help each other out, we share the burden and we try to develop an age-long value of personal responsibility.
Three years later, I decided to leave the company for a new professional opportunity which, at that time, I found it worth trying for my development. When I left, my managers told me that it’ll only be a matter of time until I’ll decide to return. I wasn’t sure what to make of it back then, but indeed, stepping out into the world reminded me of a lesson that I had forgotten: personal development is often about placing yourself in a context that allows you to change. Personal development takes place when you switch from your comfort zone to a different context; confrontation with change provides you new perspectives and opportunities to reassess what really matters to you.
Choosing to come back this year to Systematic was a natural step. I got rehired in the same team I was in, not because of “safety” reasons, but because I knew that it would be the best place, at the time, for me to jump onto a moving train. It was great to be back and it really felt more like coming back from a long holiday. Everything was put orderly into place and picking things up was made easy by an amazing group of people. I do enjoy most of my days here and I think that happens because at Systematic I feel that my open and friendly personality is valued the same as my competences and Tech skills. In an apparently arid domain where companionship and cooperation are less valued than the technical competencies stack, working at Systematic proves that both sets of skills are equally valuable.
