Playmaker Spotlight: Uroš Trstenjak, Engineering Manager

在组织者的聚光灯下，我们与许多有价值的团队成员之一近距离（有时是个人），他们的个人贡献不应被忽视，而是用来突出他们独特的经历。除了借此极好的机会与世界分享他们的成就外，我们还希望为您提供有关我们团队文化的内部信息以及在Databox工作的感觉。beplay体育appios

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人们试图出于许多不同的原因来改变职业道路。他们的职业目标或价值观可能已经改变；他们可能发现了新的兴趣，他们可能希望赚更多的钱，或者有更多灵活的时间，仅举几例。然后，有些人踏上了自我发展的旅程，并爱上了他们的新激情，并且突然无法想象没有它。

One of those individuals is Uroš Trstenjak, a.k.a. Trčo, today an Engineering Manager at Databox, but just 4 years before a PhD professional rocking his career in pharmaceutical sciences.

How does one go from synthesising molecules to software engineering? And what motivates a person to go from being a complete newbie to leading a team in a completely different industry?

好,简短的回答将会通过的ion, dedication, and curiosity. But if you’d like to hear a longer story, stick around.

“Not easy, but certainly doable!”

Uroš says he fell in love with chemistry and human biology in elementary school. His passion for learning and exploring new things led him to finish the PhD in pharmaceutical sciences and practice organic and analytical chemistry for the most part. His days were dedicated to synthesising, purifying and analysing small molecule drugs against blood clotting and developing monoclonal antibodies targeting breast, skin and bone cancers, autoimmune diseases, osteoporosis and sickle cell anaemia.

有趣的事实：在他的新型双重抗血栓形成化合物的研究中，他发现了一个四步合成，它是一种称为甲基4-（4-硝基苯基）-3-氧甲酚-2-羧酸盐的甲基，一种小的有机分子，以前在已知的有机分子中不存在科学文学。至少可以说，一个令人印象深刻且高尚的追求，对吗？

But despite the successes and a secure future in the profession in which he invested 15 years of his life, his heart pulled him elsewhere. In 2016 he decided to dig a little bit deeper into web development, intrigued by the idea of telling the computer what to do and developing something from practically nothing. Knowing it would take 3 to 5 years of studying, on average 3 hours per day, to gain some proficiency in web development, it wasn’t an easy decision, but doable, he says. Certainly, he didn’t lack the motivation. And that’s how he started his self-learning journey; through private projects and websites.

“I fell in love again. Every minute dedicated to this craft was sparkling a strong and barely controllable positive emotion within me and my brain. And that’s how my passion for programming evolved. The amazing feeling is still with me, and I hope will never cease.”

Flooded by a vision

Shortly after he started dedicating all his free time to programming, he felt that the career of a professional programmer could be the job he was seeking. As he puts this, he wanted a job that wouldn’t be just a tool to survive, a job that would not make him count the days to the weekend, a job that would be his passion and would enable his growth.

2019年，他最终决定采取一生中最疯狂的举动，并与DataBox产品总监GašperVidovič会面。beplay体育appios一件事导致了另一件事，最初对产品的热情几天后，他遇到了船员。

“When Gašper introduced me to Davorin, Andrej, Vlada and Uroš M., I was flooded with their vision, their drive to innovate and be the best in the field, not to mention their passion for learning and sharing knowledge with the end goal of growing to the infinity and beyond. I saw a part of me in all of them. I have finally met someone so driven as myself, and I couldn’t imagine a more perfect entry point into the world of professional programming than with these guys.”

吸收知识

他开始担任集成工程师的新职业，在安德烈·齐尼克的指导下，他很快就被晋升为科技领先。现在，不到3年后，他领导了我们的集成团队，担任工程经理和导师初级组织者 - 年轻的工程实习生来Databox，以获得他们在行业中的首次实践经验。beplay体育appios他本人，他将自己的陡峭职业轨迹归因于对工艺，奉献精神，毅力和软技能的热情，他在学校的辅导年份获得了。但是他的队友也会告诉你他从不扮演独奏，试图充分利用与他一起工作的每个人并全力以赴。

Impact of the culture

当您每天与Uroš等人合作时，您会意识到热情多么具有感染力。这就像滚雪球，每次另一个组织者都有自己的“ aha时刻”或走出会议的启发时，每次滚滚而变得更大。当我为这次采访做准备并听取他必须分享的内容时，我意识到了另一件事 - 我们习惯于被非凡的人包围并接受这一标准 - 对我们自己和工作环境，我们选择了花三分之一的生活。

And this recognition of the influence the team has had on his growth is the common thread throughout our conversation. When I asked him how Databox influenced his career development, he said:

“在Dabeplay体育appiostabox，我们有很棒的人和文化。管理层关心我们所有人，并真正相信公司的价值仅在于其员工。我们有很多倡议正在进行，我们开始在个人的职业道路和优势的发展上进行大量投资。

But really, every milestone I achieved here wouldn’t be possible without the people, who have accepted me, raised me, supported me and given me more than I could ever imagine. We’re truly surrounded by masterminds here. All you have to do is to bring all your skills and strengths and try to absorb the knowledge that is flowing through the air every time anyone speaks. I learn something new from my coworkers every day. And sometimes I wonder what my first programming job would feel like without them, but then I always conclude that it would be practically impossible to get a better start.”

Leading a team

Besides his inexhaustible drive and growth mindset, experiencing the importance of knowledge sharing and having a support system firsthand are probably the main reasons he was able to translate the knowledge he acquired so well and use it in his current role as a manager and a mentor. And what is interesting is that he never distinguishes his responsibilities between the two.

“我相信我的两个角色是高度国米twined. Of course, Junior Playmakers are eager to advance their programming skills and dive into real-world applications faster, which we definitely focus on in their first months at Databox. However, they also need to learn about our processes, teamwork, cross-team collaboration, work ethics, culture, and the importance of understanding Databox users.”

This is why he puts a lot of emphasis on both technical and soft skills as well as competencies when managing the team, which all are highly related to our core Databox values. It’s important to reach not only our goals but also communicate about the ways we want to achieve them.

学习，帮助和激励

使用Uroš，您真的可以看到他找到了他的呼唤。这很大程度上转化为他管理团队的方法，以及他找到每个人的优势并帮助他们发挥潜力的能力，也通过扮演通过挑战和实践来建模学习的重要性。

When I asked him about his favourite part of the job, he did mention the feeling of enthusiasm when starting the day and new projects. But more importantly, he highlights his pride in seeing the ideas come to life due to teamwork.

“I love the experience when I’m working on motivating and guiding my team, always putting in the last atom and seeing how everyone is accepting the ideas, working on them and later even evolving them to something even better than I had in mind at the beginning.

And there is no greater satisfaction than when you see Junior Playmakers becoming more and more independent within the team or when they even start to help the core members, and the core members fully embrace it due to our “learn, help, motivate and find motivation” culture. It is true for any field, but more so for software development that your today’s knowledge could already be outdated tomorrow; thus, I always advocate that managing and mentoring developers should be strongly based on learning through challenging projects and their drive to master new technologies.”

从今天开始，不要停止

New challenges can be scary. They push you outside your comfort zone. But while it’s daunting to take on new goals, they’ll lead you to new opportunities. In fact, that’s the beauty of a challenge. It opens you up to new experiences and maybe a new future you never knew you were capable of unless you push yourself to a greater height.

Having this experience firsthand and to wrap up this Spotlight, we asked Uroš for one final piece of advice for someone thinking about challenging themselves by pivoting their career, such as himself:

“不要寻求借口不要开始。从今天开始，不要停止。要彻底，不要着急。跳过一些生日派对，宿醉和手机滚动，然后更聪明地投入时间。阅读有关特定主题的深入文章，而不是在厕所上的每天的坏消息。这可能会导致每年365篇阅读文章。找到一个可以充分支持您的伴侣，如果您每天不帮助您的家务，则不会判断您，因为您会充满激情。有勇气做出改变，成为您时间和生活中唯一的老板。”

Feeling inspired? What was your biggest professional challenge? We’d love to hear from you.