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Career & current jobs at Deutsche Telekom

​​​​​​​Learning from experts: The secret of my success, love what you do

Csaba Garay, ICT architect located in Slovakia, is a master when it comes to automation. His ultimate goal is to make life of his colleagues and customers easier. How does he manage to do that? Through a high level of technical expertise and his ambition to passing this on to young tech talents in training courses. This evolves a Win-Win-Situation for both.  

What do you love about your work? 

Csaba: In my role as ICT architect, it is important to follow recent trends and technologies, which means I’m learning new things every day. The best part of my job, without doubt, is the freedom to experiment. For example, we touched couple of technologies which were not known in the company therefore the support of experienced vendors and partners was sometimes very crucial.

I am also in direct touch with our end-users and there is no better feeling than when you know that your product makes their daily work easier.

How did you start off your career at Telekom? What would you recommend to other experts when they want to boost their career?

Csaba: I started in the company 10 years ago as a junior application administrator, gradually progressing. I was offered a position as team lead, which I enjoyed however, I missed the technical expertise aspect. With automation, I found what I like and later became an architect. 
I think it’s important to find out and understand what the organization needs and discuss with your colleagues how to improve daily duties. I´ll give you an example: I happened to lead a team where daily installations were taking place all the time and it would get overwhelming. We identified the problem and came up with the idea of automation. We addressed the topic, proposed solutions, wrote scripts and it took couple of months to work them out. At the time, we were the pioneers of automation and what we developed was beneficial for the future of the whole company. 

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In the beginning you mentioned “the freedom to experiment”. How do you experience leadership support within your work?

Csaba: First of all, they did not freak out when entering the unknown, just joking. My field of expertise is a lot about following trends, looking into studies and reports and about experimenting as well. Whenever we realized we had to invest in a new tool or solutions like cloud, leaders trusted us and gave us a green light. They could tell there was added value in what we were doing. 

How do you educate yourself as an expert to make sure you are always up to speed? 

Csaba: The passion I have for the topic I deal with draws me into the issue so much that the self-development is virtually seamless. Almost automatic which is funny given that we are talking about automation (smile). So just love what you do. 

What I actually do to keep on learning is teaching others. I pass on my expertise by giving trainings to colleagues and dual students. Currently, I am involved in teaching students in DevOps, demonstrating modern ways and technologies of developing applications, such as AWS and GitLab.  I love talking about problems and possible solutions with my colleagues. We particularly like this aha-moment, when you realize things can be done in a different way, better or more efficient. It can be a challenge but that’s what I like about it. 

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