A few years later, we are happy to interview our colleague again. Martin Ivanov chose a career in Bulgaria and in the next lines we will tell you his story, how his career turned what challenges he faced and how he became a successful Team lead in B EYE.
1. What was your position when you started and what is your position now
I started as a Qlik Consultant and my current position is Qlik Team Lead.
2. How long have you been with B EYE
About 4.5 years
3. Describe your career progression
I’ve started as a BI Consultant, working mainly with Qlik Products. In the beginning, I was supporting the existing applications, doing small improvements and bug fixes, and working only for a single account. I slowly started receiving bigger projects and started becoming technical owner of applications that I’ve built from scratch. During this time, I was also responsible for mentoring the new member of the team.
Around my second year in the company, I was fortunate to become a team lead. While getting accustomed to the new role and responsibilities, the coronavirus pandemic started, and we had to adapt to the new normal and work from home. This presented new challenges, which I believe we made the best of. These challenges helped us to shape our current work environment.
Currently, the team is growing, and we also offer more versatile of technologies and solutions (UiPath, Tableau, Snowflake).
4. What is the most important thing you’ve learned?
The most important thing is to love what you are doing and give your best at every task. Also, i believe that teamwork is crucial. For example, sharing knowledge and helping your colleagues and clients. This is deeply embedded in the B EYE culture, and I think this is one of the main reasons that the company is growing so quickly and it is so successful.
Also, technical skills are very important, but they are just a tool. It’s really important to work on our soft skills and business knowledge, which will allow us to use this tool successfully. This set of skills is significant for a Qlik consultant.
5. What is the funniest/scariest/exciting thing that happened to you at work?
The scariest moment was probably having a strange server issue on a client’s environment which prevented the distribution of critical reports that I was a technical owner of. The business was pushing me for an answer and I was wondering how to explain that those high-profile reports might not be distributed today and that I was running out of ideas on how this could be fixed. Luckily, I was able to fix the issue which was caused by the security team on our client’s side and there was just a moderate delay.
The funniest moment was probably a small typo which changed the meaning of what I wanted to say quite a lot. Naturally, I apologized to the client, who had a good laugh. Back then it was just embarrassing, but now I reminisce about it as a funny moment.
In regard to exciting moments, I think I have many from getting my first big individual project, finding a solution to a hard task, being able to help a coworker stuck on an issue, providing a solution and then receiving great feedback, to getting a new account. I believe each career step provides its exciting moments.
6. What would your advice be to someone who wants to have a similar career
As I mentioned above, it’s very important to love what you do. Qlik consultant and team lead is a challenging career, as it combines technical and business skills, and it is a steep learning curve. However, it could bring a lot of satisfaction when you start seeing results and how you help big companies optimize their processes and that you save many people from cumbersome tasks that they used to do manually.
In the beginning, the job is more technical as you are not too involved with clients directly, and you are working mainly on the development part of the project. My advice is not to focus on the technical part mainly, but also try to understand the business issues and what is the main goal of the project. Understanding the business needs will be highly critical in your next career growth.
Last but not least, don’t be afraid to ask for help or advice. If you are stuck, and you already tried your best, do not waste more time. I am sure most of your more senior coworkers will be always happy to help out. This will save you a lot of time.
If you’re curious to know more about our team, you can read the interview with Alexandar Madjarov. Another one of our Qlik developers.
