Welcome to another edition of Vaimo Introducing where we’ll be catching up with Margus who’s based in our Technology Services Team in Tallinn. Listen in to hear what Margus had to say about grasping new opportunities, learning and the exciting world of eCommerce!
Can you tell us a bit about your history at Vaimo, how you’ve transitioned to new roles within the company and what you’ve gained from this?
I joined Vaimo back in 2014 as I was looking for something different in my career—a new challenge. I began as a System Developer and soon progressed to Development Lead where I headed up 2 teams. Following some changes to Vaimo’s structure, I then began as a Technical Lead about a year later. Quite soon after this, we opened our first office in Vietnam and I was offered the chance to go there for a few months as a Technical Manager (which I gladly accepted!). My responsibility here was to bring our culture, values and processes to the new office. It was my role to get new team members comfortable with using our tools, modules and our approach to agility and development.
On my return, I joined Vaimo’s Platform Team (working with our internal tools) before joining Hosting as an Infrastructure Engineer, which is where I still am.
So, the point is, I’ve had the chance to move a lot at Vaimo—the chance to try out new roles in new departments (and even in new countries!). Because of this, my knowledge and skills have completely transformed. But even now, I’m still learning every day!
How has Vaimo supported you in your career development and taking on new roles?
Every time I’ve ever felt that I wanted a new challenge, it’s been easy to talk to my colleagues openly about this. And whenever it was discussed, the management was always extremely encouraging—Vaimo understands that if you move around a company to new positions or locations then it’s win/win as you pick up new knowledge and you have the chance to share your own knowledge with others too.
One particular mention is our CTO Wilko who has always been pushing me (in a good way) to try new things, to experiment and to grow. And that’s the great thing about here at Vaimo—if you want to grow and have the initiative to make it happen then Vaimo will be there to support you and give you the freedom to do so.
You’ve visited a number of our global offices in your time at Vaimo. Can you tell us your favourite trip with Vaimo or any other travel highlights?
Hmm, it’s hard to pick out one particular time! I think I’d have to say the time when I was working on a project that required some knowledge sharing with all our country units. I travelled to every office in Europe and had the pleasure to meet our teams, see their offices and to learn about their cultures and way of working. This was a really eye-opening exercise not just in terms of the project but from a personal point of view too. And since then, Vaimo has just continued to grow to all corners of the Earth—it feels good to be part of such an outward-looking, international organisation.
You’re currently based in Vaimo’s Technology Services department—what do you find most rewarding in your current role?
I think it would have to be constantly gaining new knowledge and then translating this into new ideas and best practices to help my team and the success of our clients.
Is there an app that you can’t live without?
Well, to be honest, I’m actually trying to delete apps at the moment… I find that social media apps (especially) can be checked, checked and checked again without really achieving much. So I’ve been doing my best to take a little detox from these. But obviously I want to keep in touch with friends and family, so WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are my go-to apps for this. And for when I’m feeling peckish, it would have to be the Wolt food delivery app here in Tallinn!
What’s been your proudest achievement, be that in Vaimo or in your personal life?
Number one would definitely be my involvement in the project for our client Helly Hansen. And secondly, the automation project I’ve been completing in my current role. This has allowed us to speed up our efficiency by creating one source of truth, rather than two and has had a beneficial impact on our work.
Describe Vaimo in 4 words!
A big learning curve! From my first day until now, I feel that I’ve been learning every single day. The eCommerce environment is so dynamic that things are always changing and moving forward, which means you have to stay updated. It’s great to be a part of such an exciting industry!
Well, that’s all for another episode of Introducing. A big thank you to Margus for joining us and sharing his story. Stay tuned to hear more from Vaimoers across our offices!
