Alex Popescu – 30 yonderful moments to remember

Is Alex Popescu’s turn to tell us about his ten year experience, a yonderful journey during which he learned to be pragmatic, listen more and talk less, ask frequently “why we do what we do”, build trust and find together with the team suitable solutions to given scenarios and, maybe the most important thing, that magic happens only if you step outside your comfort zone.

“At Yonder, great people build and nurture strong communities.

After almost 10 years, for me, to be a yonderist means to be a technology enthusiast (in most cases, subject matter expert on a specific field), curious to learn new things every day and willing to be in our customers’ shoes – actively listen to their “pains”, address difficult technical challenges, identify risks and innovate the software products we are working on.

Yonder is a great company where, with the right mindset and considering the autonomy we get at all levels (that comes together with responsibility and ownership), we can constantly evolve. Each yonderist can get exposed to interesting new situations of different levels of complexity – magic happens outside your comfort zone; sometimes you celebrate, sometimes you learn (in most cases in a hard way).

Throughout this journey, I learned to be pragmatic, listen more and talk less (even though I still talk a lot when I enjoy the group or the topic – some colleagues can recognize this behavior), ask frequently “why we do what we do”, focus to identify and articulate as clearly as possible the purpose and the end goal we are aiming for.

What has given me energy all this time?
 The intrapreneur mindset. In 10 years, I didn’t have two similar weeks – as a mindset, we love customer intimacy, and we value the unique profile of each person. Some people can argue on this, but I continue to believe that a relationship is created and nurtured between two individuals (everything else is paperwork) – and you, dear reader, as a human being, must know that it’s important to enjoy interacting daily with other human beings, build trust and think together, step by step, of suitable solutions to given scenarios.
 The community. No matter if we work from the office, remotely or hybrid, we know that communication is the key and that having mentors or colleagues ready to help always makes a difference.
 The opportunities to grow as professional. Top Leadership Program (TLP) is an awesome internal academy dedicated to forming strong leaders, ready to perform in challenging situations. It all starts with a simple question – “Who are you?”. I realized how important is to discover yourself, what triggers you to become unstoppable, and who is your “internal terrorist” who sometimes makes you procrastinate. For me, a powerful experience was the session with a general in the Royal Netherlands Army, who shared real-life stories – It’s so true that being a leader is domain agnostic, and his stories were 100% relevant and applicable to IT. My takeaway was to periodically step back and reflect, get a helicopter view, and focus on important things such as: You are 100% responsible for your choices; Showing vulnerability is a strength; Knowing your teammates is not optional; You are allowed to make mistakes, but you are not allowed to not learn from them; Integrity is crucial – Speak the truth and speak up!”

Thank you, Alex, for sharing your story with us!