Michal Ptáček: From testing to leading - the diverse career of Michal in Telecom

Michal holds the position of Director of Telecom for Central Europe at Tietoevry, a role he got quite recently. In his career he has worked in more roles than most.

- I started off as a QA engineer in a small company, working with testing on a telecom project. In our small team, I was the only one who showed an interest for managerial tasks, which sparked my career development. I understand why some wish to stay in technical roles and not move on to management, but for me it seemed interesting.

Michal has since been a tester, worked with software development, has been a scrum manager, project manager, project owner and DevOps engineer. As a senior software engineer, he was team leader for 8 colleagues.

- I have always liked the combination, working with both tech and people. It was the hardest decision in my career to move fully to managerial role in 2019. But it was a good one, and I feel useful when I support my technical team members. I must admit, however, that I sometimes miss being more hands on.

An exciting industry

Michal started off working with the telecom industry and has never looked back. For him, it’s the combination of the technical development and the impact on society that is appealing.

- The telecom industry is incredibly exciting. Without reliable connectivity, managing the COVID-19 pandemic would have been much more difficult. And with increasing remote work, telecommunications has become essential. In the advent of 5G, we are reaching a point where technology is progressing faster than the development of real business cases and monetization strategies. However, we are already witnessing how these technologies, along with AI, are reducing costs through energy savings, making them highly desirable for everyone.

When it comes to technical development, Michal highlights a couple of innovations he finds the most interesting.

- Despite currently weak monetization, the use cases for 5G and 6G are groundbreaking, including remote surgery, remote vehicle operation, smart cities, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and the Internet of Things (IoT). It's only a matter of time before these innovations significantly reshape our society. Being involved in this development is incredibly fascinating.

A helping hand

Becoming a full-time manager was a shift that was made easier by the support Michal received from Tietoevry.

- What I like most about working at Tietoevry is the opportunity for personal and professional growth. Your potential is recognized, allowing you to advance from a QA engineer to a Lead SW Developer or explore other career paths. The support from colleagues, starting with your direct manager, is incredible. When I joined the managerial track, I received excellent onboarding from senior managers, including my mentor Kurt Brezina from Austria. Kurt guided both me and another new manager, Robert Nemecek, through everything—from the tools we needed to use to our specific responsibilities. It was also invaluable to spar with Robert and share our experiences. Tietoevry gave us the time to develop, which was both very valuable and necessary.

Even though Michal doesn’t work directly with technical issues anymore, he uses his experience actively.

- It's a huge advantage to have technical experience as a manager. I understand what my team members need, how they can be more efficient, and which competencies we should develop. I can discuss issues with my team at a level non-technical line manager often can't. Of course, I don't know everything in the technical realm, especially when it comes to RAN, which is still a challenge for me. However, the technical person inside me drives me to learn it at least up to some level and I found all those RAN things extremely interesting. In my new role I discovered what cool things we are doing in Tietoevry in that domain.

Michal keeps on developing his managerial skills, knowing that a good manager is one who keeps getting better. In addition to reading books on management, he has participated in a development program with members across companies and industries.

- Early on I joined a cross-industry program called “Together to Grow,” where I had a very experienced senior manager named Igor as my coach. Despite Igor working for a non-IT company, his coaching was very useful, and I learned how generic people management is across industries, with every company facing similar leadership challenges.

Tietoevry’s career planning has also helped.

- Tietoevry has a very structured way of developing the competencies of their employees, including a program in Ostrava with training tailored to line managers. This was very useful, especially the trainings on difficult conversations and recognizing different personalities of employees. What I enjoyed the most was one training called “Speak Up,” where a professional speaker talked about rhetoric and public speaking. This training gave me a lot.

The importance of culture

The Nordic culture of Tietoevry is an important element for Michal’s managerial style, a culture built on trust and equality.

- We have a very informal culture built on trust. It’s part of the company DNA, and with trust comes greater freedom in terms of work-life balance, but it also brings the responsibility to deliver. This was apparent from my first day here, with less control and fewer audits than I was used to.

This trust also shows in the flexibility that is given to the employees.

- You can work remotely as much as you want, which many employees choose to do. Of course, we like social interaction and seek that quite often, but we don’t have any rules regarding when you must be in the office. We trust our employees to find good solutions by themselves.

Another trait of the flat culture is that everyone can talk to just about anyone.

- As an employee, you can talk to the CEO or senior managers without adhering to a strict hierarchy. There are occasional meetings, including face-to-face ones, where you can ask any question and discuss things openly. This dynamic helps create great teams across the organization. As a manager, I aim to encourage such good cooperation, which is one of the reasons why people stay here.