Vladimir Koren, Chief Technology Officer, qohubs
Meet our Chief Technology Officer in a short interview and find out how qohubs challenged his IT mastery.
1. As we heard, you are the technology wizard of qohubs. So, from the IT development side, which part of the development was the most challenging?
Bootstrapping a new IT project is always challenging by itself, as there are many obstacles to overcome in the beginning, regardless of the project size. You have to make decisions on all of the infrastructure and development needs, foresee and support future expansion, and balance those decisions to deliver something meaningful on time.
It's easy to get distracted in IT development and spend too much time on things that ultimately make little impact. So, in the beginning, the most difficult thing is to focus on important things and not get distracted with minor details - time will come when they will be addressed, but in most cases they can wait.
This is where the rest of the team comes into play, as they help with their input on what they find important and what directions we should take for our next steps.
2. You worked and developed multiple big-scale projects in the last 15 years. What is your biggest drive when starting the architecture of new applications and/or businesses?
My biggest drive is learning new things in IT. As someone who really likes to learn how things work, every project is a new chance to gain enormous knowledge in previously unexplored domains.
Another thing that only new projects have is "the unknown" factor - how will the system hold on its own when we put it in production, will everything work as expected, how will our first users react, and so on.
It creates a lot of stress and, if everything works as expected, a lot of satisfaction in the end.
3. Which part of the qohubs journey was the most challenging till today?
In contrast to my previous engagements, where I was strictly in an IT role, at qohubs I am much more included in other aspects of the project. This is something that does not come naturally to me, and I do find it challenging at times, so I have a lot of work to do to get better at it.
4. The developer has to speak the same language as the user. How do you ensure gaining an understanding of the user needs?
When dealing with a new user request, the first step is carefully listening to what the user really needs.
Users tend to explain things less than ideal, so this is the step where it's crucial to understand what they are trying to achieve with their request.
Later in the development, I create multiple implementations of the solution and put myself in the role of a user. Then I can experiment with different solutions to find out which one feels the best. This usually leads to a good solution, provided that I understood the request correctly in the first step.
5. Does working on this project ignite the spark? Do you feel that you are making the world a better place?
Well, as I explained before, the spark is there as long as there is something to learn for me. I always find interesting things to work on, regardless of the project.
As for making the world a better place, this is really out of my league. I believe communication between people is the key to preventing all kinds of conflicts. And since qohubs promotes conversation and dialog between people, it could be seen as a project that makes the world a better place.
6. Fun fact about you
I've watched all of Seinfeld episodes (180 of them) at least ten times. It probably goes up to 15 times, but I stopped counting at 9. qo