Ten Years of Loyalty: Interview with Jovica Turčinović

This year, we marked two important dates at Vega IT. Recently we celebrated the company's 12 birthday, and now we celebrate our colleague's Jovica 10 year work anniversary.

Jovica Turčinović, Software Developer at Vega IT

Maja: Hi Jovica. Taking into account that the company is celebrating its 12th birthday this year, and that you have been in our company for 10 years, can you tell us how you started working in Vega IT, and how the company looked back then?

Jovica: Saša and Vladan were my colleagues at the college. We were also in the same team working together on projects that were organised as a part of exams and college obligations. After graduating from college I worked on the Faculty of Technical Sciences as a lecturer and as an entrepreneur.
Ten years ago, I got an invitation from Saša who asked me if I was interested in starting working on a project for one month. I found that offer to be pretty tempting. I had a chance to experience something new and compare working in Vega IT with everything I had previously experienced.

The first few days I spent working on the project in the company seemed like a very pleasant experience to me. I was surrounded by the people who knew more things than me and who shared their knowledge selflessly. I had an impression that I improved my knowledge on a weekly basis which equals with a few months of making improvement while working in other companies on other job positions.

Maja: What technologies did you work in the beginning and what technologies are you currently working in?

Jovica: The first project was connected to Drupal. I didn’t have any knowledge and experience with Drupal, but I managed to fit into the project and the team as well. After one month, I said that I would like to start working in a company and on the C# as the primary programming language. Soon, we started working on commercial projects and with Umbraco CMS, EPIServer CMS, web services.

Currently, I am working on the Salesforce platform and the echnologies which are available through the Salesforce platform.

Maja: What things have remained the same for the last 10 years?

Jovica: The company values. They have been present from the very beginning although they were not articulated and clearly defined back then as they are today. Either way, those values lead the company forward.

Jovica, Biljana, Ognjen and Slađana at Vega IT.

Maja: What is the most successful moment (project) you worked on for the last 10 years?

Jovica: I would like to single out the client I had been working on for more than 6 years. I was the first one on the team who started officially working for the client, and then, at some point, the team grew to 30 people.

By working on this project I gained extensive experience and got the chance to learn new things. When I say “learn new things” I am referring to non-technical skills. While I was working on that project, I was in a position to collaborate with a large number of colleagues from the company and with other colleagues who work abroad. Working on this project gave me a chance to visit some of the biggest companies in the world and also have an influence on significant improvements of the products which are used by those companies.

Maja: What were the biggest challenges you had to face during these last 10 years?

Jovica: I would say that it was the perseverance with working on this long-term project despite various turbulences that have happened along the way. During that period of 10 years I made an effort to approach work professionally and offer additional value through giving advice, suggestions and developing new solutions.

Sometimes it was easier, sometimes it was more difficult to do that. But, what I can say is that the clients really appreciated all of our work and dedication although some of those things directly influenced their individual responsibilities and additional obligations - somehow they always knew that our mutual goal is to deliver the best solution. Probably the greatest satisfaction was when the biggest client gave excellent feedback to the new release which, at the time, had some major changes on modules which were completely developed by our colleagues.

Maja: What did you get from the company as a gift after 10 years of loyalty?

Jovica: I got the chance to travel to some of the exotic destinations such as Maldives, Mauritius, Zanzibar, New York… I will probably choose Maldives or Mauritius, and I hope that the situation with Coronavirus will change so that I could realise this trip by the end of the year.

Maja: What are your plans for the future?

Jovica: A new decade, new challenges, and new opportunities. Namely, we officially embarked on this new venture called Salesforce. I will apply and improve the knowledge and experience I have gained over the period of more than 10 years in the industry on Salesforce projects together with the team of Salesforce programmers and consultants.

Vega IT started a partnership programme with Salesforce as well as official preparations for certifying colleagues who have already got their first Salesforce certificates.

What’s certain is that many interesting projects as well as working with clients on modern solutions using only Salesforce CRM #1 platform await us in the future.

I am looking forward to the new chapter and new challenges.