Stefan's 10 years at valantic DXA

Stefan has been here at valantic DXA for more than 10 years. In his interview you get a little insight into his time here.

How would you describe your time at valantic DXA in a few short sentences?

Varied. And definitely not boring.

What has changed in the 10 years since you started? (personal & related to valantic DXA)

Almost everything has changed. So we started with 5, 6 people in one room and now we are over 100 in about 100 rooms. So due to corona and home office there are more rooms now. Regardless of the 4 locations we now have, this is of course a huge change in our daily work, in team building and in our daily commute. And I personally commuted to Munich in the beginning. Then to Traunstein. And sometimes I don't commute at all now.

A lot has happened in 10 years - also privately. We bought a house, renovated it and have lived in it ever since. We had two more children and raised them in the meantime. And that is the most important thing.

What has been your biggest challenge in the last 10 years?

For me personally, the work-life balance. Not to do too much, not to work too much and not to interfere everywhere. I have perfectionist standards. Accordingly, it is very dangerous when you dance at too many weddings and then have a perfectionist demand, that at some point it simply becomes too much and you then fall under the wheels yourself. That has been the biggest challenge in the last 10 years.
It was a hard piece of work to master that. It took a lot of self-discipline and a lot of good input. I would say now that I have a good work-life balance. That has a lot to do with mindset and the way you approach things. In the meantime, I have found a very healthy mixture of being able to let things be and also to invest more in the team. In other words, handing over more responsibility and spreading the load over different shoulders.

What was the most beautiful/exciting thing you experienced in your 10 years with us?

Well, the most exciting moments are actually - which happens very rarely - but when something goes wrong on the production system. Those were the most exciting moments in the negative sense. In the positive sense, it's when you get it back live, knitted with a hot needle. Those are the little heroic moments. When you get something done, save the system again and the customer can sell his products again, the website is live again and looks good again. Those are the positive work highlights. 
Apart from that, there are countless team events that I have already experienced. From the Oktoberfest to motocross driving, the cooking course or just dancing at the company parties. That's a lot of fun for me.

What are your goals for the future at valantic DXA?

Well, I would like - and I think we are on the right track - that we as valantic DXA are really a 360-degree agency, especially for digital stories. And not just be perceived as an agency, but really as an authority. As a certain expertise, almost as a professional icon. That we are requested by the public sector or state services, i.e. cities, municipalities, etc., not only as digital consultants, but really as an authority. - Not just as digital consultants, but really as digital consultants with solid experience in integration and implementation. For small and large. So both for the large corporations and for the normal population in the region. I think that would be really cool because I believe that digitalisation is still often a foreign concept and that it is still far too little integrated into the normal school routine. I would simply like to see a little more integration.

Can you still remember your early days here?

I had already worked with the 3 managing directors before valantic DXA. We built websites together even before the company existed. We built networks and computers for medical practices in our region and then built websites for them. Those are the very old days, so that's 25 years ago now. Those are the very first origins of my computer time and thus also of the company's computer programming time. 
Of course, there are many more memories, but I'll take a mental leap to the time when I really officially started working for the company. For me, it was my first permanent position. Accordingly, it was exciting at first to have all the possibilities. So simply this self-determination and the trust that they put into my hands back then. To use that and to shape it and to prove it. 
In the beginning it was one big room and next to it there were 3,4 smaller ones. And everyone always knew about everyone else. So who was doing what and what project was going on. It was all relatively small and manageable and very familiar. That was definitely a start-up feeling for me. Because it was my first realisation and the first time it was really about making money with what I can do and building websites.

Oh, there's another funny anecdote.
We used to have an audio system in the company. They were like ceiling monitors. So there were speakers hanging from the ceiling in all the rooms. It had a web interface that we installed. So it was a bit of programming, more like modified plug-ins. There was no Spotify and such big streaming service providers yet. And if there were, they were very expensive. In any case, nobody used them. We then connected a computer and on this computer you could upload mp3 files, i.e. music files yourself, as well as stream various internet radios. We could then stream the music and control it so that different music played in different rooms. We made a server public and told all the colleagues how they could control their music themselves. Then there was also the Antenne Bayern faction - we didn't belong to that. And we used to have fun and just let various tracks run in an endless loop. Then we waited to see how long it would take for them to notice. The classic is the Hot Butter Popcorn song.