From Hagenberg to Klagenfurt: developing myself at Dynatrace

From Linz to Hagenberg and to Klagenfurt: developing myself at Dynatrace

Julian shares his career path from intern to part-time student in three different Dynatrace labs.

What’s your name and what do you do at Dynatrace?

Hey, my name is Julian and I’m part of team Stratus. We provide AI-powered observability for Kubernetes to help operations teams solve and remediate problems within their cloud environment.

What path has brought you to Dynatrace?

I started exactly three years ago as an intern at our headquarters right after I graduated from the Higher Technical College in Linz.

After that, when I started my bachelor’s studies at the UAS Upper Austria, I became part of the Dynatrace team in Hagenberg. I was among the first 15 people there. Now, they are more than 70!

This year, I switched labs again and relocated to Klagenfurt. I’m planning to do my master’s degree there and look forward to new exciting challenges in my new team.

Why did you join Dynatrace?

Initially, I learned about the company at my school’s career fair. Dynatrace stood out from the other booths because of its unique appearance. The technologies and the company culture appealed to me, so I applied for an internship. After a technical interview with my future team captain, I got accepted.

How does Dynatrace enable you to study?

It’s the absolute flexibility for me. The company allows me to freely arrange my working hours. It’s also never been a problem to increase or decrease my weekly hours to find a good balance between work and university.

What differences have you noticed between the different labs you worked in?

It’s hard to explain, but each Lab has its own spirit. This is probably due to the size of the lab, or even the cultural differences. It’s hard to believe, but this is a thing even in a small country like Austria. Apparently, it makes a difference whether you live on the northern or southern side of the Alps.

However, the cooperation between the different labs is brilliant and everyone is on an equal footing. Also, there is a true welcoming culture in every Lab. No matter which team you’re on, you soon feel like you’ve known the people for a long time already.

How do you structure the work in your team?

The most important events in our biweekly sprints are the refinement at the beginning of the sprint where we estimate the upcoming stories. At the end of each sprint, during the review, each engineer shortly presents their completed stories. In a separate demo meeting, the most important changes are discussed in a broader round with team-external stakeholders.

Apart from these meetings, there is relatively little process overhead, so that as a developer you can spend most of your time focusing on the most important thing — developing.

What technologies do you work with?

Since I am a full-stack developer, I come across many different languages, frameworks, and database technologies. However, I mainly work with Java, TypeScript and Angular.

What was your biggest achievement at Dynatrace?

I’m proud that my internship project is still being used these days. It is about detecting obsolete code in our main Java repository. The app was even extended in the course of an Innovation Day where people can freely work on side-projects.

Also, I recently completed my bachelor’s thesis in collaboration with Dynatrace. One outcome of the thesis is a tool that supports our development process. In the future it will be further extended in the scope of other diploma and bachelor theses.

What do you enjoy the most about working at DT?

I like the agile mindset, which is deeply rooted in the company culture and lived day by day. As a developer, you are not at the end of a large hierarchy, but at eye level with your managers. You can go to anyone at any time, and they will listen to you. I also think it’s good that a lot of trust is put into each employee.

What do you do in your free time?

I recently started going to the gym. For me, it’s the perfect balance to my office job. I also enjoy other sports, especially skiing in winter. Then, if I can find the time, I also work on side projects, like enhancing my smart home.

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From Hagenberg to Klagenfurt: developing myself at Dynatrace was originally published in Dynatrace Engineering on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.