How to Choose Your Next Employer

Here at ROI Hunter, we are aware that choosing a new employer is a big decision and we want to be honest and transparent from day one. We know from our own experience in previous jobs how disappointing it is once you sign the contract - you are in high spirits and eager to get started on the new job. Slowly, you begin to realize how different things are in comparison to the interview you had. Recruiters told you how amazing and cool you are, how well you'll fit into the company culture and then everything turns out sour. I get asked what it is really like to work at ROI Hunter and so I decided to give you and anyone else who would be interested a sneak peek as to what really goes on at ROI Hunter.

Your initial task at ROI Hunter will be focused on parts of the system that you will work on in the future. We may not start with Facebook’s API at the beginning, but you can be sure this first task will teach you a lot, not just about our technology but also about how we work together. You will receive as much support as you need and even though it seems we have a lot of work and it is dangerous to disturb us :p, you have to come, ask, disturb and get the answers you need.

And once you finish your first task (yes, this also includes tests…;p), you will initiate a pull request so a colleague can review your code and give you feedback – we really want the code of our services to be very clear and support developers to share what they learned. When your task is merged, it is time for new challenges – and now we can maybe focus more on Facebook API, Google API, the core of our system or other micro-services.

So what will your first task be? Hmmm, it depends on the part of the system you will work on after.

On our back-end the system is comprised of 5 micro-services that are connected to the ROI Hunter core. These services are written in Java and Python, some of them use PostgressDB, MongoDB and others ElasticSearch. Nothing is decided forever, so we will always keep an open mind to see what the future holds for us – and the future is really up to us. We have a lot of freedom to try new technologies and as a consequence of this comfortable position, we want to keep testing in order to stay on the digital edge. So when you have some interesting technology in mind that could help us to solve our challenges, we are more than happy to support you in discovering it for our needs.

On our front-end you will most probably work as a React developer with Redux and ImmutableJS. No worries, we will get together to explain to you what is going on and how these things work. To get a 360° view and to develop the best possible products for our clients, we will also tell you how our clients usually work with our system and how they think about advertising.

Currently, there are 10 back-end, 8 front-end developers in our team. 5 guys are taking care about our UX and product design, our admins about servers and 7 of our testers / auto testers keeping whole platform stable. As mentioned already, we are putting a lot of energy into exploring new technologies because we believe that this will give us the spark that differentiates us!

Let’s say Monday is your first day. This day we start with a “Developers’ Breakfast” in Brno. At around 9am we get together and everybody gives a short update on what he worked on last week and what he plans for this week.

Imagine it like a stand-up, but instead of on a daily basis we do it on a weekly basis. There are only 8 hours per day and the project is huge, so talking as a whole group about the daily progress is… a waste of time :).

Nevertheless, I would like to know and share among the team members what exactly you are working on, try to help you if you are stuck, give you more and more details about a task and provide you with news from other guys that could influence your job.

On Tuesdays we usually play football or floorball and I cannot remember a week when we were not in a pub or did not have dinner together – so yes, we are also a company where colleagues like to spend time together – both at work and after :).

From time to time we also have developer beers. This means that we meet together, the company sponsors beers and we talk about everything that is on our mind. There is a very unofficial presentation from Karel (our CEO) and myself about how the market develops, what news there is from our sales team and what we plan for the future. You are encouraged to ask questions – not only about software development but really anything that comes to your mind. Our company culture is very open, we have team hierarchies and we try hard to facilitate communication, share knowledge and give feedback to each other.

Once we need to figure out something (UX / design, some bugs, a new feature, some crazy requests from clients, etc.), we try to do it in the most effective way possible for you and us… again, nothing is set in stone and we try to keep it very customized to our needs. One might love to sit in front of his computer and chat about the issue while another one prefers to meet to discuss it in person – all is up to us. Important is to share inspiration, no matter the way we choose and even though we want to be together, you can work whenever and wherever you feel is best for you. Do you need to work from home or do you want to change place and go with us for example on a “working vacation” – no problem, we will try to make it work.

Even though there are not only nice days and straight decisions, the best feeling is once I see how things are moving forward. I hope I was able to lift the curtain a bit so you can get more insights about what is going on behind the scenes – we will always try to be as transparent as possible and this is the main reason why I wanted to share my experience with you.

I am looking forward to meeting you and please let us know if you want to learn more about our work, the company or the lucky bunch of guys sitting next to me ;-p

We can meet for a beer if you are around or get in touch via Skype (pavelsafarik) or email (pavel@roihunter.com)