We are always so proud of the Team members who have dedicated many years to the growth of our company. They have been instrumental in our success and it’s our top priority to help them reach their greatest potential. As GoHealth continues to grow rapidly and the Team continues to scale, we do not forget about our dedicated long-term champions! Often people are presented with difficult choices in life that require them to make uncomfortable changes, try something new, pursue careers they never thought possible. We’ve been lucky enough to meet a few of those people over the years and they have become a tremendous contribution to our Team. Here are their stories and how, through their will, dexterity, and skillfulness, they have found success and growth within the company.
A career at GoHealth offers enormous opportunities for professional growth and personal fulfillment — let it be a generous budget for seminars, workshops or conferences, in-house English lessons, knowledge sharing sessions, mentorship from the brightest minds in the tech industry, or sports activities, team buildings and high-standard health care. Through our work with GoHealth, our employees have the chance to accelerate their own career development while building tech that makes a difference in the lives of millions of people.
Meet Lenka, our Technical Project Manager who started her career at GoHealth Slovakia as a Tester, and Tomáš, who started as a Software Engineer, helped to build a QA automation team and became a Head of Branch in Košice.
If you want to know more about the roles of Technical Project Manager, Software Engineer, or Software Engineer in QA Automation, we’re currently looking for people for (not only) these very positions! Check out our Career page here.
How and when did you enter the IT world?
Lenka: I entered the IT world four years ago during my psychology studies. The company I worked for was a relatively small start-up focused on encrypted mobile communication. Working with new technologies and applications at the marketing, user experience, and testing level immediately caught my attention. This first IT opportunity allowed me to take small steps to blend a state-of-art technology approach with a psychological and human dimension. I consider combining these determinants as highly valuable, but yet in these hasty times, they are facilely becoming a neglected factor in the aforementioned environment.
Tomáš: It all started with high school programming, later on, I was creating web pages for my acquaintances. During the last year of my university studies, I started working as a full-time C++ developer. At that time I thought that was real programming. 🙂
What’s your current job position at GoHealth, and what exactly are your duties?
Lenka: My current position at GoHealth is Technical Project Manager. This role is relatively newly redefined in our company and might be evolving in time, but currently, my duties involve supporting a dedicated product stack. My support responsibilities are covering a broad area of project execution. I’m mainly responsible for facilitating and overseeing project execution on a day-to-day basis with a deep understanding of the business priorities. I’m also trying to improve the process of project execution, remove impediments, handle dependencies between projects, to identify and mitigate risks. I’m also supporting the planning, grooming, and specification process, and I’m trying to keep project execution and JIRA statuses up-to-date.
Tomáš: I work as both Senior Software Engineer in QA Automation and Head of the Košice Branch. The work ratio depends on what needs to be done at a given moment. Currently, QA Automation is just my side task, although I am still helping with coaching QA automation staff members. I usually do the first technical interviews with applicants, evaluate home assignments, and help with onboardings. The second role revolves around everything related to the office and its running, which includes working with people too. I also get involved in the hiring process.
We’re living in a difficult time marked by the pandemic which naturally affects current struggles and challenges. Lenka and Tomáš told us about theirs.
What are your current job challenges?
Lenka: It’s been said that the workplace is like a second family, within which we should build mutual trust, support, cooperation, and growth. That’s why I think the biggest challenge this year has been overcoming the pandemic period and setting up working conditions. These trying times changed our homes to home offices and also adjusted our diurnal habits. Meetings and dialogues, group lunches, and coffee breaks, they all kind of disappeared, and people started to become more distant at the expense of being more casual online. On certain days I’m trying to focus mostly on my well-being and my team’s well-being, managing stressful situations, more transparent communication, and early recognition and mitigation of conflicts and risks in planning.
Tomáš: As pandemic recedes, we are expecting the expansion of our current office spaces in Košice. That will include everything from reconstruction and design to implementation.
What motivates you and moves you forward the most at work? Where do you acquire new information or follow new trends?
Lenka: I think that ambitiousness and self-development grow proportionally with inner motivation. I guess that within managing roles, it’s only natural that this attribute is elevated. The ability to motivate others should be preceded by self-motivation in the form of self-education; for me, it is mainly reading professional literature, articles, or books and following current trends. (we do have a dedicated library at GoHealth for professional literature) External motivation is also essential, no doubt that but what drives me and motivates me to get up in the morning and deliver results, push myself, and the team forward is the effort to do meaningful work. Meaningful work is when you do something you genuinely enjoy and care about, when you work with experts, face new challenges, and use new technologies. It’s time when you learn, move forward, grow as a person, and all of this while seeing the results of your work. GoHealth became a place full of meaningful work for me a few years ago — and has remained so to this day.
Tomáš: Diversity and the ability to define the job description. It’s a challenge itself — being helpful and achieving everything that needs to be done at the same time. Discussion is a great source of new information, opinions, and views on many things and problems. The always present debate leads to new ideas and changes of views. Googling the necessary details is a minimal effort.
What do you like to do in your free time?
Lenka: Most of my hobbies relate to art and culture from early youth — starting with my creative outputs and ending with visiting galleries, theaters, museums, exhibitions, fashion shows, or music events. I also fancy a quality book, architecture, or cinematography. To be on point and unwilling to sound like an art freak, I also like all kinds of summer and team sports, cooking, and traveling. The more — the better. The opportunity to discover distant countries, their culture, cuisine, habits, and traditions is a privilege and luxury I can indulge easily nowadays.
Tomáš: It might come as something unexpected, but I thoroughly enjoy studying soil microbiology in relation to plant and tree nutrition. It is an incredible and flexible system.
With a genuine focus on our employees’ well-being, work-life balance, and opportunities for professional growth, it’s no wonder our team members stay for the long term. Our success is reflected in all the top talents that stay with us throughout the years, such as Lenka and Tomáš. If you’re interested in getting to know more about our all-star team, stay tuned for other success stories!
