Marek Hubatka
Customer Cluster Justice
Spiritual connection
He has spent his entire professional life at virtual7 and in the almost 20 years he has been here, many colleagues have become a second family to him. Throughout his time at virtual7, Marek Hubatka has grown with his tasks, experienced unforgettable moments and undergone exciting changes at and with virtual7. He says he has developed a spiritual connection to computers and technology that enables him to find the right solutions to pretty much any problem.
If your life were a book, what title would it have?
Half a Life – The Story of my second Family. Generally speaking, working life is a big part of life. I myself have been with virtual7 for 19 years, so it really is half my life. For me, it’s not just a workplace where you go, do your work and are happy when you can go home again. It’s really very familiar. I look forward to seeing my colleagues every morning, which is why I call it my second family.
How long have you been with virtual7?
I started at virtual7 in September 2003. After such a long time, I naturally thought about whether it wasn’t time to see something different and work somewhere else. In the end, what has kept me here for so long is that I haven’t always done the same thing in 19 years. Like yourself, virtual7 is always evolving. There is never a standstill and you can feel the development in the day-to-day work. That’s why I’ve never had the urge to go anywhere else.
What did this development look like for you personally?
I started with an apprenticeship as an IT specialist in application development at virtual7. The Karlsruhe Research Center (now KIT Campus North) was a partner company of virtual7 GmbH at the time. So I was employed by the research center, but I learned at virtual7. Quite early on, I started to work on other topics, which led me more and more in the administrative direction. After my training, I stayed in the administrative direction. This means that I did less and less programming and more and more work to ensure that our servers and those of our customers function properly. The special thing about this development was that virtual7 wasn’t looking for an infrastructure specialist; it became clear that I enjoyed doing this and that this was where my strengths lay. With the responsive company organization, things changed again.
What did the development look like for virtual7?
Over the past 19 years, I have witnessed how virtual7 has grown. When I started, we were just ten people, today we have grown into a large team with over 130 employees in three countries and five locations. After all, I was also part of this development and my work has given me the opportunity to help shape this development. As we never stand still at virtual7, we have started to consider whether there is an alternative path for our company and how we can design the company organization in such a way that it becomes more efficient and can react to the current situation on the market as quickly and effectively as possible.
What are you particularly good at?
My logical thinking helps me with programming and working with computers in general. I keep saying it, I just have a kind of spiritual connection to computers and everything technical. I find bugs where others would despair – or have already despaired. One reason for this is the experience I’ve gained over the last few years. But it’s also intuition in a way.
What is important to you at work?
At work, it is particularly important to me that I can work independently. I can’t imagine working somewhere where someone is always looking over my shoulder and telling me what to do. As I’ve spent my entire professional life at virtual7, I don’t really have anything to compare it to. However, you can always see how things work in other companies. In my opinion, the employees are the ones who know the most about operational processes. After all, they have the most contact with it in their daily work. I don’t want anyone interfering in these processes and dictating their way of working to me. That’s why the freedom I have at virtual7 is important to me. If something doesn’t work properly, I appreciate the open interaction, both between colleagues and with the Managing Directors.
What are you so enthusiastic about that you forget everything around you?
What I find really exciting is being faced with a challenging problem. Whether it’s a server error or something else that isn’t working. Then I sometimes sit for days trying to find the solution to the problem. I can dig into the smallest details. I look at the source code of the underlying server software and try to understand it. I look into the individual network packages to understand what is happening in the background. I try to find out as much as possible about the entire process in order to be able to deduce where the error is coming from. It is a challenge and at the same time very interesting to delve deep into the problem. These are the moments when you can learn the most. I always say this to new colleagues in the infrastructure sector. It’s nice when you can set up a server and everything works great. If you want to learn something, a tricky problem is the best thing that can happen to you. Only then can you really delve deep into the matter and understand how things are connected and where you can make adjustments to find a solution.
These are things that can really captivate me and where my spiritual connection and logical thinking come into play. I’ve really solved a lot of exotic bugs myself because no one has ever had this problem and been able to help me, not even the internet.
What are your most important roles? What are your tasks at virtual7?
It is difficult to say that certain roles are more important than others. There are fundamental roles that a cluster needs in order to function, but that doesn’t make the other roles any less important. I like all my roles, even if there are quite a few of them. This is because some areas of my Head activity have been converted into roles that I continue to support. How much effort or time I put into the individual roles always varies a little. I always have variety throughout the year. It always depends on the period we are in. Just recently, we had the internal annual meetings, which take up quite a lot of time in the Team Development role. I have to gather a lot of information for this. For example, the Budget Management role plays a part in this because you have to compare salary requests with the available budget. As soon as the Strategy Discourse is due, I spend more time in the Strategy Development role. And then there’s budget planning twice a year. Once all that is over, I can turn my attention to the operational roles.
These are things that can really captivate me and where my spiritual connection and logical thinking come into play. I’ve really solved a lot of exotic bugs myself because no one has ever had this problem and been able to help me, not even the internet.
About the artist
Daniel Stieglitz
“From an early age, I liked to draw a lot and finally decided to turn my hobby into a profession. So I studied illustration, film directing and animation at the Kunsthochschule Kassel and started drawing for commercials, explanatory films, newspapers and television during my studies. I have always been particularly interested in two aspects: Storytelling and getting to the point.
As a quick-drawing artist (trade fair artist) and live caricaturist at weddings, trade fairs, online events, company parties and other festivities, I combine both: I get to the heart of the complicated physiognomy of a face with just a few strokes and try to tell a small, funny story with the picture. For some years now, I have been working more and more digitally on the iPad.
In the meantime, I have already drawn many thousands of pictures and I really enjoy meeting people and delighting them with my drawings alongside my work in the studio.
I’ve even won international awards for my caricatures – including the GOLDEN NOSEY (something like the Oscar in the caricature scene)!
In addition, I still draw explanatory animations for advertising, for television (ZDF, Pro7 Galileo, WDR Quarks…), do graphic recording and write my own books.
I have lived and worked in Kassel since 2000, am married and have two sweet little daughters.”
