interesting careers
Career paths are interesting phenomenon. Some look like a highway, going from education to job #1, 2, 3 and so on in a mostly straight line. Fardjad’s career path looks a little different. It all began with a game that came out in 1989. It not only changed the gaming industry. It also set Fardjad on a course towards a destination that seemed unlikely at that time: The Netherlands.
Prince of Persia
Fardjad is one of our Tech Lead at the Jumbo Tech Campus. He came to the Netherlands about 2,5 years ago. But his IT-career started way before that, when he was still a kid, living in Iran. Fardjad: “I remember when I got my first computer game: Prince of Persia. It came on a floppy disk, and it was about a prince that had to escape from creepy dungeons to rescue a princess from an evil wizard. That sounds like a standard plot, but this game was truly groundbreaking. It looked great and technically it was ahead of its time. I was fascinated and hooked. I started looking into programming and one year later, I wrote my first simple program in Basic.”.
When he was older, Fardjad did some independent security research on phones, and he found a way to gain more control over a popular phone OS than the manufacturer allowed users to have. Fardjad: “I found a vulnerability in the boot loader and created a patch to exploit it. That patch became quite popular.” He used his newfound knowledge to create tools for localizing mobile phones.
Starting an IT career
He started working as a developer and soon became an architect. When he was given the opportunity to work for a company in Dubai, he took it. He stayed for roughly 6 years, developing frameworks in JavaFX. But then, the time had come to take on a new adventure. When he got a recommendation to look at a job at Jumbo, Fardjad jumped on it. He explains why: “The Netherlands was on the top of my list of countries I wanted to work in. I heard people here were friendly and good at English.”
Moving abroad
Fardjad contacted the Jumbo recruiter, had a few interviews, and was offered the job. To start the emigration to the Netherlands, he had to get the right permissions and papers from the Iranian government. That was easy enough. But there was another, much bigger problem: “The Covid pandemic. Borders were closed and neither in the Netherlands or in Iran, vaccination had started. And to add to that, Iran was seen as a high-risk country.”
There was a long pause between getting the job and finally moving. Fardjad started to worry. “But there was no pressure from Jumbo at all.”, he explains, “Only support. Once the restrictions were lifted, everything went really fast. Before I knew it, I was 4000 kilometers from home, experiencing a mild cultural shock.” Living in the Netherlands took him some time to get used to. But his colleagues are very friendly and supportive: “They helped me with all kinds of things, like onboarding and practical issues.”
An introvert out of his comfort zone
After a while, he got an interesting assignment: “They asked me to revitalize the backend chapter. During Covid, cooperative initiatives would come to a halt. This chapter is very important. It was a job that would take me completely out of my comfort zone since I’m an introvert. But I was and still am eager to learn and the social aspect of working in teams was always one of the appealing aspects of IT to me, so I accepted.” I did this for about a year, after which I wanted to become a Tech Lead. My team has helped me in so many ways. I try and return the favor by helping and coaching them as well as I can.”
Not for everyone
Working at the Jumbo Tech Campus may not be for everybody, Fardjad thinks: “If you like to be managed strictly or mostly work alone, this may not be the place for you. But if you’re anything like me and you like to be challenged and to grow, I would suggest you come and find out for yourself what it is like to work in an IT department that’s bigger and more diverse than anything I’ve seen. You will find out quickly that, if you are a team player, you will get all the support and challenge you want here.
Let’s make IT amazing at Jumbo Tech Campus together! Check out the positions.