Godel’s .NET division was founded in 2006 and is the largest division with over 400 engineers across all locations. The division has 35 ongoing clients with over 50 engagements where the team continue to provide value to our clients.

A plan to scale and develop the division saw Andrei Salanoi promoted to Godel’s new Head of .NET to bring a new vision and ideas to move the division forward. During his time at Godel, Andrei has become a core part of the division’s leadership team. We sat down Andrei to discuss his successful career at Godel so far and what he hopes to achieve as Godel’s new Head of .NET.

What is your background at Godel?

I have been at Godel now for over seven years. Throughout my time here, I have only been involved in one project where I was the first developer and still work on to this day. The project started off with 1 dev + 1 QA + 1 ADC to over 200+ FTEs. I have also been part of several roles within the project, from team leader, tech architect and tech advisor, and I even had the opportunity to be a division manager.

I have also been an active participant in all functions such as presales, education and compliance functions which has enabled me to learn new parts of the business. This journey brings me to a new managerial position as I become Head of .NET.

As Head of .NET, what are your priorities?

My main priority is to revisit the structure of the division in order to help it become scalable and work towards being fault tolerant. Revisiting the structure of the division will allow us to adapt it to recent challenges as the existing structure may no longer be applicable to the direction we are going in as we continue to grow to new locations. This is something I am actively working on.

It’s important to mention that I’m not trying to perform any massive immediate changes. Before I do this, I need to make sure I understand how everything works internally and get used to the new role. I will initially look to polish existing processes and tools used by the division to get a better understanding of how everything works whilst keeping the quality at a high level. Once I get a clear feeling of how the division works, I hope there will be a moment when I start seeing some noticeable changes as I begin developing all functions within our divisions. But it will all be done gradual – it is not a good idea to start changes too much when you start a new role.

What should developers do to keep up to date with the latest in the .NET world?

I would suggest subscribing to official sources of software vendors (Microsoft, GitHub), depending on your specialisation and technology stack. Developers should ensure they have signed up to receive updates from vendors and are subscribed to interesting blogs and video channels to get information from team members who are working on cutting edge projects.

I also recommend attending webinars, seminars and events to get an understanding of where the fast-paced industry is moving. In addition, invest in your education because a lot of free resources such as Udemy and PluralSight allows you to study the latest technologies. A lot of the information you get comes from free resources, so the opportunities are there to grow your knowledge.

In my experience, a challenge many come across is making sure you are investing time in these useful activities. If someone would like to be up to date, they must put in the time to learn, it is only then you can keep up to date with the growing trends of .NET.

What are the division’s plans for this year?

I will focus on revisiting the division structure and implementing necessary changes as we look at creating a framework for stable growth of the division (policies, processes, education activities). We will continue to support our clients and work to find a solution, which is the result we will get as we get to the state which is acceptable for our team and the client.

As I step into my new role, I will continue looking at all the processes within the division and polishing them whilst composing a list of improvements we could implement to make our division more efficient and more attractive for existing team members and future candidates.

What do you see as your biggest challenge?

This is a new role for me. The biggest challenge is to maintain the high level of division performance set up by the previous Head of .NET, Victor Nekrasov and at the same time, evolve the division structure and processes to meet new business requirements. It’s about managing everything and finding the balance between Godel staff and clients. We care about our people here and everyone involved, and our priority is to support them.