Employee Spotlight: Goran Kicosevic, Senior IT Manager

In mid-October we started our new series called “Employee Spotlight” in which we take you behind the scenes at AnyDesk. We give our employees the chance to talk about their experience, their daily challenges and how they manage their work-life-balance. Find out directly from them what it’s like to work at AnyDesk! This Inside AnyDesk will introduce you to Goran, one of AnyDesk’s Senior IT Managers. He offered us some insights on what it is like being one of the IT-guys at AnyDesk.

AnyDesk: Since not everybody has a technical background, what does your daily worklife look like? What tasks do you have as a Senior IT Manager?

Goran: I’ve been hired to define, upgrade and integrate new systems in AnyDesk’s infrastructure. When a company grows, the IT infrastructure has to grow, too. Within the last year we hired almost 40 people. It is my – and my colleagues’ – job to manage this growth on the IT-side. Therefore, one of my daily tasks is managing and proceeding the integration of new systems. Those are needed due to the higher number of employees. This includes talking with companies that provide the systems and defining requirements with our in-house teams that will be using them.

Also I code internal web applications for our IT team that are tailored to our needs in order to support us throughout the day. And lastly, together with my other colleagues, I do day-to-day tasks of helping our employees with any IT-related problem they might have. But before diving into all of this, I start my workday with reading the news.

AnyDesk: You started working for AnyDesk in August 2019. Now, more than one year later, what would you say was the biggest change you experienced with switching your job?

Goran: Before I started working at AnyDesk, I was a System Administrator in an Automotive company. I was used to predetermined processes and a large group of employees. Coming to AnyDesk, I suddenly had the freedom to decide and to do what I think is best for the company in an IT-context. Also, it was quite refreshing to join a small company with barely 50 employees.

AnyDesk: Due to the COVID-19-pandemic, most people are working from home. This affects the IT-department and your work. Which challenges do you have to manage because of this situation?

Goran: In today’s day and age, where everything is available with a click of a mouse button, I would say we do not have many obstacles that stop us from helping our co-workers. With a ticketing system and defined processes, it is possible for our IT department to help with almost everything. The only challenge is to manage occasional hardware failures, but we are prepared for this case and we always have ready devices to go as backups. We have also done a lot to make life easier for our employees while they work from home and implemented things to ease their communication and meetings.

From the start of this pandemic, we have been lucky to provide a remote desktop software ourselves. At one point during the lockdown, there were just a few of us in the office. Everyone else was working from home. Being able to instantly help them with what-ever problem they had was great. That I was the only IT person in the office at those times meant I had to rely on AnyDesk to help my other colleagues from IT. Additionally I had to connect to machines and solve problems. It worked like a charm! However, it did not save me from walking up and down the office from machine to machine if someone needed a reboot. But hey, that’s life.

AnyDesk: Using AnyDesk a lot yourself, are there characteristics that are more important to you than others?

Goran: I would name a few actually… First one is the speed. The tool works great even on slow networks. That helps a lot if you are somewhere outside with your laptop or a poor mobile device signal, and someone needs your help. I have witnessed a colleague of mine use it from my car while we were driving on the highway. He connected and helped someone out with a problem. I also really like the seamless switching between multiple monitors if you are connected to a system that has them. In general, AnyDesk is not cluttered with a ton of un-needed features and provides an enjoyable experience while using it.

It makes life easier while working from home. Sometimes I leave my laptop in the office and connect from my personal PC via AnyDesk. I can be sure everything is secure and safe, and continue my work from home. But I must warn you that it is useless in one situation… Being a father of a 2-year-old girl is a situation where neither AnyDesk nor any other tool can help you! When your child is at home and only wants to play with you, sit on your lap and type on the laptop as you do while working, there is only one thing you can do: Stop working for a bit, close the laptop, drink the tea your daughter “made” for you and play with her.

AnyDesk: And that’s what you should do at this point for sure! I can imagine the flexibility helps you a lot with being a working father. What else do you like about working here?

Goran: As a man with a family, I value and enjoy the work-life balance offered. What I also like, is, that the AnyDesk-team is young, committed and full of professionals. We get recognized for our work and effort, and that is what is important to me.

Moving from Croatia to Germany in 2016, I also like how multi-national AnyDesk is. We speak many languages, since many of us are not native Germans. That makes working here much easier. It was and still sometimes is hard to adapt and deal with certain things as a foreigner, but I’ve met a lot of really nice people. Knowing I have colleagues and friends that work with me who I can always ask for help is one of the best things about life at AnyDesk!

AnyDesk: Is there anything you want to add?

Goran: Hopefully, our growth has just started, and I am looking forward to what is next!