Why I left my software engineering job to join the People team at SumUp
You read the title right. Now, I don’t want to start by saying this transition has been the most meaningful step in my career, but it has been. In fact, it’s brought me the exact kind of change, growth and new adventure that I hoped for in 2020. I still can’t believe I’ve finally taken this bold step, but I’m absolutely thrilled to start this new adventure. That said, let me tell you a bit about how I became the first techie to join SumUp as a People Partner within the Platform tribe.
Why the transition?
I’ve learned a lot in the last few years, especially at my previous employer, SHARE NOW. In the DevRel team, it was mainly up to us to define our responsibilities. We saw the potential to do things differently and drive change in order to improve our colleagues’ lives. This role, combined with my activities as a change agent, led to initiatives that I am still proud of today. Be it defining and rolling out an on-call duty framework, strengthening knowledge sharing, designing the communication strategy for departmental layoffs or coaching colleagues.
I was told that my open-mindedness and compassion was key to connecting departments and hierarchical levels. It became a passion that I kept feeding with reading, workshops and active networking. It wasn’t enough, though. I was becoming unsure of how to balance my people and tech needs. However, this changed completely at the end of 2020.
It’s no question that my career path as an engineer isn’t typical for that of a People Partner. However, this is exactly what I — and SumUp — consider to be an advantage. Yes, I’m missing some of the skills that most people in HR carry, but I also have complementary skills to offer which can lead to a more well-rounded and successful team.
Why SumUp?
I remember quite well when my former colleague, Anastasia Brouwer, left car2go to join SumUp. I grew up in a tiny German village where credit cards were something used only on trips abroad. Back then, I knew about contactless payment but rarely had the chance to use it. In fact, it wasn’t until I arrived in Brighton, UK that I no longer needed to rely on cash. It was a dream. Contactless payments were everywhere: in the supermarket, in the pubs, the Spiegeltent and the street food markets. The latter is where I most often came in contact with mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) solutions like SumUp. It was inspiring to see all these small merchants equipped with the necessary technology to offer their customers first-class service. When I think back, the most popular food stalls were those with mPOS. Coincidence? You never know.
From then on, SumUp was on my radar. I started getting more interested in fintech companies and — in my employee experience research — these companies proved to be great places to work.
Thoughts on the company structure
SumUp is scaling rapidly. Because of this, product teams have needed to adapt their agility and improve decision-making processes accordingly. As a result, more and more domains are choosing to adopt the tribe model — developed by Spotify — to boost autonomy and efficiency. Essentially, each tribe is formed around a single value stream. These tribes are comprised of several smaller teams called squads. Each tribe can be seen as a team of teams and a distinct start-up devoted to a specific area.
The Platform tribe — where I fit in — builds and provides services for other product teams to help deliver products to millions of small merchants. The tribe consists of 100+ SumUppers spread all over the world, ranging from Sofia to Berlin and São Paulo. I’ve seen and worked with similar teams, but what this tribe offers is like nothing I’ve seen before. I’m looking forward to working with and learning from them both as People Partner and an engineer.
As far as I can see, SumUp has been inspired to find an interpretation to fit its own culture and context better. As an example, our tribe has its dedicated, embedded people team. So I’m eager to explore where it’s been intentionally tweaked and how we can continue to evolve it as a team. After all, a modern organisation is less a rigid construct than a living system that continually adapts to its context.
What I’ll do
My scope as a People Partner covers a wide range of topics related to people, leadership and culture — like liaising, organisational development as well as advising, coaching and challenging the Leadership team. I interpret my role as not taking control of but catalysing and supporting them. Instead of creating dependency, I intend to provide a space where teams can work as self-managed as possible and feel a sense of ownership. After all, as a partner and coach, I want to approach topics and challenge the status quo jointly at eye-level to foster a continually evolving environment that helps us pursue our vision.
I don’t want to leave my tech background behind, but rather bring people and tech closer together and thus create synergies. This is why I don’t consider it a new career path; it is a step that — kind of logically — builds on my experience and strengths. At the end of the day, it’s all about cognitive diversity on the People team. Thanks to my background in tech and product teams, I can put myself in their shoes quite easily and add new perspectives. I consider this colourful bouquet of experience my unique selling point. It may not suit every company, but the right one.
Ready for a new challenge
SumUp is the company in Europe that has been fascinating me the most for quite some time. When I was watching TV a while back with my family, and the SumUp commercial was on, my heart swelled with pride.
I’m so grateful to get the chance to join the People Partner team, to learn from and teach them and to help contribute to SumUp’s visions. World-class teams need diversity of different kinds. I am delighted to have found this in SumUp.
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A huge thanks to everyone who helped develop me towards this step in my career and encouraged me along the way. Follow my journey at daheq.com.
