Behind the Blog: Petr Hajek

What brought you to Omio?

It was just interesting to me, as a tech startup. I was impressed by the experience and enthusiasm people brought to it, and I liked the culture those things created.

Did you have an interest in travel prior?

I wouldn’t say I’m a big traveller. I love the wilderness, but I’m not doing Euro-trips that often.

What were you passionate about before you joined?

I’ve been interested in software engineering and tech in general, pretty much since childhood. I like working out end-to-end solutions to things and the experimenting that comes with that.

That passion seemed central to your recent piece for this blog. But it also seemed like you had a pretty clear roadmap for what you wanted to do in improving alerting. Were there points in that process where you were experimenting more?

The basic requirements were clear, but it’s always a matter of experimentation and fine-tuning. And that allowed me to discover other issues and requirements along the way, and address those.

What sorts of things did you want to have an impact on when you came on board?

I wanted to contribute to all parts of the product, really — from development (from a code & quality perspective) to production stability. Both aspects are extremely important and one without the other is worthless.

Do you feel like you’ve been able to do that? Or have completely different interests opened up?

Both. I got to focus on the product and make improvements in the very ways we’re talking about. But I also gained a lot of insight and experience in data analysis, which now drives a lot of my decision-making. I’ve also been able to contribute to company-wide standards and architecture.

How would you say data-analysis has changed your approach to your work?

The biggest benefit is that you can confirm or disprove your hypothesis based on real data. For example with alerting I took data about errors for the past months and was “replaying” several alerting strategies (when alerts would trigger). This had a lot of advantages, because I was able to quickly tune parameters according to real data.

What’s most exciting to you in the tech landscape, at present?

That’s a kind of tricky question to answer, honestly. I’m pretty immersed in what I do in my role, and the things I’m working on are probably the most exciting for me. We have annual architecture reviews with our teams coming up soon, part of Omio’s Architecture Crew initiative, and I’m really looking forward to getting to see the solutions other teams have developed. I’m always seeking out and learning new things, of course, but I wouldn’t say there’s anything I feel super drawn to, beyond what I’m doing here.

Interested in teaming up with Petr and joining the Omio team? There’s very likely a role for you. Check out our Jobs page!