Filip Chytrý: “I’m living in the US thanks to Avast”
In just six years, he moved from junior analyst to the man who negotiates with companies such as Huawei, Vodafone or Verizon. He works full-time at Avast, has its own company Seculu, which provides security services to small businesses, and acts as a security advisor at ENISA, the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security. Meet Filip Chytrý!
You joined Avast nine years ago. How did you get the job?
I was using the Avast antivirus at the time, and I found a bug that caused the app shut down. That opened the way for a device to be infected. So I approached Avast via email, and they replied three days afterward, asking me to come meet them. I thought, “Damn! I must have really screwed up!” To my surprise, they offered me a job at their malware analysis team.
I’d come to Prague a month before, and the offer was good, so I thought, why not?
You had just started attending the university back then. Was it difficult to work and study at the same time?
Well… I’m constantly on and off the university and even had to extend my bachelor’s degree studies. And I never finished the masters. But I was really enjoying myself at Avast, so I didn’t mind.
In the tech industry, you’re either a PhD, an MBA — or a drop-out!
Has it ever bothered you that you don’t have a master’s degree?
Not yet, because it does not matter in my field. The biggest paradox was that when I joined Avast, I used skills I learned during IT classes at high school most of the time. In Czechia, technical universities have a very narrow perspective and are similar to technical schools, so if you come from that background, you learn very little at a tech university the first year. Also, the curriculums tend to be very restrictive. In the US, they have a similar academic credit system, but you can define the path of your studies; you can study programming and linguistics at the same time if you want.
But I would love to return to the academia one day.
Speaking of your job, what do you do at Avast?
I started as a mobile malware analyst and operator. Every smartphone runs on an OS, and all the errors and dangers that threaten your phone are quite similar to those that threaten your computer.
At Avast, we’re trying to secure the OS and data transfers from and to your device.
All you need is a cheap camera with an internet connection to have all your private data exposed. Similarly, when the Wi-Fi network at a café is not secured, hackers can exploit that and steal your data or take control of your device. We work with all sorts of service providers to make sure your data is encrypted and safe.
So these days, I focus on threat intelligence and technical sales across international companies.
What’s your favorite part of the job?
I found out that I enjoy communicating with people — I don’t want to sit at the computer all day long. This position allows me to travel and negotiate contracts and deliveries with our big clients, such as Huawei, Vodafone. I am never bored because it’s a dynamic environment that is constantly changing.
Also, it enriches me because I get to work with teams from many companies, learn their processes and compare them with those at Avast.
How did your current position come up?
I grew with the company. I was hired when Avast was still small. Now we have almost 2,000 employees, but back then we were 50 or 60.
It was great because everybody was doing everything. When I saw something that needed to be done, I volunteered. And one day came the opportunity to develop a new vision for our mobile security product, so I took it.
Eventually, I caught myself doing it full-time.
In tech, you’re either a PhD, an MBA — or a drop-out!
What would you say to someone who wants to work for Avast? How does a perfect candidate look like?
Today, everybody has a clear-cut role within the company, so all open positions focus on a specific area of expertise. But that’s good because it means there is big space for self-development around one skill set.
Of course, you need to meet the basic knowledge criteria first. If you apply for a cloud system developer, you need to know about databases; if you want to be a mobile developer, you must know Java, Unity and so on.
But at Avast, we appreciate your attitude more than anything. You can always expand a skill set, but we want to hire people who are motivated, pro-active, eager to learn and find new solutions.
Nowadays, Avast is a big company with big clients, which gives you stability, but it takes its toll on your flexibility. We need people who can commit to a project even for several years in some cases and who can plan ahead. There’s not the flexibility of a small business or a start-up here anymore, which some may see as restrictive.
Was the loss of flexibility a reason why you established your own company, Seculu?
Actually, I almost quit Avast two years ago; the corporate environment did not feel right. I’d had Seculu for a year back then, and the work was much more creative. So I explained my reasons to the management, but instead of letting me go, they made the effort to meet my wishes. That way, I regained some degree of flexibility, and in the end, it was a win-win situation for everyone.
In the meantime, I realized that I actually like what I’m doing for Avast, and I’m happy that I can maintain the technical aspect of my work at Seculu, where we help small business secure their systems, and be more business oriented at Avast.
What is it like to have your own IT company?
Establishing a company is very simple, the hardest thing is to win someone’s trust and keep the company alive. Your experience depends on the people you know and your negotiating skills. Do you have a few potential customers to begin with? My network is relatively interesting, so I had no problem in that field.
When Seculu started, I thought we’d have employees and work as a common security company. But that has changed — today, I do the scope of work, set the processes and forward the work to my friends who deliver it. The initial idea changed completely during the first year, and I found out that I prefer this agency-like style of work.
When people have a vision, they shouldn’t be afraid to change it in order to find the model that’s successful and fun for them.
Today, we focus on small to medium business, such as fin-tech startups, and we try to find an error to exploit on their websites. When we find one, we approach them with a solution. This way, companies are likely to react quickly because they know there is a critical issue. With the solution already prepared, the execution of processes is pretty streamlined.
What’s the difference between working with Czech and American enterprises?
Americans are much more driven. Their processes tend to be more complex, but when they make a decision, it stands. The negotiation process can be very shallow at first, but once they sign a scope of work, it is executed step by step.
In Czechia, you usually strike a deal, sign a very vague scope of work, and then it all fizzles out.
And what about Czechs and Americans?
I’ll ask you a simple question: How are you?
I’m fine!
Then you’re an exception! You’re in the American group! Usually, Czechs tend to be negative, even though they can’t really say what’s wrong. In the end, you find out that they live in a nice house, eat good food, have a healthy family, own the latest iPhone… The attitude is the key difference.
When people have a vision, they shouldn’t be afraid to change it in order to find the model that’s successful and fun for them.
Apart from what you’ve just described, what do you think is crucial for young talented people to succeed in tech?
It would be a waste of time to name particular technologies because the ecosystem can change rapidly. From my point of view, programmers and developers capable of developing IT systems will always be successful. Back-end, mobile platforms, AI, self-driving, robotics, automatization — that’s where the future is.
Many professions will disappear in the next decades. Even today, there are apps that can draft contracts, which makes a good number of lawyers obsolete. In the future, machines may substitute even larger part of lawyers’ work — so it will pay out to be both a lawyer and developer.
We’ll still need lawyers just as we’ll need doctors, sociologists, office workers, artists… But they will be different. Most processes will be executed by machines, but machines will never replace human emotion, which is why social skills are buzzwords these days.
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