My Interview with 5 Beautifully Unique Women at Camunda

Let me start by saying Happy International Women’s Day to my fellow females and males who are taking it upon themselves to discuss and share their emotions, experiences and challenges faced by women around the globe.

With the recent article by former Uber employee Susan Fowler and the theme of this years International Women’s Day: Women in the Changing World of Work: Planet 50-50 by 2030, I wanted to highlight the diversity of women I have the privilege of working with everyday to further showcase that women continue to take on a variety of roles, changing the workforce.

I am a firm believer that change can start with a conversation, followed by time, another conversation, more time and another conversation and time again – well you get the point. My interviews with my colleagues are conversations depicting their first aspirations, their role, and their definition of success among other things, over time.

But before you read that first conversation, I wanted to point out that I only selected 5 women at Camunda to highlight the diversity of the roles women have here, by no means is this a representation of all the women and of course men at Camunda who help drive the positive culture and successful growth of the company.

So please, read on.

Nastasja, Head of Back Office

When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A nurse until I realised that I’m too squeamish. An architect until I realised that Math is not my strength. A teacher, but then another realisation: patience is also not my forte. I played with A LOT of ideas until I settled on my degree and even that I wouldn’t do again, given the choice. So it’s a lucky stroke that life cannot be planned and isn’t foreseeable and I ended up at Camunda.

What do you do now and what does your day to day look like?
I’m the Head of Back Office at Camunda and as such responsible for the smooth running of the Back Office as well as providing administrative support to Camunda Inc. My main goal in this position is to skip the Feel Good Manager and create an entire Feel Good department that is truly a service provider to all Camundos. Whether it be travel arrangements, seminar organisation or ensuring a nice office environment, the Back Office is here to help and ensure that all Camundos can concentrate on their jobs and don’t get side-tracked with unrelated tasks. Therefore my day to day doesn’t just have one look. There is structure but not exactly routine. But I like it that way, it keeps me on my toes and keeps things challenging and interesting.

What impact does International Women’s Day have on you?
Answering this question could really get me carried away, a whole essay can be written here. A quick answer is that I don’t like the idea of IWD simply celebrating women along with the likes of Mother’s Day, personally I find that patronising and contradicting. I also find it frustrating that global issues surrounding women are somewhat limited to just one day by IWD -these issues should be highlighted every day of every year. That being said, I get the impression that IWD is becoming an increasingly vocal and popular platform to highlight achievements of women. I couldn’t speak of a direct personal impact, however the work that’s being done by IWD will have and will at some point hopefully impact all women and should be highlighted and supported even further. For example, Germany only offers IWD events in 3 cities this year, whereas the US does the same in over 100 cities.

Most tech companies like Camunda are very male dominated, why did you choose to work here and how do you feel about the culture?
I didn’t choose Camunda because it was or wasn’t a male dominated company but because of the company’s atmosphere and culture which is very open, honest and welcoming. It’s a light-hearted and fun workplace without losing its professionality. Let’s not focus on the ratio of male to female employees is my suggestion as we also don’t focus on age, religion or origin. Let’s concentrate on being one awesome team, creating awesome products in an awesome work environment.

What does success mean to you? And why?
Success to me is a personal or professional achievement that made me break out of my comfort zone and tackle something that I wasn’t previously aware of I could do. I like to challenge and discover the many new facets about myself, especially as I’m a person that can find internal as well as external change quite trying.

Svetlana, Software Developer

When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I had plenty of ideas at different times, from hairdresser to vet, but none of it included sitting in front of the computer all day long :).

What do you do now and what does your day to day look like?
I know how to translate human speech into machine code so that people’s thoughts and achievements could be reused by others. But no matter how this sounds, my day to day job includes many routines, the purpose of which is to make the result of work predictable, stable and long-living. Fortunately I also need to communicate a lot which helps me stay in touch with reality :).

What impact does International Women’s Day have on you?
It’s a good occasion to reconsider who I am and what I achieved in my profession and to appreciate living in an era where being a woman does not mean just sitting at home doing housework.

Most tech companies like Camunda are very male dominated, why did you choose to work here and how do you feel about the culture?
Yes, most tech companies are male dominated, so this isn’t really a criteria when selecting the employer in this sphere. Nevertheless I’m happy that I’ve chosen Camunda as I feel I am at the right place and my colleagues contribute a lot to this feeling.

What does success mean to you? And why?
Success often means success among other people. For me it’s more about how content am I with my life and for this I only need to look inside myself and try to find something comforting :).This feeling of self-contentment can go away and come back with different events and emotions. As soon as you can keep it for a long time, you’re successful.

Madeleine, Marketing Manager for Events

When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to become some kind of performer and organizer – leaning mostly towards dance and theater performances. I organized my own small shows and workshops from the age of 8 so that is where I saw myself in the future I assume.

What do you do now and what does your day to day look like?
I kept the organizational part and now manage all event related marketing activities at Camunda Services GmbH. This includes for example conference sponsorship management, arranging and supporting community events, as well as organizing our own in-house conference. My “typical” day is filled with event research, talking to conference organizers, negotiating sponsorship packages, developing new event ideas/concepts interesting to our customers and prospects, as well as tracking our event performances and results.

What impact does International Women’s Day have on you?
No real impact to be honest. I don’t think any less of a woman’s performance compared to other sexes in a particular field, so that appreciation should be shown 365 days a year. Nevertheless, I appreciate the initiatives of supporting and recognizing women’s abilities.

Most tech companies like Camunda are very male dominated, why did you choose to work here and how do you feel about the culture?
When I was interviewing with Camunda I already noticed that the company has a strong focus on individuality, diversity and empowering people to build a strong company culture but also of course grow a successful and driven workforce. On top of that, Camunda offers great products and is an aspiring organization with very talented and skilled fellow employees – no matter the gender, so I closed the deal.

What does success mean to you? And why?
Success for me means, when I manage to do what I am passionate about so that I end up completely enjoying what I do “for a living”. I don’t measure success financially as happiness is my success indicator and as we all know, happiness is only partially influenced by money.

Kerstin, Office IT Administrator

When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I always wanted to do something technical as if anything was broken, I always tried repairing it.

What do you do now and what does your day to day look like?
Everyday will be different, I will fix many kinds of problems – like repairing broken PCs, solving email non-responsive email issues, software bugs, and ordering new hardware for the office. Those are just a few examples of the large diversity of tasks I take on at Camunda.

What impact does International Women’s Day have on you?
I don’t know really, I just think everyone should do the job which she/he likes, independent of  gender.

Most tech companies like Camunda are very male dominated, why did you choose to work here and how do you feel about the culture?
For me gender is unimportant, it’s more important that you feel good working with your colleagues and like what you do, every day. I really like to work at Camunda, my job is cool and the people here are very nice.

What does success mean to you? And why?
Ultimately when you feel success it’s important to feel good, but I think success has a different meaning for everyone. For me it means people are satisfied with my work and I was able fix the problems so that everyone can do his or her job without trouble :).

Roxy, Working Student

When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up?
In kindergarten we had a teacher that would always draw princesses, so I also wanted to be a princess. And if I couldn’t make it as a princess, I wanted to be a model because they get to dress up nice, have beautiful hair and look like princesses.

What do you do now and what does your day to day look like?
Then I grew up and found out that I couldn’t be a princess, shocker, so I did the next best thing and studied business. Now I am working in marketing and learning programming in my spare time. I usually do project based work so depending on which project I am working on there are different things to do. It always starts out with creating a concept. During the execution I usually work with different departments within the company. At the moment I am working on a product marketing project, where I am collaborating very close with the designer which is always fun!

What impact does International Women’s Day have on you?
I actually never celebrated it in the previous years, but this year I am quite excited about it. I think it is a great way to point out gender issues in society and in the workplace. I am also excited to be volunteering for an event this year, that focuses on women in tech throughout history to inspire more young women to follow a path in tech.

Most tech companies like Camunda are very male dominated, why did you choose to work here and how do you feel about the culture?
You’re right, unfortunately this statement still holds true in most companies and I think we have to actively work on creating a friendlier environment for women in technology. I chose to work at Camunda because the product inspires me. As a woman I feel welcome at Camunda, although Camunda is not exception when it comes to gender issues. Camunda is a friendly and welcoming workplace, but of course there is still much more we can do to actively empower women.

What does success mean to you? And why?
To me success means to be free of constraints. Let me give you an example: In the early stages of my career I had jobs that I hated with a passion. But I didn’t have the freedom to leave because I needed the money, experience, etc, etc. Today I have the freedom to do everything I choose to do with love and passion. This holds true for my professional and my private life. So success to me means to be free of constraints in your workplace and private life.

So there you have it, my brief conversations with my wonderful colleagues, if you want to learn even more about Camunda’s people and our culture, visit our Careers Page.