Having spent 14 years with a multinational networking and telecommunications company, Ruiying Zhang decided it was time for a career change and joined Ductus US as employee number 3. Since then, the company has grown rapidly, and Ruiying has never looked back.
It’s been three and a half years since I joined Data Ductus, and what a journey it’s been. Overnight I went from working as a team leader at Ericsson R&D, to working in a team of three at Data Ductus. It was like joining a start-up, where you’re responsible for everything – sales, coding, invoicing, requirements gathering and customer support – but with the luxury of being able to call on the team back in Sweden when we needed extra tech support.
Now that Ductus is more established, with three offices across the US, things are a little less hectic, but there’s still a lot of hands-on work to be done. I’m both a manager and a developer, which means I get to work with my passion, which is coding, everyday. And I’m still involved in customer relations, requirement gathering and I also help train and onboard our new employees.
What’s really interesting about Ductus is that even though we’re a relatively small IT consulting firm – with all the dynamism that comes with this – we get to work with some of the world’s leading companies. We’ve orchestrated global networks and built cloud management solutions for Fortune 500 companies, and we’re in constant communication with Cisco and their clients as an official Cisco Partner.
But of course it’s not all work. We try to instill the Ductus culture, values and ways of working across our organization. In part, this means making sure people have time for their families and interests. I believe that encouraging people to pursue personal activities means they usually perform better at work. Personally, I like to play badminton and table tennis, and I spend a lot of time at different swim meets cheering my girls on, who are great swimmers.
If there are talented people out there looking for a career in software development then they should definitely consider Data Ductus. Our consultants work at the forefront of technology, are constantly learning and innovating, take responsibility for their own time, and they get to work with really interesting people and clients.