The upside of a flat hierarchy

How does working for a Danish company with a flat hierarchy compare to the more classic company constellations? For Romanian Software Developer Tudor-Ionut Dumitras it allows for better teamwork and greater innovation in his work with the SitaWare Aspire team.

Before Tudor joined Systematic in 2022, he worked for a Romanian start-up in Bucharest. When he became aware of the opportunity to join Systematic, he was initially drawn to working with quality products and highly structured processes. Since starting, he has though been impressed with the effects of a flat company hierarchy that values the best idea, no matter who comes up with it.

“Working for a start-up allows for a lot of freedom in your work, but it can make software development a bit chaotic. That was not for me. Today, I am Scrum Master in the Aspire team, so I have the responsibility to uphold the processes that support our work. It helps guarantee the technical quality of Aspire, but at the same time I am impressed by how we can uphold strong processes and still have a culture where everyone can pitch ideas and suggestions,” he says.

“My friends in IT are really impressed when I tell them about how we work in my team and the amount of influence you get – even as a young developer. It’s quite unique and I think it helps us to be much more innovative because we allow for everyone to contribute with their perspective.”

Building the foundation of a leading product

As SitaWare Aspire is currently in the early years of development, all new features are essentially foundational building blocks for future development. This requires Tudor and the Aspire team to think long-term and consider development in a new light.

“Whenever we approach a feature, we must take into consideration how it will affect other components of the product because we are still in the process of developing what will become the foundation. This requires us to consider how our choices can affect future features. It’s a great challenge that forces us to take a more holistic approach to development. Fortunately, we have great collaboration across the teams based in Denmark and Romania and that ensures that perspective,” Tudor says.

With offices in 11 countries across the globe, Systematic houses more than 1.100 dedicated colleagues of different nationalities. In the Aspire team, the members are all based in Romania and Denmark.

The right fit – on and off work

While the strong processes, focus on quality, and an interesting tech stack keeps thing interesting during work hours, the focus on team events and off-hours activities has helped Tudor feel right at home.

“Systematic has formed an environment where people are friends and generally like spending time together outside of work. I know that every office hosts a lot of events for its employees, but I think the Romanian office has the most. The focus on team events translates into my development team, even if we work across different offices. You don’t really feel the geographical difference. Instead, it feels really close, and our teams work just as well together in the office as we do online,” Tudor says.