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Marius Cristescu has been part of our team for 13 years and one pandemic. He has worked on 10+ projects and grown his passion for mentoring his teammates and teaching young tech enthusiasts.

Read about Marius’s career path and the project from the automotive industry he enjoyed working on. Get a glimpse #BehindTheCode and catch some words of wisdom from our dear bunicu’ (grandpa). Spoiler: his nickname is not necessarily related to his age. 😊

 

Can you please tell us a bit about yourself? What are your studies, hobbies, passions?

I studied Computer Science at the University of Craiova and got my master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence and Data Mining at the same college.

In 2010, I decided to move to Cluj-Napoca. It was an unknown city for me, which offered very attractive opportunities. In the same year, I joined the company as a Java Developer. I am a very sociable person, and I easily embrace change and adapt to new places, circumstances, and people. Adaptability is key; that’s why the relocation was very smooth for me.

In my spare time, I like to play football, ping-pong, and go skiing. Together with my friends, we go to the Alps each winter for an outstanding skiing experience. We used to organize ping-pong tournaments at the office. I really miss those matches during our lunch breaks, when I managed to break a lot of balls. 😊

Another activity I enjoy is the Moving Challenge, a 6-month internal program. Its main goal is to encourage us to log off, go outside and participate in biking, running, and walking. All this in a gamified context – with points to collect, levels to achieve, and prizes to win. My target is to walk at least 5 km daily, to stay fit, and to keep a place on the program’s podium alongside my younger competitors. My achievements in the program are: third place in walking in 2023 and second place in 2022 and 2021.

 

Please describe your career journey and your current role.

As I use to say, I’ve been with the company for 13 years and one pandemic. 😊 When I joined the company, we were a small team of around 80 people. I remember meeting Daniel, VP of Software Engineering, and Călin, CEO, during the selection process. I felt an instant click with their mindset. Coming from Craiova, I was used to the agitated style that people from the Oltenia region have. Surprisingly, I discovered a very different working style, focused on respect and teamwork. I found a people-oriented approach, where your soft skills were evaluated at the same level as your technical capabilities.

As Fortech has become a part of GlobalLogic, my journey continues here. My current dual role is Java Software Architect and Team Leader. In my 13+-year journey within the company, I have worked in many teams, but I can state with certainly that all the people I worked with were great. Even if we don’t all think and work alike, we share the same strong passion for technology and our craft – the projects we develop. Beyond that, we are driven by the same values – we respect each other, and we know there is always someone who will have your back, who will listen and inspire you to strive in what you do. And we know how to have fun and spend quality time together. By going on lunch at the famous “cantina” from the Technical University, enjoying the well-known tori tempura at Nobori, playing ping-pong, going to team buildings, joking, or simply sharing memories together.

Over time, I discovered the passion for guiding young tech enthusiasts in their career in IT. You know the saying, give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. I enjoy teaching young talents about “fishing” in IT.

I have been a trainer in 8 out of the 14 editions of the internal Java Pre-Employment Training in the last six years. This is a 6-week program for students, fresh graduates, and professional reconversion. The participants learn Java Standard Edition and Java Enterprise Edition through practical sessions.

I am also part of a mentoring program at Babes-Bolyai University. This one-semester course helps third-year students get familiar with working on a software project as a team.

In the past three years, I have also joined the Discover Your Call in IT (DPIT Academy) program, and I’ve mentored a few teams of high school students. It’s a program that our company has been sponsoring for the past nine years, and I am happy to share my knowledge with young enthusiasts. In 2023 we even made it to the podium and won third place.

 

Marius and his colleagues at the opening of Java Pre-Employment Training

 

Your colleagues use to call you “bunicu”. What’s the story behind the nickname?

Around seven years ago (2016–2017), I worked on a project where we managed to scale up the team from 2 to 8 people in a short period of time. As we used a niche framework, smartGWT, the newcomers needed a lot of support and guidance to get on track with the project. As I was a key member of the project and worked on it from its beginning, I oversaw the onboarding process.

During the knowledge-sharing sessions with new colleagues, I gave them advice and shared stories from my professional experience. I also used proverbs, aphorisms, and “words of wisdom”, as my teammates called them. Just like a wise old man. Once, before an important release, one of my colleagues was very stressed and was smoking a lot. I told him to take it slowly if he doesn’t want to die young. He replied that I remind him of his grandfather, who also uses many proverbs and wise advice and takes care of his health. And somehow, he started to call me “bunicu’” – grandpa. My teammates loved the new nickname, and it rapidly stuck to me.

I consider the nickname a proof of appreciation and respect from my younger colleagues (and not only). By the way, I’m not that old. I am in my mid-40s. 😊

 

Tell us a bit about a software project you enjoyed working on.

I will tell you about a project from the automotive industry. The application is an integrated management system supporting all business cases for the used truck business. It is used in 13 different countries, each with its own features and characteristics. It is a back-end application used by truck dealers for the entire resell process of a truck, from registering it in a truck store until the final sale. The features of the application include adding truck details, getting technical details from different services and storing them, sending offers to clients, printing invoices, and sending invoices to different accounting systems.

 

What was the project’s tech stack like?

It is a legacy project, for which we used a lot of frameworks. We had the old application, which contained old functionalities based on Java 8, JSP, Struts, Hibernate, and the DB2 database. We built a new application using microservices architecture for the new requirements, using Rest Services and a new PostgreSQL database.

 

What were your favorite and most challenging things about this project?

Even though the project implementation started somewhere in the 1990s, our client wanted to migrate it to a new technology stack.

The application is used in 13 countries, some of them with more than one market. The deployment was complicated, as we had one Tomcat instance for every market. I worked to change this. We wanted to migrate from Tomcat to WildFly and keep only one WildFly instance for all the countries. Thus, the deployment would become simpler, faster, and cheaper for our client.

 

Tell us more about your team.

As I said previously, during my journey at Fortech and GlobalLogic, I was fortunate enough to meet only amazing colleagues. I had a strong bond with all the project teams I was part of. We shared both good and difficult moments on the projects. You know, good times become good memories; bad times become good lessons.

I used to call most of my trainees, mentees, and teammates “nepoți” – grandsons. I think now I have a large family of around 100 “nepoți,” and it’s currently growing with “strănepoți” – great-grandsons.

I like to remember our team lunches and going out after successful releases. Or our collective Black Friday shopping when we ended up buying stuff that we barely needed. Or our tradition of bringing goodies after each client visit. We’d take a break, eat goodies and talk about the adventures we had while travelling. But most of all, I like to remember stories from the office. Like when someone said “Bunicule, I found a bug. Wait, never mind, it’s not a bug.” And I replied with “Stop it, you know I’m old and have heart issues.”

I’ll share with you one of the popular pandemic jokes in our team. Iliescu: “It’s great I still have antibodies after the Spanish flu from 1918. Bunicu’ has them, too.”

 

 

Nepoții waiting for bunicu’s return from holiday

 

What’s next in your career journey?

I will continue focusing on coaching and mentoring. I enjoy helping new colleagues roll up their sleeves and explore new perspectives in their careers. I also want to develop my knowledge and grow on the DevOps side.

 

What advice would you give to someone interested in joining GlobalLogic in Romania?

If I, a simple “bunic” can continue hanging out within the company after 13 years and one pandemic, it is surely one of the best places to work. I joined the company with a certain fear of the unknown, and there was no time to regret the choice I made.

Here you’ll see that your work is appreciated. You are encouraged to grow professionally, share your opinion, make mistakes, and learn from them. In the end, the atmosphere you’ll find within the teams is what makes the difference. This team bonding merges into the high-quality software we work on and we are proud of. Choose GlobalLogic and you will not regret it. For myself, a “bunicu’” who hopes to retire from the same company.😁