Developer meetups were one of our favorite activities till the pandemic rearranged our world. They offer great opportunities to connect with like-minded individuals within your field, build valuable relationships and also to share knowledge. Innovation thrives when great minds come together, and we are thrilled to see that with the constantly reducing number of reported Covid-19 cases and loosened restrictions, more and more organizations decide to host these get-togethers again.
One of our newest clients, Nitro, decided to take the lead and create an event to bring the C++ developers of Hungary together again.
It’s a bold decision to organize an offline meetup these days but we are more than hyped to participate, so we interviewed László Gombosi, Site Lead & Product Manager at Nitro, Inc. about the event and their company in general, since we are sure that with their role in the community and a site opening in the plan they will be one of the key figures of the Hungarian engineering scene.
As the world slowly swings past the pandemic, the opportunity to meet and get to know each other opens up again. A well-established custom for this is meetups, as they offer just that! We would like to actively participate and restart this series of events. I think this is also a good opportunity for us to introduce Nitro to Hungarian professionals, show them our working methods and convey our standards. Nitro is all about innovation and a supportive community, and we wish to transfer these values to our new site in Budapest as well.
Fortunately, we have several reasons for that! Firstly, the region is rightly famous for its professionals that we are eager to get to know. Secondly, we are in the fortunate position that one of the constraints to our business growth is the pace of growth. I consider this a great challenge and a lucky pairing. I am pleased to be in charge of ensuring that all of our future colleagues can join us as equal partners, and experience a modern type of corporate culture that benefits all.
Our product development goals are well defined: significant contribution to developing Nitro from a multi-product company into a unified, end-to-end document management solution, available on almost all major devices (Windows, Mac, Mobile, Browser). Our platform should include multiple possibilities, ranging from authenticated digital signatures to process automation. With time, we’d like to achieve a similar entity to our Dublin base in Budapest, for the teams to become independent as part of our unity. This will include multiple roles and responsibilities, from product development through support to marketing. In the short term, this mainly means development capacity and quality assurance positions, but our medium- and long-term plans also include the opening of product management, sales, support and other related roles as well.
The Budapest team will be an equal partner to our other bases. All Nitro employees in Hungary will have the same rights and compensation packages as their colleagues in any other part of the world. We live in a world where the importance of physical location is secondary to the good and smart use of current telecommunications technologies that ensure a successful and sustainable remote environment.
In the beginning, we are mainly looking for C ++ developers and colleagues that are proficient in automated testing of desktop applications. Their initial goals are closely linked to Nitro’s ambition to become a united platform. This includes integrating new products from Connective, upgrading current technology and solutions, outsourcing them to an internal SDK, or replacing the complete UI technology.
The idea was born in Melbourne, Australia in 2005, with three founding members and an office. We currently have nearly 400 employees on 3 continents at 7 locations. Due to the continuous, stable growth, those numbers are changing day by day, in a positive direction. Together with acquisitions, we are slowly reaching 400 people in 7 locations on 3 continents. Our future Budapest colleagues will join this network, as the eighth base. We have clients in 155 countries and more than 68% of fortune 500 companies use our solutions.
Regarding our products, fortunately there’s more than one to talk about! The first and original one is Nitro PDF Pro, which, as the name suggests, is a tool used for PDF creation and editing, as well as being a productivity solution. We also have our own cloud-based signature solution, Nitro Sign. We’ve expanded this list over the past 12 months with the U.S. PDFpen development team, present on Apple’s platforms, as well as Belgium and France-based Connective, Europe’s largest provider of secure digital signature solutions.
In addition to meeting the needs of our customers and other market participants based on the capabilities of our products, we are also known for our outstanding customer support.
People-centered. In every situation, we put our employees first. We know that we can only expect excellent performance if we ensure the right environment for everyone to achieve that. We trust each individual we hire deeply, and firmly believe that everyone is doing their best for our common goals. In my personal opinion, the top management of the company really does live up to the values advertised on our website, which read: Be good, Performance First, No B.S. In addition to paying attention to each other, we are also performance-oriented.
While buying a PDFpen, we had to integrate a small but complete team into Nitro, which gave us an easier time. Retaining the original structure, complemented by an additional development resource from Nitro, the identity of a product team within the larger Product & Engineering division was seamlessly established. The acquisition of Belgian-based Connective was a bigger and more recent event. Both Nitro and Connective have similar values which makes combining our forces smoother. We follow a 12-18 month action plan, an integral part of which is to be able to present our products as one single platform to the customers, and part of this process is the organic merger of the two companies.
As Nitro Inc. maintained offices in 3 continents and 4 countries before the pandemic, remote collaboration and asynchronous communication were integral parts of our daily lives. There are elements of this that are tangible in practice today as well: We do not and cannot have a process that would favor colleagues who prefer to go into the office. 99% of calls are video calls, for example.
Personally, I moved a little over 300 kilometers from our Dublin office and I don’t feel like it would be a disadvantage. My team and I try to meet every month, maybe every two months. On such occasions the main rule is to focus on each other and build the team spirit- work only comes second.
At the young age of 19, I started working in quality assurance within Hungarian game development, which was probably the first golden age at that time (Digital Reality, Stormregion, Eidos). Here I managed to establish a very strong client-oriented approach to work. I have made a small but very useful detour into the world of game design, which still helps my career as a product manager. I spent the next decade developing my quality assurance skills. I feel lucky to have been able to study from and develop for companies like Prezi in its very early days or AVON’s development center. Throughout my career, I have always paid great attention to building and optimizing efficient processes, regardless of my job responsibilities.
I left Hungary around 5 years ago, and after a short detour, I joined the Nitro team in their Dublin office. For a short time, I worked with the Quality Engineering team as a senior member. The next period was a longer etap as a Technical Product Owner, and now I’m a Product Manager working closely with a team focused on immediate, release and sale blocker issues. I like to deal with critical, difficult situations. Fun fact: Every member of our team is an ex-game developer! Leading the establishment of the Budapest site was recently added to my responsibilities, with tasks regarding the promotion of the new location, the establishment of its organizational structure and the design of efficient work processes and cultural integration systems. In this sense, I physically divide my time between Hungary and Ireland.
I came because of the professional challenges and stayed because of the people. I love that I have the opportunity to make my plans come to life so that the company is open to all ideas. I love that my evaluation is based on value and not time. I also really like that if I want to do more, I have the opportunity and the support from our management, and so does every employee, regardless of their role and seniority.
