A Day in the Life of Payam Ebrahimi: the challenges he’s facing as a CTO of Devoteam G Cloud Netherlands

In this series, we’ll put the spotlight on Devoteam G Cloud’s experts who are always at the forefront of driving progress in the exciting and rapidly-evolving Google Cloud world. In this article you’ll meet Payam, CTO (Chief Technology Officer) at Devoteam G Cloud in the Netherlands. He talks about what a typical day looks like, the challenges he’s facing, and what makes his role exciting and rewarding.

In a few words, what does your day as a CTO at Devoteam G Cloud Netherlands look like?

The role of a CTO is diverse and multifaceted. At Devoteam G Cloud in the Netherlands, the CTO is responsible for talking to sales, management, and engineers, as well as customers, to understand their challenges from a business and technical perspective. One of the key aspects of this role is to assist customers to clarify their needs. Many times, people are aware they have an issue but don’t know how to address it.  The CTO is responsible to make sure that customers’ technical requirements are in line with the company’s objectives and where we can be at value.

How did you ever get into IT? 

In the pursuit of a career in theoretical physics, I once received a piece of advice from a fellow programmer that would change my course forever. Despite my aptitude for the subject, I was told that I would excel more as an engineer. This prompted me to reconsider my passions and ultimately led me to the world of programming. What started as a hobby quickly became my full-time focus, with my studies in electrical engineering and computer science paving the way.

What I love most about programming is the immediate sense of achievement it brings. Unlike other professions where it may take months or even years to see the fruits of your labour, programming offers instant gratification. Creating software allows you to constantly build on your knowledge and hone your skills, making it a truly rewarding experience. Plus, the best part is that programming can be taught to anyone, making it an accessible and fascinating subject for all. So if you’re looking for a cool and exciting field to dive into, programming may just be the perfect fit for you!

What makes this role challenging?

As a CTO, you have a lot on your plate, with building and managing an engineering company at the top of your list. In contrast, as an engineer, you are primarily focused on the code. However, when you take on a management role, your responsibilities expand beyond the technical aspects of the job, and you must start worrying about things you never considered as a programmer.

One of the biggest challenges you face in this role is dealing with the technical depth of the customer side. It’s common for clients to continue using outdated processes they established years ago, making it difficult to convince them to embrace change. However, as a company, your job is to transform these processes and provide the best possible solutions. To do this, you must find the right balance between agility and stability, reducing the failure rate while maintaining the flexibility to quickly go to market.

Even Google Cloud, a well-established cloud company, faces challenges as they continue to grow. The concept of the cloud is more than just running someone’s code on someone else’s computer; it often requires companies to adopt new processes and ways of thinking. Dealing with these changes is a big challenge, and you typically have to go through it alone. However, together with my team, we offer solutions to help companies manage this transition.

To what extent does IT play a business-critical role within your organisation? 

At our company, we also had to undergo some internal process changes to improve our software development. We realized that we could create accelerators by reusing our existing solutions rather than developing everything from scratch. 

For example, in order to govern our internal Google Cloud Environments we have been developing solutions which later we turned into Google Cloud Accelerators. These accelerators were further enhanced to fit our customer’s needs and nowadays they are a big part of our offerings for our customers. 

So of course, IT plays a business critical role within Devoteam G Cloud. 

Have you ever considered the possibility of working as an engineer for an end user? 

While it may present unique challenges, working directly with customers can also be a very rewarding experience. I, for instance, began my career working with customers directly. 

Today, I’m still involved in customer projects but on the consulting side. Consulting, on the other hand, offers its own set of advantages. By working with multiple companies, you can gain diverse experiences that help you grow as an engineer. Additionally, you get to collaborate with colleagues from different company cultures, expanding your network and providing opportunities to work with a diverse group of people that you might not encounter in a non-consultancy. Ultimately, this can lead to an enriching and fulfilling career.

What is it like being close to the fire and always having to be up-to-date on developments in IT? 

In any profession, continuous learning is essential for growth and development, and this holds true for the field of IT as well. The fast pace of technological advancements in the industry makes it crucial for professionals to always stay up-to-date. Personally, I find it exciting and invigorating to be so close to the latest developments in the field. The work is always thrilling, and you get to experience things that you wouldn’t in any other profession.

To stay up-to-date, one needs to strike a balance between learning from work projects and actively seeking out new information. Our work demands us to stay up-to-date as we learn new challenges through various projects. To supplement this, I keep track of best practices by closely collaborating with Googlers to know what’s on their roadmap and what they are working on. Additionally, attending meetups helps me understand what the next focus is, and I also keep in touch with academic colleagues to stay abreast of the latest developments. Overall, staying up-to-date in IT requires a multi-faceted approach that includes working at the customer level, keeping an eye on industry trends, connecting with Google, and building a network of colleagues.

Which technological development has had a big impact on your career?

One of the technological developments that have had a significant impact on my career is distributed systems, which underpins many aspects of cloud computing today. Another development that has been particularly valuable is the maturity of streaming data analytics, which has enabled near-real-time insights for our customers. Finally, containerization has also been crucial for achieving immutability in runtime, separation of concerns, and improvements in security.

What would you like to pass on to another CTO? What made our customers grow? How did we help them grow? How do we add value?

When it comes to passing on advice to other CTOs, there are a few things that I think are particularly important. 

Firstly, investing in your team is essential. Providing opportunities for lifelong learning should be part of the company culture, and encouraging your team members to develop their skills and knowledge is key to their success, and in turn, the success of the company. Certifications are not everything, but we’re very proud that every engineer has some certification(s) in Google Cloud. 

It’s also important to remember that customers come to you because you’re the expert, but the real experts are the talented individuals in your team. Delegating tasks and relying on the knowledge and expertise of your team members are crucial for achieving success.

In terms of adding value for our customers, it’s important to remember that everything we do is engineering, and there’s no such thing as a perfect process. Instead, we focus on improving existing processes and finding ways to add value for our customers while not being afraid of suggesting major changes when it’s necessary. This approach is not only key to helping our customers grow, but also a central part of how we treat our customers.