Courage, growth, Precognox

Ricsi is currently the head of the testing team and the DevOps division. He also handles many things around the office, tasks he prefers to tackle hands-on rather than just talk about. These are responsibilities he does not easily let go of.

I’ve always loved IT, ever since elementary school. I completed a system administrator training, which I really enjoyed, but with no experience I couldn’t find a job in the field. In the meantime, I worked in a lot of different places: at a gas station, as a bartender at festivals, doing night shifts stocking shelves and later as a production planner at a plastics company.

Then I came across a Facebook ad saying that Precognox was looking for a tester. Two of my former classmates already worked here, so I checked out what the company was doing.
I felt like this might finally be an opportunity in Kaposvár where someone without experience could also get a chance.

During the entry test, I told them that I did what I could. I didn’t want to look up solutions on Google or use Translate. I think this attitude is what impressed Endre and the others. That’s how I got hired as a tester.

I immediately felt a huge difference compared to my previous workplaces. The attention, the openness and the supportive attitude were there from day one. It wasn’t just about the benefits, although the English lessons and the extra support meant a lot, but mainly about the atmosphere.

In our former office on Vár Street, there was a sign that said: “You’ll be good at your job if you do what you love.”
This wasn’t just a nice-sounding motto. Things genuinely worked that way. I knew right away that I had ended up in the right place.

The biggest leap for me was in English. I did not speak perfectly or grammatically correctly, but I was not afraid to speak and that made a huge difference with our American clients.

In terms of leadership skills, a six session training program helped me tremendously. Situational leadership, giving feedback, delegation…every session had at least one key takeaway that I still use to this day.

I started as a tester, but after a year and a half the QA lead at the time resigned and recommended me as his replacement. I discussed it with Karesz and we agreed that I would give it a try and once I felt confident in the role we could call me a QA manager. That is how my journey in leadership began.

Later the DevSecOps team also became my responsibility. I had studied system administration, so I enjoyed taking on tasks related to the office network from the very beginning.
For example, I completely redesigned and rebuilt the network in our old office on Vár Street. I put together the full plan with costs and Endre approved it.

I joined the DevOps team by first taking over the standups. I brought the scrum mindset with me: prioritization, focus, transparency. Over time I learned the DevOps tasks as well and today I can handle certain parts of the work independently.

I learned an incredible amount. That was where I first saw Scrum working really well: how to maintain focus, how to prioritize, how a good standup should work and how to communicate effectively. We had an excellent Scrum Master and I learned a lot from observing him.

The daily communication with the American clients also helped me become more confident in speaking English. My language skills were far from perfect, but I was not afraid to speak and they appreciated that. They could see that I was paying attention, trying my best and that I had my own opinions and that meant a lot.

A large part of my DevOps mindset also came from there. Cloud tasks, scripting, understanding processes, these were things I first learned deeply while working on that American project.

Over time more and more people were assigned to me for mentoring. At first it was just one or two colleagues, then it gradually expanded. It turned out that I have a knack for it. I can talk to people easily, I can see what they need, what their strengths are and where they might be stuck.

Today I also hold one on one meetings, although not always in a formal setting. With some colleagues a short conversation is enough for me to understand how they are doing.

People here know they can come to me anytime if they are struggling, whether professionally or personally. Often it helps a lot just to have someone who listens and I am happy to be that person for them.

The American project is definitely a major milestone. We were working on a legacy system with many developers and testers and as the project was gradually phased out the team became smaller and smaller. In the last six months I was handling it completely on my own.

I wrote the DevOps tasks needed for the shutdown and in the end I was the one who literally pulled the plug on the product. Not many people can say they saw a large multi year legacy project all the way through to its closure.

On the testing side the Basis project is my favorite success story. We started with two juniors and now five people are working on it achieving an incredible level of automation. They could not program when they joined and now they can fully automate the testing of all their products. Because of this success development work has also returned to us from the same partner.

In testing I now tend to rely more on the knowledge of my team. They have the freshest hands-on experience. My role is to support them in exploring new technologies and in using large language models in their work.

In DevOps however I am learning continuously. I read a lot, I experiment and I also learn a great deal from the team members. Copilot is a huge help as long as I already understand what is happening in the code.

I started back when we were still using Redmine and that was when we switched to JIRA. Since then I have seen continuous progress: modernization, greater efficiency, better and better processes. From the JIRA workflows to the one on ones to the tools we use, it is clear that we want to move forward. For me this is very motivating.

The transition to Kubernetes was a huge effort and it helped us bridge several years of technological gap. I am proud that the team accomplished this.
The Basis project is another example. Two juniors grew into a team of five incredibly skilled automation testers. It is a truly rare success story.

Attitude matters the most, not perfect technical knowledge. In the coming years it will be essential how well someone can use AI. You can write a perfect entry test but it will be just as important to show how you used AI, what prompts you wrote and how you approached the task. Using AI will be an essential skill just like testing techniques or programming.

Because of the appreciation. There are many good things I could list, but the essence is this: I feel that the work I put in is valued. And that is very rare today.