During my one-and-a-half years at the firm, I’ve discussed challenging technical topics with CEOs and CTOs of big companies all over the world. This experience has been eye–opening. It has revealed the process of prioritization of business projects from ideation through implementation – literally from an idea in a CEO’s mind until the deployment of a value–creating microservice.
Maximizing emerging tech
I came to the realization that a lot of seemingly unrelated software challenges tend to overlap among different industries and different company cultures. For example, adopting evolutionary architectures as well as adhering to a culture of peer-reviews, excellence and knowledge sharing among software engineers is crucial for continuous software advancement.
Another striking thing I have witnessed is the tremendous value Agile methodologies create in an organization, especially when the management joins everyday problem-solving. An eye-opening example of agility’s added value that I have experienced, was a project where seven different back-end software development teams around the world were invited to commit to a common API layer. The key to this project’s success has been the quick iteration cycles and the teams’ commitment to continuous improvement.
Exploration and experimentation
Exploring new technologies and architectures is at the heart of my everyday job. From applying a new Graph database on a challenging client project, to deep-diving on decomposing a tightly coupled system, every client is different, and the diversity of solutions I get to implement as a software engineer is very exciting, especially if you are curious like me.
About Ioannis
Ionnis is a McKinsey software engineer based in Berlin. He has a bachelor’s in computer science from the Athens University of Economics and Business. Prior to joining McKinsey, Ionnis co-founded ethelon, a nonprofit to promote tech events across Greece, and worked as a software engineer and product manager.
For more information on McKinsey's software engineering career paths, visit mckinsey.com/TechCareers.