Ask anyone about a job they’ve left, and you’ll usually get a clean story. The good parts, the bad parts, a tidy reason for leaving.
The harder story is the one told from inside. While the project is late, the feedback stings, and the work looks nothing like what you pictured when you signed.
We’ve been building software since 2004, from Bitola, Ohrid, Prilep, Skopje, Amsterdam and Novi Sad. In over twenty years, one thing has held true. The opinions that change a company are the ones said at the table: to a lead, in a retro, in a one-on-one, while there is still something to fix and someone to fix it with.
Every company has friction. Ours included.
There are decisions people disagree with. Processes that frustrate. Weeks when the job isn’t what someone imagined it would be.
Some people read friction as a reason to pull back. Others read it as the actual work: the conversation they didn’t want to have, the feedback they didn’t want to hear, the responsibility that looked two sizes too big. The second group grows faster than anyone else here.
We get things wrong. Here’s one.
We used to offer work from home. Then we cut it. We wanted people back in the offices, working side by side and spending time together, and we thought removing the option was the fastest way to get there.
It wasn’t the right call, and our people told us so. They didn’t do it in comments after they’d gone. They did it in proposals, while they were still here. They didn’t ask us to give up on the office. They offered a middle ground.
We listened. Remote work came back as 25 days per quarter, roughly two days a week. People still come in, still spend time together, still build the team. They also have flexibility when they need it.
The better policy didn’t come from management. It came from people who cared enough to argue about it.
Growth works the same way
Every year we run AI Code Connect, our own hackathon. At the last edition, forty-two people formed eight teams and spent one weekend building something real with agentic AI.
One team finished third and had expectedbetter. One of their developers said the gap between what they wanted and what they shipped was the most useful thing he took home. Next time he’d commit to the core idea early instead of polishing four versions of everything.
That’s what low stakes are for. You find out what you get wrong before it costs anything, and you carry the lesson into the work where it would have.
Say it at the table
Different opinions are welcome here. Some sting. Some are fair. The remote work change shows that the fair ones move things.
But they have to be said where they can do something. Feedback given while you’re here shapes how we work. Commentary after you’ve left can’t, because there’s no one at the table to build the fix with.
What we offer, honestly
You’ll be stretched. You’ll be asked for your opinion in rooms where yours is the least senior one. You’ll get feedback that lands harder than you expected, from people who want you to be good. And when you come back with a better idea, we’ll hear it.
Not everyone wants that, and that’s a fair choice. We’d rather say it up front than have someone find out in month three.
The questions that matter
Everyone has a chapter that didn’t go to plan. We just told you one of ours.
What did I learn?
What could I have done better?
Who am I now that I wasn’t before?
They’re harder than asking whose fault it was. They’re also the only ones that pay you back.
Your career is measured by who you became while you were somewhere, and by what you do next. If that sounds like a place you’d grow in, our open roles are at https://iwconnect.com/jobs/.