Davor Gornik

When you were a student, did you do anything outside of school to build skills or get knowledge that has helped your career?

Yes, I did a lot. It was in the late 80s and at that time I worked in a company in parallel to my full time study. This gave me a lot of experiences related to the practical use of my education. I had 3 years work experience when I finished my college! Luckily the company was flexible enough to work around my time... My final work at the college was actually a completely working tool that was integrating legacy databases with the set of next generation applications including building a data dictionary (yes, there were databases that did not have a clue what they were storing) for the database. In addition I was participating at many conferences and discussion groups (at that time in person) about software development, changes in software development process, and use of modern design concepts. At the time I finished my college I was a speaker at several conferences and had enough ideas and experiences to be recognized as relevant.

What is the most useful piece of career advice you got as a student, and who gave it to you?

According to the advice, I am still a student. The advice was: Never stop learning new things. Accept that what you learn today might not be relevant tomorrow.

Did anyone ever oppose your career plans when you were young or push you in a direction you did not want to go?

My parents did not understand my choice, however they never pushed me in a certain direction. They supported me all along.

When did you get your first Big Break? How did you get it? How did it go?

My first big break was a very lucky one. I was just hired by a small company that forgot to mention that they were without cash already at the moment they hired me. After three months of empty promises and not a single pay check (I got paid years later after my lawsuit), my account standing was deep in the red and realistically I did not know how to pay for my bills. At that moment I got a call from a headhunter who organized an interview the next day with Rational Software. It took 5 more days (two of them were weekend) until I started working with them. I went from not being able to pay my bills to a market leading company that defined software development in few days. Through self initiative and extreme curiousity I became quickly one of the evangelists that traveled the world advising customers on software development processes. However I could never be there if I would not listen. I was often the person that did not say a lot for the first 15 minutes of the meeting. I asked questions. I did what I call "white boarding in my head" before I started talking. I did not have my standard presentation. I had few slides that I could pick and choose from, but the core of my every engagement was a piece of paper of a white board at the end. I stayed with Rational Software for 6 years, then we were acquired by IBM. It was a good time.