Yevgen Lepekha about growth from an installer to a head of department

He is known in the company as a man who is used to doing rather than talking. Zhenya doesn’t like long conversations: if questions, then to the point, if requests, then specific. He has been working for the company for almost six years, and he is a man who has had a rapid career growth — he started as an assembler and a year later took a managerial position.

How the company has changed over six years, what qualities are key to a successful career, and what unites all Maxnet employees — read about this and more in our interview with Yevgen Lepekha.

— Many years ago you joined Maxnet? Can you remember why you chose this particular company at the time?

— Before Maxnet, I worked for another company where I had very little free time and nothing in my life but work. At one point I realised that I needed to make a change. That is how I ended up at Maxnet. Back then, there was much less money, but more free time.

— How did you start your professional career with the company?

— I came as an installer and worked in that position for about a year. After that something had to change again. I was an orderly for a while, a bit later I worked as a team leader in this field. I was in that position for a relatively short time, and then I was offered the job of supervising technicians. All in all it turned out to be a little over a year in various positions, and then a position as head of the repair and maintenance sector.

— Why did you choose the telecommunications industry? Were you educated in this field and have you always wanted to work in it?

— Historically, that was the way it happened (smiles). I studied a little differently. I am a programmer by education. One speciality was «Software Engineer», the other was «Computer Systems Analyst». But due to the fact that during my studies I had interests which weren’t related to my studies in any way, I needed money. The field of telecommunications was very clear to me, you could earn money doing sensible work and learn a lot. It was more or less interesting for me.

— Has your life changed after joining Maxnet?

— Yes, I had more free time, I could do something apart from work. Before, work took up all my time — I would leave at seven in the morning, come home at ten at night and so on for six days, and the seventh day was spent doing laundry and sleeping.

— Do you have as much free time as you do now in a managerial position?

— No, I don't have that much free time now. But there are advantages. There is some freedom of activity even when I am working. Here, managing something, I am not too tied down to a location. You can manage and control the process remotely.

— What do you like most about your job?

— It's hard to answer. Probably the access to all sorts of hardware, the opportunity to mess around in it. That's interesting. I also like the fact that I can participate in decision making. When you can influence something, there is more interest in your work.

— Do you remember what the company was like six years ago when you first started working here? What has changed in that time?

— Back then, for me, the company started and ended with getting a work order. Got a work order, went to work. Came back, turned it in. That was it. I didn't see what was going on in the company. And plus I had duties like an ordinary fitter. There weren't very many of them and it wasn't really clear what this company did on the whole. When I was an installer I didn't see what was going on in the company. It's different now. People are communicating more, the company regularly organizes corporate events, and there is periodic training, attended by everyone from management to rank-and-file employees. And plus there are a lot more employees now, the company has expanded.

— You have had a good career development during your time with the company. You started as an installer and became a manager of a large sector. What have you learned in that time?

— At Maxnet, I learned practically everything that I know and can do professionally now. I learned as I went along, my job duties dictated it to me. I had to develop in order not to slow down the department I was entrusted with. For example, I had not had any people management skills before. I had never been particularly interested in it. But when I came here I needed it in order to manage my subordinates adequately.

— Is it difficult to be a manager of such an area?

— Yes, it is. It is difficult to be a manager of any business area. When you have some people under you, you are responsible for them. This is the main difficulty. Everyone has his own interests and views on what is going on, and they don't always coincide with the company interests. You have to be able to steer them in the right direction.

— It's commonly said that if a person has devoted many years to one job, it ceases to be just a job. Do you agree with this opinion? What is Maxnet to you?

— Yes, if you work for a long time in one place it ceases to be just a job, of course. You start to feel something and it is hard to imagine yourself moving to another field. You get used to the people who work here, it becomes a part of life, a bigger part of life.

— What can you call your biggest achievement during your time at Maxnet?

— Probably the current tech department. What the department is like now is my achievement. I recruited most of the employees who are now in the department. I watched them develop and tried to influence them, to teach them something. We used to do internal training periodically, but now most of them are experienced, they can share knowledge with each other, and minimal involvement is required in this process. The technicians themselves deal with the tasks at hand and, for the most part, they are already able to make some decisions on the spot without involving me or other company employees.

— What can you say about the Maxnet team in general?

— It is difficult to speak about it as a whole, all people are different, but probably the common quality for the majority is activity and striving for development. People who work only for money don’t come to us. Mostly those who want to learn something are here. People who just want to make money go to other jobs or, at the very least, don’t get used to us. In order to fit in here and become part of the team, you have to get into the ideas that the company is pursuing.