I first joined VisualLabs in the summer of 2020 as a junior business analyst. As you can see from the timeline, I was part of the mass junior recruitment. With three of us, the company grew to 8 people at that time.

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In the more than 1 year I worked here from 2020-2021, I was involved in quite a variety of tasks: building and improving Power BI reports, working a lot on a contract management application I built using the Power Platform, and also gaining insight into the beauty of Business Central. The latter also gave rise to some comical memories, such as the painstaking work involved in recording and subtitling training videos for clients, and how I was then, as an undergraduate student, on 'duty' for Christmas because I had no more holidays left for the year. But I got a lot of support from my senior colleagues in these things, they didn't let me get lost in the shuffle.

3 years later, in the summer of 2024, I rejoined VL, but now I work specifically with ERP. One thing that was very nice and new to me in the company was the company timeline. Where last time I was one of the mass junior hires, I'm now a part of the company life.

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An amazing amount has happened in my time away, and it's great to see these events being shared by my colleagues, creating a stronger sense of belonging.

What has actually changed in these 3 years? I haven't had the chance to go through everything since I rejoined, and there's not enough space to go into it all here, so I'll just give you a few snippets.

Office

The first of these is probably the new office: the move from Zsigmond Square to Montevideo Street was already done when I was still here as a junior. But who I couldn't enjoy it then, and I wasn't part of the "moving in", but still, when I returned here 3 years later, I felt like I had shaped it. Interpret this to mean that the ethos that makes visuallabs to visuallabs, I think, changed very little, and the homeliness of the office reflected that.

Specialisation

The company has made huge progress in terms of specialisation and staff numbers while I was away: the team has grown to 35 people, and there are now separate business units for all the tasks I had the opportunity to join on a rotational basis as a junior. These are the CE team, who build business applications for clients, the data team, who deliver data analytics and visualisation solutions, and there's the ERP team - of which I became part - where we introduce Microsoft's enterprise management solutions (Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations and Business Central) to clients.What I would perhaps highlight from this is that even though these specialisations have evolved, it has not brought with it a siloed operation. To deliver work in our own area, we have access to the knowledge of other areas, and we mutually help each other across teams to deliver the highest quality service possible. From this perspective, what has changed in 3 years? I would say nothing; what worked then on a small scale, works now on a bigger scale.

Agile operation

We have had a solid vision of how we deliver solutions since I was a junior employee here: the agile methodology. What was in its infancy is now mature. If not fully agile, it uses the agile elements so well that it supports our work to a great extent on a day-to-day basis.It helps us communicate internally and to our customers by allowing them to post issues in DevOps that we help them resolve; we write features, user stories, test cases that help us with needs assessment and implementation. We have daily stand-up meetings with the team in the mornings where we discuss our stumbling blocks, at the end of the week we have sprint rounds where we always plan the next week's sprint, and monthly we have a retros where we pay special attention to feedback to each other, looking back on the past 1 month.

Team and all the fun

Unfortunately, during my first job, I didn't get much of that live because of Covid, but even then I had those short conversations at the beginning of a call or at the morning "all-people" DSMs that reinforced the sense of belonging to the team and the good atmosphere. Fortunately, we have kept this habit ever since, so no call is ever dull. And once the epidemic subsided, these community events only grew stronger, with regular team-building events, VL team-building retreats, co-hosted Christmas and Halloween parties.It's also a good day at the office. Although it varies from day to day, we have little rituals that colour the days and take the focus off work. For example, the daily lunch together in the office, chit-chat while making coffee, or just passing a funny comment to each other at the next desk, or the monthly office day when we all go in and look back over the past month. In short, you never get bored here. 😊

Coming back to a place where I've worked before is a special experience - especially when so much has changed in the meantime. VisualLabs has retained the supportive community and vibrancy that I grew to love, while reaching new levels of development and professionalism. This journey has been a learning experience not only for the company, but also for me, as the old and new experiences have given me a stronger, more mature perspective. I look forward to being a part of the next chapter and seeing where the company goes in the future!