“Where I am particularly competent, I make the decisions in the team.”

Nidhi Dutta (29) works for beyonnex from Munich. Here she explains what makes the company’s team spirit so special and how she copes as an Indian in Bavaria.

Nidhi, you joined beyonnex in mid-2023. Why did you choose this company?

Before I applied to beyonnex, I did a lot of research into the company. I am very interested in constantly developing my career. New processes and technologies had always fascinated me, and I had the impression that I could dive deep into this at beyonnex. Also, the product had convinced me: driving forward the digitisation of residential buildings and thus also contributing to climate protection is quite/rather new and a challenge. Helping to make this work is a real motivation!

You mentioned that personal development is very important to you in your job. What exactly do you do at beyonnex and where do you see the opportunity to grow personally?

I work as a Quality Assurance Engineer; My main task is to build quality in the products and processes at beyonnex: I am responsible for ensuring that the software that developers set up in the backend doesn’t have any bugs and works perfectly for the end user. I also help to refine the user stories.

What I particularly like is that practically everyone in our team takes on leadership roles. I don’t formally have a management position myself. But where I am particularly competent, I take the lead and make decisions for the whole team. That is clearly a growth process. The others do the same. I find this management style very pleasant, and I think it brings the best results.

Considering that the company is based in Hamburg, but you live in Munich and work completely remotely, how did your onboarding go?

My team made it very easy for me to settle in. The team spirit is uniquely good. Everyone communicates very transparently, and any given challenges are addressed openly. We therefore have a very good mutual understanding of what each and everybody does and is good at. If you have a question, you just need to reach out, and there will always be someone to give you an answer. And this is exactly the culture we have between the individual teams.

This works very well remotely. Ideally, however, I would like to have a mixture of office and remote working, as I really appreciate the personal contact. In India, I worked 100 per cent in the office. But that was also before the Corona pandemic. In any case, the regular company events in person are nice.

What made you decide to come to Germany initially and how do you like it here?

[laughs] The reason is that I married a man who was already working in Germany. In IT, like me. We both feel very much at home in Munich. I like the cleanliness and the helpfulness of the people. However, the German language is not easy to learn. I took German courses in India to prepare myself. But the language definitely remains a challenge! However, on the job we speak English almost all the time. Nevertheless, I would of course like to be able to speak German as well as possible. I think it’s great how the company supports me and other non-Germans in this area. beyonnex offers non-German employees like me language courses in German and English on different levels. The lessons take place online once a week. This fits in well with the job and is really helpful.

What about the food? Bavaria is known for its hearty and meat-heavy cuisine. Is that something for you?

Well, I’m a vegetarian. The choice of vegetarian food here is much smaller than in India, but I cope. I come from a region in India where we eat a lot of bread. More than rice. And when it comes to bread, the choice in Germany is really huge. I love German bread: white bread, dark bread – you name it! And that more than saves me [laughs].

Thank you very much, Nidhi.