Life at CROZ

As you probably already know, we are a team of about 300 technology-enthusiasts, young and experienced people who love to collaborate and solve complex problems. Every project brings new business units, users, technology stacks and challenges, and we strive to constantly improve and drive new ideas and initiatives – both technologically and organizationally. Despite our passion for technology, CROZ would not be where it is today without the people who make it happen. That’s why we are excited to introduce you to our superstars! Okay, let’s dive in!

Average years of work in CROZ

We like to work with data and numbers, but these numbers are close to our hearts – just like the people who give us a deep understanding of culture and values in CROZ and have been doing so for years.

Our team also continued the trend of education and certification in cloud and data streaming technologies. The enablement in these areas became a standard for all CROZ employees. Some of our colleagues who are technology advocates have further specialized through the following certificates:

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
Certified Kubernetes Application Developer
Confluent Certified Administrator for Apache Kafka
Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Container Platform Administration
– Red Hat Certified ENGINEER Ansible

Congratulations to all certificate owners!

UniCROZ: To bring us together

As our company grows in all directions, we realized it was time to bring our employees and members of our partner network together to showcase what CROZ is doing today and, more importantly, what we will be doing in the future. That’s why we organized our first internal conference, UniCROZ, in 2022.

Why UniCROZ?

The name UniCROZ has three meanings:

United CROZ – because we wanted to bring together all CROZ employees and partners
Unique CROZ – because we wanted to showcase our unique qualities
University@CROZ – because sharing knowledge is at the heart of what we do

The conference was held at Camp Pine Beach Pakoštane and included panel discussions, expert lectures, workshops and presentations from organizations, departments and projects across the CROZ partner network. The goal was to bring together people who may not have the opportunity to work together every day. And hey, there was also time for free activities and relaxation. The two panel discussions were designed to give employees insight into the project lifecycle and help them figure out which career path fits their interests and skills. We also hosted three TechTalks on Kafka, cloud practices, and DIAS (data integration and analytics system), as well as several workshops on product development, DevOps, and machine learning. We also organized a “fair” where different departments from CROZ and our partner companies had the opportunity to present their work in an interactive and engaging way.

We don’t know what the future holds, but we have big plans. The most important thing for us will always be the well-being of our employees and the ambition to develop new and better projects. If our employees are happy and the work gets done, anything is possible.

Tech Thursdays: Learning & growing

Sharing knowledge is one of the most important values at CROZ. That’s why we’re always looking for new and interesting ways to do so. One of our oldest events is Tech Thursday. It all started in 2007 with a colleague, Davor Čengija, who invited anyone interested in development to join a mailing list. Then in 2012, we moved on to shorter Thursday morning meetings where one of our developers would share their knowledge on a current technical topic. “Tech Thursday” still exists today and is co-organised by many CROZ members – from juniors to seniors. We believe that every experience is valuable and inspiring, and we want to cover topics from all perspectives. Since many students work at CROZ, we wanted to create a version of Tech Thursday tailored specifically for them. That’s why we introduced Tech Coffees for students in 2020. The goal is to create a “safe space” for students to discuss technology-related topics and gain new knowledge. Originally Tech Coffee for students was led by two colleagues, but over the years the organization has grown and is now led by six great people. We thank the team for their support in fulfilling our mission of spreading knowledge and expertise among all employees and partners at CROZ

So far, 51 student Tech Coffees have taken place, and the topics and guests are always different. The topics and guests are always different, ranging from a student’s project to advice from our founder and second CROZ retiree, who has been with the company for 20 years. In addition to technical topics, students are also interested in CROZ’s projects and the different roles within the company. To satisfy their curiosity, we also invited representatives from different departments to talk about their typical workday and the less typical situations they find themselves in.

Building strong bonds: Fun times @CROZ

We’re pleased to say that we’re a group of people who know how to have a good time. We believe that work doesn’t have to be all about, well, work. Balance is the key! Take a look at some of our favourite moments from the past two years that illustrate our main motto: Work isn’t just about getting the job done, it’s about having the best people to spend quality time with by your side. Even when we aren’t in the office.