Best Bits from Season 3 and People & Culture Reflections + Holiday message from my guests

The power of belonging, Employer Value Proposition, defining career moments, and lessons on leading with trust and support—these themes made my final podcast season of 2024 truly special. In this episode, I look back and reflect on the best bits from my conversations with inspiring guests. 

As the year comes to a close, many of us pause to reflect. I hope this episode brings you something meaningful to carry into 2025—whether it’s a spark of inspiration or a learning. 

Be sure to listen until the end for a heartwarming surprise from Kristof, Ema, Thorsten, and Karolina. Coming from different cultures and speaking different languages, they share what tradition makes their holiday season special. 

Find full episodes on any streaming platform. Search for Real Talks powered by Dynatrace.  

Happy holidays!

Discover the opportunities at Dynatrace and take your career to the next level: careers.dynatrace.com 

Transcript

Sue

Welcome to Real Talks. I'm your host, Sue Quackenbush, Chief People Officer at Dynatrace. And today's episode is a special one. As we approach the end of the year. It's a time to pause and reflect on 2024. It's amazing how much we've accomplished. I also want to say thank you to all of my guests, who joined me on this podcast. So we're revisiting some of those most memorable moments from the season. The first guest was Christophe, who's based in Belgium. He's been with Dynatrace for 15 years and he currently is our innovation services director. You hear about his slow and steady career philosophy and he's live that.

Kristof

Well, I've been I've been lucky enough to be part of many revolutions and evolutions within Dynatrace. I started as a developer and moved into a customer-facing role in the post-sales, the Dynatrace One organization we call it today. And as my role progressed and changed, actually the company changed a lot as well. It's obviously we've we've over the last few years, we went from, from a rather large organization to a but one that's focused on observability. Right? So really focused on our space and wanting to be the best in that space, really wanting to make a difference and massive growth as a result. All right. Both from the amount of people to amount of customers. And it's that relentless well pursuit, I would say, of making ours, uh, a better company tomorrow that we are today. And seeing the opportunities that brought along for myself in my career, but also in a way to in the way that we work, made it just super exciting. Um, it's it's not that every day is the same, right? Every, every day brings a new challenge and brings a new a new aspiration to work towards. And that's what keeping me here. Uh, as long as I'm thanes and I'm. And I'm loving my job. Uh, I don't see a reason to to go and look elsewhere.

Sue

So Kristoff's story really speaks to that constant innovation, the ability to look at your career as a journey. It also reminds me of some of the findings that we discovered when we were looking into our technology employer value proposition, really wanting to understand why do technologists come to Dynatrace? Why do they stay? And he's been able to really experience that fullness within Dynatrace. Another person I spoke with is Ema. She's based in Australia and she's our Senior Field Marketing Manager, and this conversation really focused on women in tech. And we had a great conversation about, although sometimes you feel like you don't belong or you might feel like you're an imposter, how much there is an opportunity in technology and in the field of technology for females. And you don't have to be a technologist.

Ema

I just made the choice to throw myself into the deep end and see how it went for me. And if the, you know, worst case scenario, I was going to run home with my tail between my legs and never go back. But I think the fear is that you don't feel like you're you're going to belong. And the problem with not belonging is that it takes everything that you have and squashes down all of your ambition and all of your passion. And for me, the moment I walked in the door and I found all of these incredible people who were in a very similar situation to me, um, as soon as I saw them with that warm smile, I felt like, okay, maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm maybe I do belong here. Maybe I am the right person for this room. Maybe I am smart enough. Maybe I can make new connections and I can grow who I am as a person in technology with these people around me.

Sue

There are so many opportunities, and what Ema's story really brings out is that lean in, take a chance. Be open. You get a sense of belonging. My third guest this year was Thorsten, who is based in Austria, and he's one of our product leads. Thorsten's story is really interesting because he's a long-time career Dyna tracer who actually stepped away from Dynatrace and then came back.

Speaker 4

One of the main reasons for that was, uh, why I came back is, uh, all the different colleagues and, uh, I grew with them from a professional perspective, but also many of them became friends. So I went with many of them on different trips. Uh, perform our annual conference, for instance, but also in our free time. So we spend family time together. Uh, so also our families became friends. And also during my absence at Dynatrace, we still were very close and very connected. So I was always very well aware of what's going on at Dynatrace and also where the company is still moving. I was also then feeling again here, I want to go with Dynatrace again because I also honestly missed all my colleagues and also friends. I said before.

Sue

I love Thorsten's story, this sense of belonging, the connections, the relationships, the friendships that are created within an organization. And this really speaks to how Dynatrace is welcoming. Not all organizations can offer that type of environment. And when an organization can, I would say, jump right in. And coming next month, I will be talking with Karolina, who is based in Poland, and she is our director of software engineering and organizational lead. What's interesting about Karolina's story is the realization that she's leading, as she was led early on in her career.

Speaker 5

So I had a new joiner in the community team, where I immediately saw that she has such a leadership potential to drive this team forward as a team captain, so I can move out of the team completely because I needed to move out at some point in time. Uh, and just after three months being in the company, still on her trial period, I asked her, would you take on that opportunity to be the team captain for the team? And her response was very similar to mine back almost ten years ago. But how? I am the most fresh team member in the team. And how can I now lead the team? Do they trust me? Do I have skills? I've never done this before. And I told her yes, you have skills. I see this from the interview. Uh, so experience will come, but skills are more important. You can always learn technical stuff.

Sue

I love Karolina's story. What it really showcases is the ability for leaders to be able to inspire and believe in someone, and trust that someone can deliver. Even though they've never done it. And so that role modeling of belief, you can do it. And inspiration is really something that, you know, when you think about from a leadership perspective, if you could give that to someone, that's a tremendous gift. Let's take the best learnings from our guests into 2025 and make it a year of even more growth, more well-being, and more success. And with that, I want to leave you with a little holiday cheer. Here are messages from all of my incredible guests this season, sharing their favorite traditions and warm wishes for the holiday season.

Kristof

Hi, everybody. I'm Kristof. I'm based in Belgium. Uh, and my favorite part of Christmas is, uh, it's, uh, ugly Christmas sweater season and fan fest, though it's, uh, happy holidays in Dutch.

Ema

The most wonderful time of the year is the end of year in office. Sometimes out of office and of your party. And I can't wait to go every single year because it brings everybody together. We come from all over Australia and we just party like it's 1999.

Thorsten

Hey, my name is Thorsten. I am located in Linz, Austria and usually I celebrate Christmas Eve with my family, uh, and also with the family of my wife, which means we are having a lot of fun. And usually this means I play the entire Christmas Eve Lego it. It's challenging, believe me. In German forever, you know?

Karolina

Okay, so my favorite holiday thing is probably buying the Christmas tree because there is always, you know, so much decision-making for my husband. It's always too big, too high. Uh, for my kids, it's always too small. Uh, if it's just one, it goes to, uh, to our dining room. But then my kids want, uh, smaller ones to their room. So. Yeah, buying a Christmas tree. Definitely. Um, and to say Happy Holidays in Polish.

Sue

So many stories we shared on our podcast, and there are so many more interesting ones to come. You can listen to the full episodes on your favorite. streaming platform. Find us by searching for Real Talks powered by Dynatrace. Thank you for listening and sharing our episodes. Happy Holidays, and here’s to a meaningful and blessed 2025!