Employee Spotlight: Igor Danshyn

This week in our “Employee Spotlight” series, we meet Igor Danshyn, who works as a Cloud Platform Manager, discuss his career and experiences at JERA. Don’t forget to like the JERA page for more employee stories and to keep up to date with our latest position openings.

Please tell us a little about you

?I am Ukrainian, born and raised in the capital of Ukraine - Kyiv. I started my career about 20 years ago after graduating from a technical university with a master’s degree in Computer Science. Currently, I have 15 professional certifications in the information technology field, and 8 are in cloud computing. I can speak fluently in four languages: Ukrainian, Russian, English, and Japanese.

?I have always been passionate about two things: computer technology and the English language. Since the start of my career, I set a personal goal to work in the information technology field at international companies and use the English language at work on a daily basis. While living in Ukraine, I had a chance to work at global companies such as Honda and Samsung Electronics. At Honda, I had my first experience working within a Japanese, family-like corporate culture and helped to introduce new car models to the Ukrainian market. Needless to say, Honda as a brand stole my heart forever, so over the past decade, I have owned two Honda cars (Civic and CR-V) and a motorcycle (VFR 800F).

?I always knew that someday I wanted to move abroad, so I hoped that maybe life has something exciting in store for me. That wish was granted in 2011, when I was offered a unique opportunity to move to Japan. Sometimes all it takes is a brave step forward, so I decided to buy a one-way ticket to Tokyo, packed my whole life into two bags, and jumped into the unknown. This was a pivotal moment in my life. I was young, ambitious, and full of confidence that the future belongs to the brave. For the first time in my life I felt that I was facing an open road.

?I am a people person at work and an introvert at home. I enjoy quiet walks in parks or riding my mountain bike in nature. I am always looking to increase my knowledge, so usually I am reading 3 books in parallel: a self-development book, contemporary literature, and classic novels. What we know is a drop, what we don’t know is an ocean. In the fast-changing world of technology, you need to keep your knowledge up to date. Therefore, professional development education is a part of my daily routine.

?Every year I create a roadmap with a list of goals and actionable steps to develop my life, health, and career. I dare to be adventurous, so I like experiencing unique activities and creating new habits. My favorites activities are motorcycle touring, indoor and outdoor swimming, Kyokushin karate training, and practicing mindfulness.

?I respect openness, honesty, and assertiveness.

?What is your role at JERA and what do you enjoy the most about your role?

I joined JERA as a Cloud Architect, Senior Manager and set an ambitious, but simple vision of adopting multi-cloud for the largest power generation company in Japan and accelerating the Digital Transformation program. The biggest challenge was to properly design and implement the multi-cloud architecture for a company that still hosted most of its IT assets on-premises. With huge support from the CIO and management, the goal was accomplished within 2 years, so JERA officially became a multi-cloud company with a cloud-first approach. I also influenced the organizational changes to create CloudOps, SecOps, and DevOps teams.

?In 2021 JERA began its globalization and expansion to the international markets, so I had to work out the strategy for introducing the public cloud to subsidiaries and accelerate the adoption of cloud-native services. At present, we have successfully migrated all IT assets to the cloud for JERA Americas and JERA Australia.

?Some time ago I was promoted to the Cloud Platform Manager’s role and became an end-to-end technology and operations owner of a cloud platform as well as a leader of the CloudOps team. The genuine spirit of the entire team allows me to grow in my professional career and work collaboratively on projects with all Ops teams.

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?What attracted you to JERA as a company?

I chose JERA since I believe in what the company is doing and how much effort it invests into renewable, alternative and sustainable energy. JERA is ushering in the era of zero CO2 emissions and that journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I genuinely welcome this initiative and am proud to be a part of it.

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What has been the most transformative experience you had since joining JERA?

All my life I was working at international and foreign companies in a fast-paced manner where the results must be delivered quickly. At all times speed was a statistic that sold, however, I realized that Japanese ways of working are different from western countries. It empowered me to learn more about the Japanese business culture and etiquette that is an integral part of society. In Japan, it’s very important to follow a hierarchy and pay homage to local traditions.

?Contrary to popular belief that Japan is a high-tech country with flying machines in the sky and robots walking the streets, Japanese businesses usually become late adopters of technology. From my personal experience, the transition from the on-premises to a public cloud is not trivial. Sometimes it felt like a steep uphill hike, however, once you define the business's mission and purpose, you need to translate them into actionable objectives and educate the personnel accordingly.

?Over the past 4 years working at JERA, I received a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience. In order to build a common language and trust, I had to adjust my working style, communication skills, and mindset. The learning path wasn’t exactly a straight line, but I’ve handled it.

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What’s one piece of advice you would share with your younger self?

As you navigate your way to the top, remember, nothing is forever. Sometimes, life humbles us in ways we least expect. Be humble, be kind to others, don’t run people over, don’t run people down, don’t run people under.

?I also admire these quotes:

“Learning is the oxygen of human growth”

“Not all storms come to disrupt your life. Some come to clear your path”

“Be open to everything and attached to nothing”

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What would you tell someone that is interested in joining JERA?

JERA is a one-of-a-kind company that embraces innovative technologies and treats its employees as valuable assets. Opportunities like this don’t come around very often. As a member of the technology team, the newcomers will get a unique opportunity to work with multi-cloud services, collaborate with CloudOps, SecOps and DevOps teams as well as take advantage of cutting-edge technologies like AI, IoT, data science, big data, etc.

?John Lennon once said: “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality”. At JERA we bring together many talented people to make our dreams of Digital Transformation and sustainable energy come true.

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How did you learn Japanese, and when you entered JERA what was your Japanese level like? Have you kept studying while at JERA?

?When I moved to Japan, I could not speak Japanese at all. I naively thought that Tokyo is a very international city where most of the inhabitants can speak English... A few months of living in Japan proved me wrong, so I had to sign-up for a Japanese language academy where I studied full-time for about a year. At that time my Japanese level was equivalent of JLPT N5 (Basic level).

?Over the next 7 years, I mainly used English at my work since most of my co-workers and customers were foreigners. I continued studying the Japanese language passively and eventually gained the equivalent of JLPT N3 (Conversational level).

?After joining JERA in 2018, I quickly realized that there is a huge room for improving my Japanese language abilities, and I need to quickly develop my vocabulary, presentation and writing skills. At that time delivering presentations to the audience and writing business emails in Japanese was nearly a mission impossible for me. I realized that it was a swim or sink time. To help myself to hit the ground quicker, I found a private tutor online and practiced the necessary skills a few times per week. Eventually, after working 4 years at JERA I gained the equivalent of JLPT N2 (Business level). These days I am confident in making presentations and writing business emails in Japanese without using electronic dictionaries or online translators.

?Studying a foreign language is a lifetime commitment, so small daily actions can manifest big impact.

We hope you enjoyed getting to know Igor and learning about his journey at JERA. If you are interested in learning more about?#LifeatJERA?or you’re looking for a new challenge this year, check out the open positions under “Jobs” and stay connected with us by following the JERA LinkedIn page. We’re Hiring, with some position linked below, so check them out!