Chemnitz_zieht_an_Magazin_2024_englisch

Pratham Arora
Customers from the automotive, commercial
vehicle, aeronautical, transport and
control engineering sectors worldwide
rely on the solutions and products of the
independent Vector Group, which has been
working on tomorrow’s electronic technologies
for more than 35 years. Vector’s
new site in Chemnitz will also contribute
significantly to the development of future
generations of automotive software. “Our
work in Chemnitz will focus on various
aspects of the software-defined vehicle.
To achieve this, we will continue to expand
the site,” explains Thomas Beck, Managing
Director of Vector Informatik. In the future,
the Chemnitz site is set grow to around 150
employees and will increasingly employ
international specialists.
Looking at the company headquarters in
Stuttgart shows that cooperation between
different nationalities can greatly enrich an
organisation. Here, people from 64 nations
work together in teams, some large, some
small. “My work is diversity through and
through,” says Thomas Stolz, who has been
part of the Vector family for eight years.
For the past year, he has headed a team of
14 in the Embedded Software Department,
which acts as a point of contact for customers
and aims to ensure that the products
developed by Vector are ultimately used
successfully. His team members mostly
work on front-line customer support, coaching
or software deliveries. Thomas’s role
as the first level of escalation is to make
sure that problems and conflicts are dealt
with effectively and swiftly in order to maintain
customer or employee satisfaction.
“That translates as: if there’s a fire,
we’re there,” laughs Thomas Stolz,
who also acts as a mediator between
cultures. “Every cultural group brings
a different approach, different learning
processes and different ideas to
our work. This is also personally enriching
and something I don’t have in
my private life. One of my tasks is to
create an awareness of the idiosyncrasies
of other cultures. Incidentally,
we Germans have our idiosyncrasies,
too,” says Thomas Stolz.
Team member Essam Rizk can list
some of these idiosyncrasies: “Germans
work close to perfection. They have a
fondness for details and obviously love
hiking,” smiles the 31-year-old Egyptian.
The electrical engineering graduate was
looking for a new personal challenge and
found it at Vector in March 2022. The
company’s welcoming culture is one of the
best he has ever experienced. He got to
grips with its specialist topics with the aid
of a mentor, and his colleagues are still a
great source of support with any questions
he has. He shares his tips for international
specialists who want to follow the same
path as him: “Make sure you learn German
before you arrive. At work, communication
isn’t a problem because everyone speaks
English. It’s a different story in your free
time. Good German really helps in being
able to participate fully in social and cultural
life.” Essam certainly has enough time
to improve his German. He would like to
return to his home country in ten years at
the earliest. And so that he doesn’t always
have to wait until his annual holiday to
satisfy his longing to see family and friends,
Vector allows its employees to work from
home for 30 days a year. On top of this, an
additional 28 days per year can be spent
working abroad. Essam also prefers to use
these days to extend his stays in Egypt.
Pratham Arora, another member of
Thomas Stolz’s team, also has no plans to
return to his home country of India any
time soon. In September 2015, the 33-year-old
moved to Germany to complete his
Master’s degree in Automotive Software
Engineering at Chemnitz University of
Technology. “In 2017, I moved from Chemnitz
to Stuttgart to do an internship at Vector
and then write my master’s dissertation.
A year later, I was offered a full-time job.”
He has many more job opportunities in his
field here in Germany, says Pratham, who
clearly feels at home in the Vector family.
“Internal and cross-team events – from
cinema trips to laser tag – make integration
easier. Twice a week after work, there’s
the opportunity to socialise with others
over free drinks and make new friends,”
he explains. In addition, regular meetups
are occasions for employees from the
same home country to get together. The
programmes offered by the Vector fitness
studio, such as Zumba classes or yoga, are
interesting, but unfortunately not in English.
“If I were to improve anything, it would be
that,” says Pratham. Incidentally, Essam and
Pratham believe that the biggest challenge
in Germany by far is the local bureaucracy.
The fact that they can pronounce words
such as Ausländerbehörde (immigration
office), Aufenthaltsgenehmigung (residence
permit) and Niederlassungserlaubnis
(settlement permit) in perfect German
shows that they have already had plenty of
experience with the German authorities.
“If you go to the immigration office without
an appointment, you should definitely allow
plenty of time. Some people sleep on the
street just to be at the front of the queue
the next morning. The situation is horrendous,”
says Pratham, speaking from experience.
This is also why he does not want to
apply for German citizenship. “The process
simply takes too long.”
WEITERE INFOS:
Vector Informatik GmbH
chemnitz.jobs/vector
People from 64 nations work
at Vector Informatik GmbH.
Applications in German or English to:
hr@vector.com
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