Everyone wants to see what the future will look like. Adam Kovacs is no different – except for the fact that he is actually building it. As a Software Developer in our Technology team, he is exploring opportunities with a view to constructing digital solutions to bring the future of work into the present. 

Getting to where he is, however, requires us to look to the past – right back to when he was in primary school and mulled a life of building video games. His career has taken him in a different direction as he utilises his valuable creativity and technical talent within our A-team. 

Here, Adam tells us about his day-to-day variety, why working in a small team suits him, and more. 

Hyphen: Take us through a regular day in your role – what are some of the things you do? 

Adam: One of the first things I do is review the code of the others and maybe write some comments or suggestions. By the same token, I look at the comments left for me by the other members of the Technology team – David and Orlando. Once everything is approved, I merge the code and deploy it. 

Once that is done, I look at our task manager, see what tickets are there and pick the most urgent or important ones. This might be something like research on certain applications, reading documentation about other services or it could just be coding, whatever is needed. 

We also have a daily development stand-up where we discuss what we did the previous day and what we are doing today and tomorrow, as well as any issues that we might have before I go back to coding. 

I really like it when I’ve done my research as I know in my head how I want to solve a problem so then I just sit down, focus and code. I sort of get into a flow – I like to call it the coding monkey mode. 

Hyphen: How is it different here compared to other places you have worked? 

Adam: The previous companies I’ve worked for were so-called software agencies, where they provide software developers for client projects. In those businesses, roughly 80% of the people are software developers, whereas Hyphen has a totally different business model. 

It’s different because there are three developers here as part of a much larger staff, plus the work is interesting and you have much more responsibility. 

Hyphen: When did you realise you were interested in coding? 

Adam: It was when I was in primary school, so I was between nine and 11 years old. I liked to play video games and I wanted to make video games. 

I found this tool where I could import sprites or pictures of certain characters and animate them and I could also configure it so that if I pushed certain keys on my keyboard, the characters would move up or down or something. 

There was a tool you could use to drag things to put things together, but you could also write code and make your character move with it. That was maybe the first time I played around with code, and I liked it. I wouldn’t say that I decided then and there that I wanted to be a programmer; it was just that I realised that this thing existed, and I enjoyed it.  

I chose a maths and IT specialisation in high school, which meant that I had four or five lessons a week on coding, which is a lot more than a lot of countries. I progressed from there to university and work, and I have learned several coding languages along the way. 

Back then [at primary school], I enjoyed playing video games more, but nowadays I usually only sit in front of the computer when I’m coding. 

Hyphen: When you’re not coding and working on your various tasks, what do you like to do to relax? 

Adam: I like going to the gym and playing sports. I have been taking tennis lessons, but I don’t think I could beat some of the other tennis players at Hyphen but maybe we could do a tournament on one of the co-working retreats and find out. I also enjoy playing table tennis and darts and I sometimes go wakeboarding as well. 

Away from sport, puzzles are another thing that I do. I’ve finished jigsaws with several thousand pieces; they took me some time and now I have finished them, I have mounted them on my wall. Obviously spending time with friends and family is really important, too. 

Quickfire questions 

Are you a morning person or a night owl? When I was studying at university and with my previous employer, I was an early bird, but since joining Hyphen, I prefer to sleep a little later and work a bit later, too. 

What is your favourite book? My favourites are the Song of Ice and Fire books, which are what Game of Thrones was based on. I have read the books several times and have watched the TV show a few times as well. 

Would you travel 200 years into the future or 200 years into the past? If it was a short period like a week, I would pick the future because I am so curious about what’s going to happen. 

If you could learn any foreign language instantaneously, which would you pick? Probably Chinese because there are so many people who already speak that language and China will have a huge geopolitical impact in the upcoming decades. 

If you could have any superpower, which would you choose? I think I would like to be able to see the future.