An Interview with Willem Stam, Agile Delivery Team Lead

Getting to know the people building AMBOSS

How did you land at AMBOSS?

I used to work as a QA Engineer for about 12–13 years. I realized that the things I liked most about the job were helping the teams and people I worked with to improve. This led me to wanting to transition to be an agile coach.

My plan was to find a new QA job in a bigger growing company where I would hopefully slowly transition to coaching. I had prepared this process to take a couple of years.

I applied as a QA Engineer at AMBOSS and had the nicest and most comfortable interview I’ve ever had (props to recruitment!). When I talked to the recruiter again he told me that he had bad news and good news. The bad news was that I was not a good fit for the QA Engineer position, the good news was that they were about to open a position for an agile coach and he thought I would be better suited for that! 🙂

Recruitment was able to ‘read between the lines’ and see where my real passion and interest was and I was able to start as an agile coach!

What has surprised you most in your 2 years with AMBOSS?

AMBOSS is filled with very nice, smart and dedicated people. This was not really a surprise to me, but what was a surprise was that this combination is part of the success of AMBOSS.

It makes it a place that is fun to work, where you can be part of a beautiful mission with other dedicated people and when something is challenging there tends to be a lot of empathy, which makes it also feel like a very safe place to work.

What has been your favorite project at AMBOSS?

It’s not a real ‘project’ but my favorite part of working at AMBOSS is seeing people, teams and departments grow.

That there is a willingness to reflect and improve, and to see the enormous development that has happened over the last two years and that will happen in the next two years. This also makes it much easier to see challenges and frustrations as something that will most likely be addressed in the future.v