Showmax Engineering

team in Prague

Product & Engineering

Showmax is all about working together on one product. And when we say collaboration, we really mean it. Here you won't find the domination of the product people or, on the contrary, the developers. Neither side dictates to the other what the next release should be about. It's really about discussing with each other and choosing what's best for the product and its use by customers. We look together for the best ways to design, solve and optimise something. Often in companies you see that the product doesn't look to the engineers or vice versa. And that always leads to dead ends and it's expensive and dysfunctional. At Showmax, it's a perfect balance.

Developers work with the Product team on developing features which means that we don't develop everything coming from Product, we need to agree on it. Developers are encouraged to work on their own ideas. You can prepare a proof of concept and if it is approved, you can work on it and push the feature to production. I have couple of own features in the app and I feel proud of it.

With pride

If you ask the people at Showmax what they enjoy about their work, they'll tell you that one of those things is definitely the product, and they'll add that they're proud of it.

That's right, pride in the product: you just don't see that anywhere. We can develop a great product for our customers and deal with complex requirements. It's not just about pride in the product itself, but also pride in the individual teams that build it. Showmax is a collaborative environment where the outcome - whether success or failure - is shared.

Challenge accepted

Working for the African market can mean throwing away everything you've learned working for European or American companies. From marketing to UX, everything is specific to that region. We're dealing with complex requirements, from conveying images on older phones to dealing with huge traffic spikes that can be in the thousands of percentages - for example, when an African team makes it to the final rounds of a football tournament, millions of users come to the screen in a matter of moments. Africa is specific, it's magical and most of us feel that making a product for Africa makes our work that much more interesting. Africa is three times the size of Europe and has huge potential for growth. For us, that means a lot of unique challenges and opportunities.

Building team first culture

Learning culture

Showmax is built on increasing internal excellence and know-how. We strive to make everyday learning a natural part of our work, because that's the only way to keep up with the ever-accelerating technological world.

As you can see, we're doing a lot to support learning, and it all comes together to push our experience and knowledge.

Highlights
  • In addition to a budget for personal training for everyone at Showmax, we have other platforms to encourage learning, such as internal company-wide discussion meetings.
  • There are a variety of workshops and lectures that relate to important occasions and topics, such as International Privacy Day.
  • We always try to find the right hybrid model for these to involve our colleagues in Africa.
  • Plus, everyone is invited to participate in regular hackathons based on internal assignments.

Developers mindset 24/7

We are all about sustainable quality and the E2E approach. We work with modern and proven technologies, and our people understand these in a cutting-edge way. Some teams develop everything from start to finish, from design to development to final testing and troubleshooting. This means that we look at every part very carefully and strive for sustainable quality at the highest level because we are responsible for the whole product. We write good-quality code that we maintain at a high level, we refactor whenever needed, we have proactive monitoring because we are responsible for deployment, subsequent functionality and 24/7 monitoring. All of this is key to us preventing any potential problems, and ensuring a high-quality product.

We write good-quality code that we maintain at a high level, we refactor whenever needed, we have proactive monitoring because we are responsible for deployment, subsequent functionality and 24/7 monitoring.

About relationships and people

Showmax is built on relationships and friendships, fostered by the Showmax mindset. We have offsite training twice a year, and every month we have an Office Day where we order food, throw in some educational activities and give a warm welcome to our newcomers. But we also support those who would prefer to work from home - it's up to each team to work out how they function best, taking into account their remote colleagues and those at the office. At Showmax Engineering, there is a big emphasis on simply making people feel as comfortable as possible, so that they have everything they need to do their job freely and to the best of their ability.

Our Values

Customer Comes First

The technology is the means to deliver the service to customers. Thanks to new trends and modern technology we can have more fun with what we do, but we always need to consider the customers and think of every change as made for them.

Do things your way for Showmax’s best interest

We need to balance creating the service to meet customers’ wishes and needs and doing things the right way for Showmax. You need to use your knowledge, experience, and intuition to choose the right solution for everyone because you are the best person to do it, there’s no one else to do it.

Work with purpose, understand the “why?”

Never work on anything without knowing why, or you will do a sh•t job. Always have a purpose and ask why.

Trust and help 
each other succeed

We are here for each other. Roles can swap and next time it will be you proposing a crazy idea or asking for help. Listen to others, help them, and colleagues will pay your kindness back.

Be curious and keep learning

Be curious about things so you don't stagnate. If we want to move forward, we need to learn about new trends. Always share links to interesting things you’ve found.

There are no 
stupid questions

Never be afraid of asking questions as there are no stupid questions, and no authority you couldn’t ask a question to. Keep on asking questions, especially the "Why", as the reasons that were correct a few years ago might have changed and things should change.

Progress beats perfection

Ultimately, we create for customers and we need to push the changes to them fast and test the solution with them. Without this final step it’s never perfect. Don’t chase perfection before pushing the idea to production, it will never be perfect.

Embrace your failure 
and learn from it

We push things forward and aim for progress, so it is natural that problems occur. We have post mortems to document the failures and prevent these specific things from happening again. Not learning from our failures is worse than the failure itself.

We support and take 
care of each other

We are here for each other. Roles can swap and next time it will be you proposing a crazy idea or asking for help. Listen to others, help them, and colleagues will pay your kindness back.