Fabian Seitz has been with MediaMarktSaturn for eight and a half years. The 24-year-old started his career as an apprentice, then as a permanent employee. At the same time, he completed his A-levels and studied part-time. Today he is Cloud Product Owner. The magazine Audimax asked him what was behind it.

What is your role as Cloud Product Owner?

The role as a product owner is very broad. Depending on the product, this is either business or very technical. In my case the topic is very technical - my product builds a technical platform for developers. So I'm very close to technology to make life easier for people. At the same time, the whole thing should pay off for the company. There are sometimes conflicting goals here - but it's precisely these that make it particularly attractive for me. 

What challenges do you face in everyday life?

The technical challenges can be divided into two large blocks: Firstly, the speed of development within the Google Cloud. It is incredibly high, so the half-life of knowledge is very short. Second, the integration of the cloud world into the old system landscape. A significant paradigm shift is taking place here from monolithic super-large applications to small-scale applications. In addition, there is the people change. We only switched to a product organization last year - many things have to be learnt anew accordingly.

What are the advantages of working "in the cloud"?

With the cloud, you obtain a basic infrastructure from an external partner with the help of the cloud. But the real value lies in the part of PAAS products (Product as a Service) - that is, what is built on the cloud infrastructure. 
If our systems were a smartphone, we would have developed the device, operating system and apps ourselves permanently in the past. Now it's as if Google is constantly providing us with a new smartphone with a modern Android. And we could focus on designing the best apps. This concentration makes us better, faster and, above all, more value-adding.

What qualities do graduates need if they want to work in cloud computing?

Anyone who wants to work in IT naturally needs a basic understanding of technology. For a job in the cloud, you should also have a high level of personal initiative and the urge to discover and try out new things. Of course, coding skills don't hurt either - but that applies to everyone who does technology today.