Happy 25th Birthday to Pythian!

Five months ago, I got this amazing opportunity to work for an IT services company in the People and Culture team and my experience, here at Pythian, for the past five months has been nothing short of excitement. During one of my onboarding sessions, I learnt that Pythian is celebrating its 25th anniversary in September and I was piqued to learn the company’s history. Whom better to ask other than our long-standing Pythianites. Want to hear what I learnt? 

Alright, here we go!

• From the first Pythianites who worked in a basement office to five physical offices. 
• From using pagers to communicate with team members, to using recent chatting applications.
• From starting with three employees at the beginning to almost 500 today.
• From North America to Oceania, we have team members in 25+ countries speaking 34 languages. 
• From being a database services company to delivering services in MySQL, SRE, Applications, SAP, Data, Cloud, and Analytics, Pythian has grown exponentially in these 25 years.
• I also learnt that Pythian is named after the Oracle of Delphi who was renowned for her prophecies in Ancient Greece.

Talking about the history of Pythian with our Pythianites made me learn a lot about the company and its culture. Want to know a bit more about Pythian? Follow along and learn through the interviews I held with some of our longest-standing team members from around the world!

Vanessa Simmons, Senior Vice President, Business Development

Location: Canada

Years at Pythian: 12 Years

Do you remember the first time you walked into Pythian’s Office?

Let’s see, that was 12 years ago, it was January 10th, 2010. I remember it being cold and snowy, and a little odd to be joining a company whose office was in a shopping mall. I recall vividly the deep technical expertise of most of my new colleagues but equally how they were all warm and welcoming. As I was new to the services industry and database technology in general, it took me a while to really grasp the high caliber of technical talent at Pythian that I had available to leverage in my marketing role (the answer is always 42). As I settled in over time and got to know many of them as more than exceptional technologists, I realized that everybody had a role to play. Mine was a connector, builder, and facilitator to expose the world to that really great technical talent, and harness it for the benefit of our clients and partners (something I still do, to this day). I also remember the awesome sense of community, how collaborative they were as teams, and how amazing they were at supporting their colleagues with knowledge sharing about the success they had on projects and the fixes they were working on for customers.  

Where do you think Pythian will be in the next 25 years?

I believe Pythian’s legacy of being a leader in all things surrounding data will live on for the next 25 years and beyond.  There will be new cutting-edge industry players to partner with, and a continued need to be at the forefront of new technologies as they are brought to market and released, as we have been for the last 25 years.  I see an ongoing spirit and community of shared collaboration and technical excellence all made possible by future automation, tools, and more efficient processes. There will always be a role for smart technologists to play, leveraging leading solutions in the service of customer needs—however the world evolves.

Fabiano Amorim, Principal Consultant

Location: Brazil

Years at Pythian: Eight Years

How would you describe your growth here at Pythian?

I would say that my technical skills have improved a lot. I would say that the technical part of it is being able to work on projects with different clouds, technologies, and databases. The best thing about working at Pythian, especially in the project team where we get completely different projects every time. 

What is your favourite part about working at Pythian?

Working remotely with very smart people and different technologies. These definitely are the best part of working at Pythian.   

Amarjeet Kaur, Database Consultant 

Location: India

Years at Pythian: 11 Years

What is your favourite part about working at Pythian? 

The first thing I enjoy the most is teamwork. The way we work together, our escalation procedure, our coordination process between teams, etc. The second is flexibility. It is not mandatory to sit in front of our laptops for eight hours continuously. At Pythian, since day one, we have had remote working. Our remote culture is one of my favourite things about working at Pythian.  

What is your favourite memory of working at Pythian?

One of my most cherished memories is my visit to our office in Ottawa, Canada for the 20th Anniversary of Pythian. The way the HR Team arranged for the visit, and the way everyone welcomed us, made me feel how great our Pythian is. I love that memory. From airport car pick up to my hotel reservation and to my office visit, everything was so nicely arranged.

Greg Leger, Senior Project Manager 

Location: Canada

Years at Pythian: 23 Years

What is your favourite part about working at Pythian?

My favourite part about working at Pythian is the diversity of tasks, of people, of platforms, of everything that we get to work with. With the wide scope of what we do, with all the people, there is a lot of exposure to different things which keeps it interesting.

Where do you think Pythian will be in the next 25 years? 

Originally I thought Pythian would become part of a subsidiary, but what I am realizing is that it’s the opposite. At Pythian, we have acquired a number of companies and it seems like Pythian has grown into something like the umbrella that everything is joining. 

If you look at how the industry is evolving- the growth of social media, the cloud, and augmented reality (which will be new biggest thing on the internet), we are going to be supporting these environments. 

There’s going to be a lot of growth and expansion with Pythian at the helm.

M. Narsimha Raju, Office Manager

Location: India

Years at Pythianite: 15 Years

What’s it like to be a Pythianite?

I am lucky enough to be in an organization like Pythian that takes what I say, considers it, and either implements it or negates it and tells me why. and also allows employees to work freely.

What is your favourite part about working at Pythian?

Work Environment.

Interested in being part of the Pythian team?

Learn more about our career opportunities, perks, and #pythianlife here!