Sanjay Chandak

“Although I was working in telecom in the UK, I’d always been interested in the financial sector, so I thought ‘Why not give it a try?’. And before I knew it, I was living in Amsterdam and working as a developer at ING. Then a few years later I became a senior engineer and moved from one department to another.”

An extra MBA

“I got the chance to grow as a tech professional every step of the way. Then one day, I decided it was time to develop my management skills. So I started an additional MBA and spent two years studying alongside my full-time job. It was super tough. I hardly had a social life for two years, but all the sacrifices paid off!”

Combining tech and management

“That extra master’s degree strengthened my wish to become a chapter lead. I wanted to combine my tech skills and my management skills, because over the years I’d discovered that I love to coach people: to see them grow their craftsmanship, find their talent and develop as professionals.”

Common language

“As my chapter consists of developers, it helps that I have broad experience in IT and that I still work as an expert lead engineer; I understand where they’re coming from and what they need – we speak a common language. I know what it takes to keep techies happy and motivated.”

Not a stressful type of guy

“Balancing the two aspects of my job can be tough. There’s always quite a bit of pressure from both sides, but I’m not a stressful type of guy. In fact, the combination gives me energy – and so too does the freedom we get as engineers to experiment with the latest tools and technologies. As engineers we need that, otherwise I’m sure many of us would get easily bored. But there’s no chance of that at ING! I often feel like I work at a start-up, but with the safety net of a large and well-structured company which sees the needs of its people and highly values their talents.”