A year ago, we founded ADVVISE Schweiz out of conviction and with a clear vision to be closer to our customers and partners and to be able to respond even better to local needs.

Our first employee immediately moved into our office in Lucerne – right in the heart of Switzerland. Robert, who had already been working with ADVVISE in Austria for a year, decided to join us in Switzerland without further ado. Since then, he has been looking after our local business relationships with expertise and enthusiasm. ADVVISE Schweiz now serves eight clients in Switzerland from a wide range of industries and company sizes.

What was a big and significant step for ADVVISE was also a big step for Robert. He moved around 1,000 kilometres from his hometown Budapest to picturesque Lucerne, swapping coffee house culture and the Danube River for mountains and lakes. It now takes Robert 12 hours to visit family and friends in Hungary and around 9 hours to travel to our Vienna office for our quarterly team meetings.

A year after this adventure began, we asked Robert how he is doing and how his life has developed since then. We learned that Robert successfully traversed the official matters, moved into a flat and furnished it, his wife managed to land a job. Together they have visited many lakes and mountains all across the country so far, and they spent the second Christmas and New Year’s Eve entirely in Switzerland. To get an even better insight, we asked Robert to complete a few sentences with personal thoughts.

is that I can work together with very smart, capable and motivated people – we are simply passionate about what we do.

We foster an environment where you can feel safe – not afraid to ask questions, try novel ideas, or admit difficulties. Because of this, the transparency that you see here is remarkable. Transparency then leads to trust, and trust leads to freedom, creativity – we simply trust each other, a very important thing in the era of remote work.

I think, in the end, actions are louder than words. I received mountains of support from ADVVISE in terms of my goals, and ended up where I wanted to be. It’s a big leap, showing the trust-based relationship that we value so greatly.

is hard to answer just yet. When my parents visited us here, they were fascinated by everything. Even rocks. My dad would just walk around and collect random pebbles from the ground, filling his pockets with them, referring to them as “Swiss rocks”. It’s not just any rock after all, it’s a Swiss one. He reminded me of Hank’s mineral obsession from Breaking Bad.

The truth is, the rocks here do not have any special properties – they are just normal rocks. Similarly, the people here are also just that – regular people. So, I can’t answer the question yet and I don’t want to give a generic rundown of the scenery, the multilingualism or punctual trains.

In truth, it’s been only a year, and I need a lot more time to learn, get closer to the language, the culture, the people. Until then, let me just say, even after a year, I still look at this place the same way my dad looked at the rocks – with awe. And even if under my dream-like perspective, the rocks are just normal rocks, they have been shaped by the environment in unique ways, and I am really looking forward to discovering what those are and learning from them.

in ServiceNow’s Strategic Portfolio Management Solution if I had to pick one concrete place.

But I would also like to mention my second favourite place. The present. The past is done, the future is unknown, so it’s always good to prioritize the present a little bit and make the most of it, whatever it is. Extremely cliché, I know – but it is true.

I manage to make someone happy.

Even very small things can result in something profound. A single kind word or gesture might seem insignificant at the moment, but its ripple effects can spread far beyond.

I am always proud when that happens – I made someone’s day better, and no matter how small my contribution was, I wonder, what butterfly effect I might have created?

I am learning something new.

I also tend to go on learning sprees – especially at very inappropriate times, for example trying to learn quantum physics or trying to learn Japanese at 3 AM.

It’s so unfortunate – whereas in school I wanted to do everything else but learn, for some reason as an adult, it’s the other way around. Fortunately, computer science allows me to learn all the time and keeps this curiosity burning.

I don’t know. To be really honest, I have all the keys to the doors of sadness, and have not yet found the keys to the doors of happiness. Has anyone really? Please let me know.

On a less abstract level, I just want to share laughs with my wife, family, friends, people. I just try to enjoy the small, stupid things.

Doing or saying something socially awkward and having a good laugh, assembling the IKEA furniture in the wrong way, seeing a dog experience zoomies, forgetting the water and putting an empty mug in the microwave early in the morning, or throwing out the spoon instead of the yoghurt can by accident. Just forgetting about all the seriousness for a bit and getting lost in a laugh.

“Us, at the poker table of the universe.”

I always like to think of the scale of the universe. It makes me feel so small, so insignificant, yet so special.

Where I am, is the result of countless twists of chance and a series of decisions that shaped my path. So many small things, both in and outside of my control, could have landed me in such a different place, or no place at all.

If we see a world record in a 100-meter sprint, we probably think of all the hard work behind that achievement, but do we stop for a second and think about the tailwind that day?

If we have great success in our life, we probably think of our perseverance and all the weekends we worked through, all the hard problems we have solved, but we do not necessarily stop and appreciate our luck: the country we were born in, the family we were dealt, the people who supported us, the damage we did not receive along the way.

We walk through life in a form of survivorship bias, looking through lenses that have been heavily distorted by our experiences. We work hard, we succeed, and life may feel fair and balanced, because we don’t have the experiences of the people who worked equally as hard, if not harder than us – but still failed – people for whom effort did not lead to reward, and for whom life remains profoundly unfair.

I like poker, and it seems so similar to life. We are sitting at a cosmic poker table, everyone with their own strategies. We are in control but also aren’t. Some get all the good hands, some get all the bad hands, some get a good mixture. Some waste away all their opportunities, others somehow cling on by a thread, against all odds. Some didn’t even make it to the table – they were not invited, not even given a chance to try.

I try my best to actively think about my luck, and attempt to increase the luck of others – maybe slipping them a few cards under the table so they can complete their winning hand. In each hand, enjoying the moment and living in the now, because regardless of hard work, the next hand is unknown for all of us.