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Silicon Valley Insights with Dropbox's Jan Spidlen

EventsCommunityNov 23, 2015

EventsCommunity

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Nov 23, 2015

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It's not hard to land a spot at a Silicon Valley tech company – you just have to apply, do the interview and accept the offer.

“The most difficult part of the whole process is applying,” Jan Spidlen, a software engineer at Dropbox and STRV's most recent Silicon Valley Insights speaker, told the the crowd gathered inside a packed screening hall at Cinema City Slovansky dum for the November 12th event.

“In Silicon Valley, we need engineers. There is a huge influx of people,” Jan said during the fireside chat with STRV COO Lubo Smid. “There's definitely a lot of luck involved, but don't be afraid to apply.” Another bit of advice: “Take advantage of study abroad programs. We have great schools in the Czech Republic.”

Jan, a graduate of the Czech Technical University in Prague and Georgia Institute of Technology, has been based in Silicon Valley for the past six years. He joined Dropbox earlier this year, where he is part of the Dropbox Paper team, after previously working for Google and NVIDIA.

Jan said he welcomed the chance to work at a “small, young company” after years of working for some of the biggest names on the IT market. (Dropbox has around 1,500 employees compared to NVIDIA's 9,000 and Google's 57,000.)

“It depends on what you are looking for. It depends on what you want,” Jan said. “Google and NVIDIA are great companies, but for me Dropbox is better – it still has the feel, it still has the excitement of a startup.”

“Dropbox competes with some of the biggest companies in the world,” Jan pointed out. “I think we do pretty well. The service we provide is superior in many ways. I feel in general, the future of cloud-based storage is collaboration.”

Check out the photo gallery from the event and after-party on Facebook.

STRV’s regular Silicon Valley Insights series brings together leaders from the global tech community to share knowledge and experiences. Next month's installment will feature Tom Krcha, an Adobe Sr. Product Manager who is working on the IT giant's innovative Project Comet. STRV CEO David Semerad will be flying in from California to moderate the event. Get your ticket on Eventbrite.

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