How CTO Tomáš Sedláček Drives Progress at Dataddo

Despite the fact that our CTO Tomáš Sedláček joined Dataddo just a few years ago as a part-time programmer, we can already say that the company would not be what it is without him. As might be expected, his path from part-timer to C-suite was hardly a straight line. We sat down with Tom to learn a little more about his background, the personal and professional growth from university to present day, and why he wanted to be Dataddo’s CTO (spoiler alert: he didn’t). 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.  

Can you tell us a bit about your background and education? 

I’m from Jičín, Czech Republic, and studied IT at the University of Economics in Prague. After university, I went to work at Deloitte for 2 years, doing IT audits. But it turns out that IT auditing means mostly a lot of typing in MS Word—not very much fun. So I left Deloitte and went back to work as a freelance programmer. 

What were some of your most interesting projects during your time as a freelancer? 

I worked on something called Rezervacnik.cz. A friend and I who play a lot of sports were frustrated with the terrible online reservation systems used by sporting clubs, so we programmed our own. At its height, I think around 50 sporting clubs in the Czech Republic were using it. It was an incredible learning experience—I spent many, many evenings, hours, days, and months making it good. And in the end, I sold it for less money than my monthly fee (laughs).

Why did you join Dataddo? 

Petr (CEO) and I knew each other since school and stayed in contact, so I knew about Dataddo from the beginning when it was also one of Petr’s side projects. I was developing data integration in another company with somewhat similar technology. 

As Dataddo started getting bigger and bigger, it was clear to Petr that he wanted more programming help. There was a lot of knowledge that we could offer one another from our different IT backgrounds, and working together was a win-win. So I came on as a part-time programmer.

Tom (center) with Dataddo founders, Petr Nemeth (left) and Joel Thom (right) in 2020.

How has Dataddo changed since you started? 

Absolutely everything has changed—our staff has grown exponentially, our technology is wider and more efficient, and my position made a huge jump. Mostly I like how it’s evolving here, and I can interact with technologies I’ve never used before. The previous company I was contracting with that had a similar data concept, except I was there for 3 years and it was not moving at all. Everything here just goes faster, which I like—I don’t enjoy staying in one place for a very long time. 

What’s your approach to growing the developer team? 

Most companies want to hire only seniors because they’re less work to train and they can deliver new features to product in almost zero time. These days, there just aren’t enough seniors to hire. Luckily, I enjoy knowledge-sharing, and I choose people on my team who have the same attitude. I like to see people improve, and it’s great that we can also combine juniors and seniors on one team to help the juniors advance even faster. 

I don’t want juniors we hire to be afraid if they lack some skills. I want to establish Dataddo as a company culture where we can offer juniors good positions where they can grow in both their work and personal lives.

What are you most excited about for the future with Dataddo? 

Considering that I know so much more than I knew even two years ago, in both the tech and business realms, I’m looking forward to even more progress. My only business is to make the product work, but I like to see people happy here and doing a job they enjoy. To anyone looking to join our team: this is a good atmosphere that allows for a great work/life balance. I really appreciate that our company culture is on this level.