Great mentoring
István is one of those exceptional leads who also takes on the role of mentor, someone who changes fundamentally how you think, always leaves you something to sit with, and takes genuine care of his mentees and employees, not solely focusing on the product. Our mentorship spanned a significant period of time, with regular conversations that followed my growth and the challenges that came with it.
His interdisciplinary background in engineering gave him a rigor and a philosophy that left a lasting lesson for me as a developer. He would share stories from his own studies, how different the expectations were, how demanding, and why that discipline mattered. Code should be held to the same standards as hardware, where failure isn't just a minor inconvenience but a matter of system-level collapse, which introduces a very real human risk on everything being worked on. That philosophy stuck with me throughout my career. Beyond the technical, he genuinely invested in the wellbeing of his team, sharing resources, recommending courses, and making sure that happiness at work wasn't an afterthought.
What sets him apart is everything beyond the technical. He's the rare manager who will name the thing everyone else doesn't dare bring up. Not to stir conflict, but because he'd rather solve a real problem than tiptoe around a fake one. That same directness applies to his feedback. István has a way of cutting through the surface-level explanations you've convinced yourself of and helping you see what's actually going on. And it goes both ways, he genuinely wants to hear how you, as a junior, would approach a problem, and takes the time to help you refine that thinking rather than just handing you the answer.
I came into his mentorship notoriously quiet and afraid of authority. The conversations were honest and direct, sometimes challenging, but always safe — I never felt judged, only pushed. Occasionally it was also a little intimidating how well he could read a situation, or read me, but looking back, that was exactly the point. He pushed for that actively, without making it feel like a project, just enough pressure, applied the right way.
He also kept tabs on his team the way leaders should. He always emphasised consistent check-ins, genuine availability, and real investment in whether the environment was working for people, not just whether the work was getting done.
I'm currently working as an AI research intern at a major company, in exactly the kind of position I had been working toward for a long time. István is the kind of person you don't forget. What stays with you isn't the bar he sets, it's how much he wanted you to clear it.
Fecha de la experiencia: 06 June, 2026
Fecha de la experiencia: 06 June, 2026