When I met Viachaslau Balashevich, I immediately noticed how communicative and what a people person he was. He admitted he liked discussion and different people, as much as challenging them! Can only confirm that during our meeting he was challenging me as well. 😄
We spoke about many things: the product, the industry, the people from the IT world, but also about the importance of being human, not a machine or a robot these days. The common thread of the conversation was the value of constantly asking yourself the question “Why?”, and the critical thinking as a concept that Viachaslau believes in and represents.
Without further ado, I’d like to invite you to get to know our Community Member of the Month - @Viachaslau. 😉
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Can you share some details about your past? What is your story, and how it happened that you decided to work in the IT / APM area?
When I was a child, like many other young boys, I dreamed about outer space. I grew up on books by Ayzek Asimov, Gary Garrison, Frank Herbert, and many others.
After school, my path to IT could have been more straightforward. Initially, I got 2 higher educations: In History and Social science and later in International Law. It was helpful to lead my own small business in the construction area. Leading my own company resulted in having an introduction to IT. We needed a website and administration. So, it was on me to set this up. After my freelance period, I decided to go “all-in into IT” and chose to follow several IT courses. Finally, I was able to work on some severe IT projects.
In my current project, I was introduced to Dynatrace as an APM tool for mobile and web applications. Some developers were concerned about its code customization which felt like a “burden” to them and diverted them from “real code”, but for me, it was and is a great tool that can show the fair product state and quality of systems and applications in real-time. 
Can you tell us a little bit about your professional life? Where do you work, and what do you do in your job? And how does Dynatrace fit into the picture?
I have been working at EPAM Systems for more than 7 years. Currently, I’m the IT Solution Architect Monitoring & Observability for Motorola Solutions, helping them in their digital transformation journey. One of my primary responsibilities is to care for the observability of the entire IT ecosystem. Dynatrace plays a key role in this process by supplying reliable data, based on which we can set up quality gates and deep information for operations. 
What was the biggest challenge Dynatrace helped you to overcome?
The challenging task is to build a forecast for product quality and predict problems. I must detect problems in real-time and create impact analysis as quickly as possible to limit the impact of those problems. Luckily, Dynatrace helps in this with significant amounts of built-in and custom metrics.
What brought you to our Community? What made you stay? What best advice can you give someone who just started using Community?
My primary stimulus for joining the Community was and still is experience exchange.
And now the Community is also helping me to find answers to non-standard questions.
Tell us something about you that most people don’t know. What is your biggest joy or passion in life?
We live close to the sea, there are a lot of parks in my city. My favorite hobbies are playing volleyball, cycling along the dunes, and having activities with my Family. 
What’s one thing on your bucket list? Your dream?
My dream is to imagine a world without wars, where we will be focused on making life better, longer, healthier without poverty and struggling to get basic things.
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Viachaslau, having you as one of the Community users celebrating the critical mindset is a real value, both for our Community and for Dynatrace. Looking for different perspectives and choosing the best one makes Dynatrace a better product. More is yet to come, so we’re looking forward to more challenging from you 😉
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