Driving Data Center Expertise and Personal Development: The Techbuyer Academy

If there’s one thing that comes up time and time again in employee interviews, it’s the willingness of management to say: “Why not?” and make great ideas a reality. So it was no surprise when I found out that Techbuyer’s latest development was born from an employee’s idea.

The Techbuyer Academy is a new department which supplies technical training to company staff. From networking equipment to Dell blade enclosures, and SSDs to server memory, the training provides detailed insight into a wide range of IT and data center equipment, ensuring that we uphold the highest industry standards for our customers every time.

The Academy is run by Slav Dabrowski, Technical Training Coordinator, who started at Techbuyer in the server configuration and testing departments. As a previous physics teacher, not only was Slav was the perfect person for the job, but he was also the person who suggested the idea.

“A few years into my role at Techbuyer, I remember wondering how I could develop further and bring something worthwhile to the business," says Slav. "That's when I started thinking about my teaching skills, and how I could utilize them. Management liked my ideas and let me run with them, so I put together the plans. Before I knew it, the classroom was being built!"

The Academy first launched in February 2020 – unfortunately just two weeks before the Covid-19 lockdown, and so training was limited at first. Now things are up and running again, with all the appropriate social distancing and Covid-19 regulations in place.

“A lot of the products and services that we deal with are very technical and difficult to visualize,” says Slav. “This is why high quality training is so important. When I’m teaching, I always try to use analogies and real-life scenarios, to make sure I’m using a language that’s understandable for everyone. For instance, a hard drive is like a library because you can store, read and write data.”

“I’ve trained about 50 people so far, which is roughly a quarter of employees,” Slav continues. “I teach in four sessions with four people at a time, each from a different department to make sure business operations can run as normal. Whether it’s someone from purchasing, sales or marketing, everyone has different areas of IT expertise. I like to think that after my training, people have the same level of understanding once they’ve left the classroom.”

When I asked Slav about the best parts of the job, he smiled and told me about a recent phone call he had. “One of our sales executives rang me up just a few hours after they’d completed their training… A customer had called and asked them one of the exact same questions that was in my test! They were able to give more of a detailed answer than they would have done previously, which is a great result.”

“Sharing my knowledge and getting to know everyone is also a great part of the job. I was fairly shy when I first joined the company so it’s nice to feel like I’ve connected with people.”

“One thing I love about Techbuyer is that if you’re a person who wants to learn and develop, you will always do well working here.”

Coming up…

Techbuyer Academy is going international! Slav is currently working out the logistics of training employees virtually, meaning colleagues in France, Germany, the US, Australia and New Zealand can join in with the knowledge exchange. This is also a great way to futureproof in case of any further lockdowns.

Once the mandatory general training has been carried out for everyone in the business, there will be a series of refresher sessions to see if everyone has remembered the information, and whether it has proved useful in their day to day roles. After this, Slav will offer voluntary sessions which go into more depth about specific IT equipment.


Techbuyer is a sustainable IT solutions specialist. With seven locations worldwide, we provide market-leading prices, services and customer support for our clients across the globe. We sell a wide range of new and quality refurbished servers, storage and networking equipment, PCs and laptops. We also maximize IT budgets by refurbishing, upgrading, replacing and eventually buying back IT equipment.

Check out our IT hardware here. Or get in touch with one of our five-star rated team members to see how we can help your business today.