We are very proud of our organizational culture that lights up at the office. It’s now nice to know how we have managed to bring the crazy Andersian culture into the virtual. Let me introduce Roosa, Joonas, Kari and Roberto, who all started to work at Anders last year.

I’m a 26-year old Master’s student in technology, horse owner, and a caring person from Helsinki. I’m also really into photography, but I sadly have no time for that at the moment.

Photo: Mila Cronvall

I’m currently doing my Master’s in Information networks at Aalto University and in my studies I’m focusing on Data, user, and design and having Uschool (usability) as my minor. I have worked previously as a UX intern in few different companies.

When I started my studies in 2017 I had no idea what I would like to do “when I grow old”. While on my second year of studies (two years ago) I had a course about Human-Computer Interaction and got interested in UI and UX design, landed my first job as a UX intern and here we are.

As I’m a very visual person, I like efficiency and I’ve always liked for example photoshopping and creating something beautiful, I feel like I’ve found the job that’s really made for me.

Currently, I’ve helped out in few internal projects: I’ve been designing ads for campaigns and UI for one internal tool. I also have two external (client) projects, although in the other one I’m more in an observing role. In the other client project, I created product wireframes and currently, I’m designing visuals for the product.

I would say that I have settled into Anders team as well as anyone can in this situation. Working remotely and especially starting in a new position remotely can be difficult, but here in Anders it has been taken into account very well. There are greeting meetings whenever a new employee starts here and these meetings are well organized.

The pre-Christmas party, although held remotely, was also a good way to get to know each other. I’ve also visited few times our Helsinki office and always new persons greet me and we have a short conversation about everything. In my other external project, we have Daily meetings, which has also helped me to get to know people. I’m quite a social person and I don’t find it hard to get to know people.

People, they made it easy to settle in even remotely. And the atmosphere is great when we are having group meetings with the whole company! It feels safe here, I feel like I can always ask anything from my supervisor, and he is always there for me. I also like that we get positive feedback a lot, it makes me feel appreciated.

I’m Joonas Venäläinen 31-years old living in Kerava with my fiancé and two dogs.

My background is not the most typical. I have done most of my career in the private security industry. Before that, I studied to become a telecommunications technician and I have always been interested in computers but at that time the job situation wasn’t that good in the industry. In 2018 I spotted an ad about a 3-month coding boot camp that would land me a job as a software developer. I applied and got accepted. I did pass the boot camp and started my career in a large multinational professional service company as a software developer and now we are here.

I’m working on projects where we update/create new infrastructure as code solutions. Also, a big part of my job is developing our own internal tooling, ci/cd pipelines, and practices.

Considering the current COVID situation and starting at full remote mode at Anders I have settled nicely into the organization. Work with my teammates has been a breeze since day one and I’m getting to know them more and more every day. We have daily meetings with the whole team and also we have developed a habit with the core team to have a video call open half of the day. This keeps feeling that everybody is in the same room and also gives the opportunity to discuss non-work related stuff also easier.

People of course! Other things that I really find important is that ideas are heard and you can really affect how we do work at Anders through those ideas.

I’m a Developer from Honduras and I moved to Finland 2 years ago. I’m into blockchain, art, and rock climbing.

I’ve Studied CS and founded my company after graduating. I did a lot of projects in my home country, also tried game development, and did a lot of freelancing developing iOS applications for clients in the US.

Mainly developing on a python ERP on the backend side, but also involved in various tasks like frontend development and general maintenance. I’ve also been supporting sales in mapping out customer’s needs and architecture.

After doing a lot of freelancing and being independent I thought that going back to work for a company would be hard. But the settling in was very easy, I feel pretty good at Anders. The company culture is really nice, I’ve been learning a lot from everyone. I’m surrounded by very smart people that are always available to help if stuck on a problem.

Yes, we do regular coffee breaks where we can talk freely with our teammates.

A lot of good things! The diversity of people and the company culture is great. The superiors trust in developers and there’s no micromanagement. We have good coding practices and I feel I’m able to express myself without repercussions.

I was born in Pori, Finland and I lived until around adulthood in the countryside near Pori in Harjakangas. In junior high school (yläaste) I got interested in demoscene out of wonder. Programming started as a hobby but eventually evolved into an occupation. I studied computer science in Turku university.

During the way, I learned a lot about programming and did some reverse engineering of 1980s-1990s adventure game engines into an open source project named ScummVM. I also worked for around 10 years on a custom ERP system for a company that sells tailored kitchens in Turku. From my background I’ve got lots of experience in using C++, SQL and x86 assembly and some experience with Python.

So far, I’ve only worked on two projects at Anders – I started at Anders around mid-November 2020. They both use Python’s Django framework as the backend. The first one used React as the frontend and the second one’s frontend is a bit more legacy. Did some data migration between systems on the first project. Just started on the second project a few days ago.

I think I’ve settled ok although the Covid-19 situation and the currently prevalent remote working has made integration perhaps a tad harder than it would’ve been without a pandemic. The frequent use of Slack and Teams for internal communication has been good and has helped integration. I’ve got to know my teammates a bit, yes, as we’ve also talked about other things than only work. The pre-Christmas party, which was done remotely using Discord, was good for settling into Anders as I got a relaxed and a broad view of all people working at Anders.

Competent peers and many different projects.

We are so happy of our new Andersians, warmly welcome to Anders: Roosa, Joonas, Roberto, Kari, and all the others! Let’s rock this year!

– Johanna Kainulainen, Marketing Manager

Banner photo by Jason Strull on Unsplash