Who? Lauri – Design Engineer and fourth year software technology student at TTY. Has carried out Android and cloud service development at Bitwise, and according to his own words a bit of everything along the side.
From Bootcamp to becoming a Bitwiser
Lauri joined Bitwise in February 2016 via a Bootcamp summer job period: “After my year in the army I began to apply for work, and Bitwise had stayed in my mind from the Campus arena’s recruitment desk due to its name. I sent in an application, and I hadn’t really had time to apply anywhere else when I received an invitation to a job interview, after which I soon had concluded an agreement too.”
Bootcamp is an experiential summer job period intended for software industry students, where work can be carried out in genuine customer projects alongside experienced Bitwisers. The Bootcamp concept, which was awarded in the Responsible Summer Job campaign, is also praised by Lauri: “The work duties during Bootcamp taught me at least a lot more than my studies at TTY. Real world issues are best learnt in real projects, at the guidance of skilled colleagues.”
Work is flexible according to studies
After the summer job period, Lauri was hired as a part-time employee for the Wisehockey team. Combining school and work is made as easy as possible at Bitwise. It is in everyone’s interest that graduation is not prolonged due to work. “The employer’s flexibility was extremely important to me. Working alongside studies requires flexibility in both directions, so that everything can be scheduled. At Bitwise, this did not cause a problem. The amount of work was adapted according to studies”, Lauri says.
At Bitwise, young professionals are appreciated, and the number of experience years does not make a difference – skills are the deal-maker. Lauri is recognised as a colleague, who can consider the overall situation. “Unclear issues are often asked from me first”, he says. Lauri praises his own team for both their skills and their positive attitude: “There are very many different professionals in my current team, and this is truly valuable. There is always someone, who has a view from a slightly different perspective, and knowledge and skills in different areas. And most important of course is that my colleagues have a positive attitude towards work, in other works everything is carried out with enthusiasm, and everyone works to their best ability according to their own skills”.
At best, work and studies support each other. “At this stage, when my own studies are still incomplete, the main importance of work is to develop my own skills and accumulate experience. On the other hand, you get the sense of achievement at work”, Lauri summarises. “And Mother Sun’s fresh pastries on our coffee breaks are not bad”, he continues.
Creative and highly tuned team in the background of product development
Wisehockey, Bitwise’s own product, is a speciality among the software company’s customer projects. Working in product development requires creativity and discipline according to Lauri: “Usually the customer specifies, what time is spent on, but now the development team must prioritise issues themselves. Responsibilities are also rather different compared to customer projects – the company’s own project often requires personal input from developers, in order to complete tasks. But that effort has been natural, because product development as well as researching and doing new things has been great. Someone is always doing and researching something new, and the whole team learns at the same time. During the past year, I have also learnt all sorts from architecture design to serial port standards, so the scale of technology is wide.”
You can find out more about the results of Lauri’s and the Wisehockey team’s work at the Wisehockey.com website. The real-time sports analytics system shall be implemented in already four Liiga (Finnish Elite League) ice rinks during the 2018-2019 season.