A Culture of Caring Sets Polar Squad Apart

We are Polar Squad! Here is Lasse – he takes care of sales so the rest of us have work to do. He’s our go-to guy concerning cooking advice and chilli growing tips. Here are his thoughts concerning life at Polar Squad.

Tell us a bit about yourself and your background?

My name is Lasse and I work in sales in Polar Squad.

I have been working in the IT industry for the last 28 years, starting with a praktikum in Goslar (Germany) in 1993, going through the Technical University of Helsinki (Aalto University nowadays), and at the same time working for Nokia and Telia(Sonera).

In 2007, I invented Wifi tethering and patented that with a company named Joikusoft. It was a nice ride, but unfortunately, it vanished with Nokia mobile phones. However, it taught me a lot about software development and how beneficial it would be to automate software production processes.   

I’m married with two children and a proud owner of a dachshund. We are living in Northern Helsinki. I enjoy nature, gardening, hiking and biking outdoors. In fact, every summer for the last ten years, I have been biking in Northern Finland and Norway for a couple of weeks.

How did you become a member of Polar Squad?

I started working for a DevOps consultancy in late 2013 – that was my previous position. Having worked with the larger team and multiple companies,  in 2018, I decided that it was time to move forward.

What seriously attracted me was the fact that Polar Squad has senior consultants concentrating only on Devops and they want to be extremely professional in that area. Ideas of constant improvement, both on technical and cultural sides, sharing of ideas and low-level organization as well as a culture of respecting everybody's opinion are all things that inspired me a lot. 

What tools do you use in your work?

I mostly work with sales, so it’s mail, phone, and Slack.

What sets Polar Squad apart from other companies you worked for?

The culture of caring, being empathetic and striving for constant improvement.

We try to finish projects within a year and transfer all knowledge to the customer. We are very open about this, and I think it sets us apart from various other consultation companies.  

How would you describe the culture in Polar Squad?

Culture is discussed a lot. We share and work on technical and cultural challenges with various tools. We also try to be as open as possible. For example, Polar Squad’s economic details (including bank account balance) are shared with everyone every month. I have not seen that in my previous positions.

Tell us about your day to day routines?

Nowadays, it’s lots of video calls with customers around Europe. Typically the consultants are taken into sales cases already in the early stage to get an exact understanding of the potential project. We only go forward with a project if we and the customer have a shared vision about the project.

What kind of technical challenges do you face in your work?

Nothing that can't be solved by our team :)