At Polar Squad, I have front-row seats to a rapidly changing world
We are Polar Squad. In this blog series, we introduce the people of our amazing company. Next up is Antti Poutiainen!
Tell us a bit about yourself and your background?
My name is Antti, and I started at Polar Squad in February 2020. In the past, I’ve worked with IT outsourcing and consulting companies in various roles. I have a background in operations and I’ve always been close to Microsoft stuff. I live in Espoo with my wife and two kids.
What was the path that led you into becoming a DevOps consultant for Polar Squad?
Over the years, working on different roles in operations and platform teams, I realized that a lot of the workload we dealt with is something we now consider as Toil. Ever since the rise of cloud and some popular DevOps tooling, I’ve felt the ambition to shift focus on improving workloads and services to get the most out of the cloud-native offering and automation. At the same time, I’ve suffered from significant frustration when working on tasks that should have been automated away a long time ago.
When I first heard of Polar Squad, I noticed they had some extremely talented people working in the company. I followed their tracks for a couple of years – hoping that I would be able to join the gang one day – until PS reached out to me. That felt almost like a dream come true in some ways.
I think the way we develop, innovate and digitalize the world is going through a significant shift. At Polar Squad, I get to see and experience that from a first-row roller coaster car.
What tools do you like to use in your work?
Infrastructure as code and configuration management are close to my heart, and you’ll likely find me working with them any given day. The Microsoft roots are deep inside me, so I tend to fire up VSCode whenever I need to script something out. I’ve really started to like Golang, but I need some more practice with it.
What sets Polar Squad apart from other companies you worked at?
I think Polar Squad has managed to capture a sort of ‘lightning in a bottle’ and there is a huge creative force in the company. I’ve worked with many talented people in the past, but with Polar Squad, the bar is set to a completely different level. Since people have such diverse backgrounds, there is always someone more knowledgeable willing to help out.
At Polar Squad, the employees are the number one priority. That is evident in everything we do. If I don’t feel comfortable working on a project, I can opt out and look for another assignment. The wellbeing of our people is our most valuable asset.
How would you describe the culture in PS?
I think that our culture is the single most distinctive matter that sets us apart from the rest. Teal organisations heavily inspire us, and that shows in everything we do. Due to people working with different clients, we try to organize some “company time” with office Fridays, tech talks, and other recurring events that bring us together. We also have squads running on different speciality and technology areas to bring like-minded people close to each other.
I think taking care of our culture is more important than anything else, because that’s what enables us to teach the same things to our clients.
Tell us about your day-to-day routines?
I try to start my day by catching up on news and the web – on the blogosphere, announcements or something else entirely. I feel most productive during the early hours, so that’s my number one choice for working on anything that requires me to stay focused.
Especially during the COVID time, I try to maintain a certain rhythm, and include appropriate breaks and physical activities in my day. If I feel like I can’t focus on something, I try to close the laptop and pick up from where I left off when I have the energy to do something meaningful. It’s one of the benefits of flexible hours, and I think it’s bliss.
What kind of technical challenges do you meet at your work?
I work a lot with cloud and platform architecture, so themes like scale and reliability are often on the table. Right now, I’ve been involved in this cutting-edge machine learning project. Since everything we do there is very experimental, the breakthroughs and innovations we did during the morning might be obsolete in the afternoon :) Often, this comes down to writing Infrastructure as Code.
Deployment and delivery automation is another thing that I like to bug myself with. Sometimes automating specific build and delivery steps is a lot easier to be said than done.
How does it feel to work with developer teams? Do we have a common ground?
It feels great! I always feel very welcome when I join a new team for an assignment. Everybody understands that we have a common goal, and developers feel good to have a DevOps person in their team.
I also consider working with new people and new types of challenges as a learning opportunity. We prefer having an organic approach to transferring knowledge and teaching teams, so working daily alongside them is the best way to accomplish that.
Curious about the work possibilities Polar Squad offers? Read more on our Careers page!