Three years of building business in a new market

We are Polar Squad! Yair Etziony, the founder of our Berlin office, has been working in Polar Squad for almost three years. It’s a good time to reflect on his three-year experience of kickstarting our new office in Berlin.

Hi Yair, could you tell us a bit about yourself?

I am Yair Etziony, and I lead the Berlin branch of Polar Squad. I have worked in IT and software development for over 20 years. Like many Israelis, I started in the army with many jobs: network administrator, Windows system administrator, Unix support engineer, system engineer, and QA engineer.

I have a funny background for an IT expert. I studied for a master’s degree in German history, focusing on the history of ideas. I have worked as a journalist for Israeli magazines and newspapers, run a nightclub, and had a career in music.

How did you connect with Polar Squad?

In 2018, I started working for a company in Berlin as a senior DevOps engineer. Multiple consultants from Polar Squad were already working there, and we enjoyed working together. After a couple of months, the company got closed, and I felt I would like to change my role from DevOps engineer to a consultant.

Eventually, I had three offers: one from a very stable hardware company, one from a promising startup, and one from Polar Squad.

I liked our discussions with the people at Polar Squad. After considering my options, I decided to take a leap of faith and start working for Polar Squad – a company that had no real presence in Germany at that time. Little did I know that this decision would change my personal and professional life.

What was it like to start work at Polar Squad?

The first days were awkward, as I worked for very hierarchical companies, and Polar Squad has a very flat hierarchy. The flatness can sometimes be intimidating.

Typically someone from HR or your team would guide a new employee through the first few days. As I was the first Polar Squad employee in Berlin, I found myself sitting alone in our small sublet office corner, wondering what I should do next.

It took me some time to understand how things work in the company. For example, I was looking for the person who calls the shots, and at some point, I understood that there are no ‘bosses’.

There’s little in the way of strict rules. For instance, I sometimes like to work late at night, as I can’t think clearly in the morning. Coming from some big corporations, it felt like a breath of fresh air to work when and where I wanted.

Early on, I felt the trust and empowerment. There was an agreement that even if I am alone in Germany, I am not really alone. I was trusted – no one stopped me from trying and doing things, writing blogs, giving talks in conferences, and adding a lot of ideas from my studies into the field.

How does Polar Squad compare to your earlier gigs?

For most of my career, I’ve worked for product companies. Typically, I’d get bored after a while and look for a new job. Consultancy work is a bit different: It reminds me of when I was managing a nightclub in Tel Aviv. You need to reinvent yourself periodically; it’s a much more dynamic side of the IT world.

Working as an external consultant, you can’t think you know everything. If I ever go back to working in a product company, I would invite external professionals to evaluate my ideas, architecture, and design. Getting an external view from real professionals can save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

The fact that we have very narrow expertise at Polar Squad is a huge plus for me. We deal with DevOps and hone that to perfection. The collective knowledge and camaraderie we have in Polar Squad are huge success factors: One can tap into such a fountain of shared knowledge. When you work for a company like Polar Squad, you live and breathe DevOps.

What was it like to be the first employee in Berlin?

I learned so much from this experience. I feel very privileged to be part of this journey. I learned a lot about recruiting, building a budget, and diving into the world of business, which is something new for me. With Polar Squad and its freeform ways, I could use all of my general knowledge.

The most important thing is that I did not feel that someone was stopping me from trying (and failing) for most of the three years: The people supported me all the way, acting as advisors and sparring partners.

Now, we have a great group of people with various nationalities. I’m very grateful for the team we have.

Any lessons learned you could share with us?

Taking chances and trusting your guts can be rewarding. A coincidental meeting with a strange company from a peculiar country resulted in the best job I’ve had. It’s even more than that: I feel that Finland is my northern home. After Berlin and a few Israeli cities, Helsinki is the city I have spent the most time in.

For me, it’s all about the people, and we have some of the most amazing people I have ever met in Polar Squad. I gained some friends for the rest of my life.