Our willingness to create change sets Polar Squad apart

We are Polar Squad. In this blog series, we introduce the people of our amazing company. Next in line is Antti Forsell!

Tell us a bit about yourself and your background?

I’m Antti and a co-founder of Polar Squad. Originally from Espoo, I now live in Helsinki with my wife and our two cats. I’m part of the generation that pretty much grew up side by side with modern computing. The first family computer was a Commodore PC 10-II (8088, 4.77 MHz, 640kB RAM), and the damned machines have been a part of my life ever since.

Fast-forward almost four decades, and we come to the present day. For the past year or so, the terminal emulator has no longer been my primary tool in use. As Polar Squad has grown, my role has become more about the people and their wellbeing. I do this on all levels, from the big Vision-Mission-Strategy stuff to various day-to-day duties and everything in between.

Outside of work, I keep on dreaming of becoming a proficient musician with the guitar and bass as my main instruments. I also like to balance things out by doing stuff with my hands, and the family summer cottage ensures I’ll never run out of things to do.

What was the path that led you to become a Squad member?

I’ve been programming as a hobby since I was twelve and getting paid for it for about 15 years. Initially doing mostly web development and DBA type of stuff, I shifted towards system administration quite early on. I got on to the whole continuous integration train when it started gaining momentum and worked in some sorts of hybrid roles, combining all these things. One day I heard about DevOps and thought it was a pretty good description of what I actually do.

I worked in a few different companies as a DevOps consultant or an internal DevOps dude, never quite satisfied with how all the stuff surrounding the actual technical work was handled. I also hated how difficult it seemingly was to get those things to change. Then one day, all the circumstances were just right, and there was an opportunity to start doing something instead of just thinking about it. I took it, and as a result, Polar Squad has been in business for a bit over three years now. It hasn’t been as easy as I may have thought, but I think we’ve done quite alright.

Which tools do you like to use in your work?

When I get the chance to do technical stuff, I don’t care what the tools are, as long as they’re well suited for the job. So zsh, vim, and VSCode are usually involved, complemented by whichever additional languages and tools are required.

Most of the time, tech is no longer what I do on a daily basis, and the job is mostly about different types of communication. Slack, Google Meet, and the GSuite tools are in heavy use. I can’t say I really like to use them, but they work well enough to get the job done.

What sets Polar Squad apart from other companies you've worked in?

Everything. As a co-founder and being part of the Leadership team, my views can be quite biased. With that in mind, I do think that what we’ve got here is something exceptional. I’m not claiming things are anywhere near perfect or that we have everything figured out. I do think, however, that everyone at Polar Squad has the will to create change.

And change is the crucial thing here. We’re not doing this just because we need something to get the income to pay the bills. DevOps is largely about getting rid of unnecessary work and improving plain old human-to-human communication. I also think most industries could benefit from that. We’re figuring out different ways to do things better. Hopefully, we get a lot of it right and others can then follow our lead.

How would you describe the culture in PS? How can you maintain a company-wide culture when most employees work long-term with different clients? Would you like to give us detailed examples of what the culture is about in Polar Squad?

Are you trying to say culture is more than just free pizza and beer at the office? Yeah, the culture part was a big question from very early on – how to maintain a sense of unity and belonging when people are scattered all over the place and meet only at random. The first thing was to have dedicated office days – days where everyone worked remotely from the office (this was pre-covid, remote work meant not working at customer premises). At least we could hang out together once a week.

That worked well enough, and we also had our different parties, events, company trips, etc. Spending time together really helped out in building a good and relaxed culture. But with growth, we started to struggle a bit. Some were already missing “the good old days” (which was kinda odd, as the company was only a couple of years old). We came up with some new ideas, like family dinners, to not slip into a mode where people are resources and the company is only the place where you collect your paycheck.

Then the pandemic hit us. We had some tough times from a financial perspective, but it was our culture that suffered the most. Not meeting people, focusing a bit more on billing, being stressed out as we didn’t know what to expect. People weren’t doing so well and it was tough overall. But actually, things weren’t as bad as they first felt like.

It was the culture that kept us together: People were willing to sacrifice their happiness to ensure the company can keep on going. We were, both together and as individuals, willing to take one for the team. Now we just have to make damn sure to continue maintaining what we have and improve things as easier times gleam on the horizon.

Tell us about your day-to-day routines?

Please no! I go to meetings and I write stuff. I mean, the content is interesting, but the routines aren’t.

What kind of technical challenges do you meet at your work?

The challenges are usually non-technical. Chrome eats up RAM or audio doesn’t work right as I’m having that “really important” telco, etc. So nothing special.

How does it feel to work with developer teams? Do we have a common ground?

Maybe again one day...

Some final words?

It’s been one helluva ride. A lot of the time I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing, so luckily I’m surrounded by people who do – even though they might have the exact same feelings. Polar Squad is for the people, by the people. (Hmm, that sounds vaguely familiar). Anyways, I’m just really, really happy to have my part in this all.