Nextcon also attracts people at the end of their careers. There is a demand in the IT sector for a wide range of experience. Nextcon’s experts Leif Sundell and Anssi Järvenpää have been valued by customers and partners alike. Leif and Anssi have been positively surprised by the variety of challenging projects Nextcon offers and the opportunity to learn something new until the end of their careers.
Leif Sundell, Project Manager
Leif didn’t have long to spend his retirement when the call to return to work came. The old job needed help and Leif, who enjoyed his work, decided to continue in his role as a project manager, which had been interrupted by his early retirement.
Leif’s career began in 1976 watching punch cards and tapes. Titles included post-processor and operator. At the time, Finland had a difficult training situation for the industry, so Leif ended up in Uppsala to study systems design. Relational databases were on the way and Leif started as employee number 3 at Oracle Finland. Throughout his career, Leif has worked in various roles as a consultant, trainer and in administrative jobs. Since the 90’s his main role has been in project management ranging from financial management systems to large infra development and transit projects. Leif is currently still working as a project manager at Nextcon.
– What matters to me in my job is a good team and a good relationship with my clients. I have had the opportunity to work with a variety of people, including internationally. With long experience, I have realised how important it is to have a good team and the right team members, where everyone understands their role and the role of other people. A good client relationship is essential in the work of a consultant and project manager; if the client relationship is good, mistakes are allowed, if the client relationship is bad, no mistakes are allowed,” says Leif.
The possibility to work on different projects
At Nextcon, Leif has enjoyed the opportunity to work on a variety of projects, including shorter ones. Nextcon has been able to offer Leif a wide range of assignments from infrastructure projects to software development.
Leif has seen a lot of projects in his career and also the development of project methods. Yet he says that the basic principles of project management itself have not changed.
-The same basics are and will remain.
Technological progress surprises and puzzles
Technology, on the other hand, has come a long way since punch cards. Leif himself has been surprised by the huge growth of mobile applications and the mobile requirement for everything. On the infrastructure side, however, Leif is hesitant about developments.
– A large part of large organisations depend on central machines. However, they are expensive to maintain, so the trend has been to move away from them for cost reasons. Transition projects from mainframes to other solutions have often proved very difficult and expensive. There are many applications on mainframes dating back to the 1960s that are not easily migrated to new environments and their application developers are no longer available. Mainframes are also very stable environments for critical operations. A lot of transit projects have also been suspended. Personally, I wonder where we are going. Can companies afford to make savings in critical areas and will more money go back into these projects anyway?
New projects to continue
The corona made a total mess of Leif’s retirement plans. The idea was to travel and spend more time abroad, but it didn’t work out that way. The idea of working is not impossible for Leif – as long as I can keep my fingers on the keyboard, I can work.
Leif encourages a varied career.
– I encourage diversity in working life. Personally, I have done well with a diverse background and experience.
Anssi Järvenpää, Testing Specialist
Anssi Järvenpää, a testing specialist at Nextcon, will retire in September 2020. Anssi has had an IT career since the early 1980s, when he started as a summer intern at Nokia Networks’ predecessor company. He then worked as a graduate student and had a long career at Nokia in various roles from architect to line manager.
– The 90s at Nokia Networks was my most enjoyable period in my working life, there was no quarterly economy and development could be done in peace. The work was varied, international and you met a lot of people. I was involved in many things, including the first implementations of Agile methods at Nokia,” says Anssi.
Employees at different life stages enrich the work community
Since then, Anss’ career has taken a turn towards becoming a testing expert, which he has done during his time at Nextcon.
– My career was interrupted when I chose to become a carer. At the end of the period, I still had a couple of years to go before retirement. I appreciate the open-mindedness of both Nextcon and their clients in allowing me to continue my career. There has been a lot of talk in the media recently about age racism. Fortunately, the other side of the medal came true in my case, which sees the views and experiences of employees at different stages of their lives enriching the work community.
Continuous learning
Continuous learning has been necessary throughout the rapidly evolving technology, changing technological directions and changing ways of working.
– The major technological changes that have affected uranium have been the development of communication networks and the diversification of communication solutions. I have witnessed the evolution of technology from the days of the landline telephone to today’s versatile communication devices, where the telephone feature is becoming marginal. This evolution has been driven, among other things, by the increasing efficiency of processors and their peripherals, both in terms of processing speed and energy efficiency and in terms of size. When I started my career, the software in the centres was stored on PROMs. When the customer’s centre software was upgraded, the necessary PROMs were packed into portfolios that weighed like a stone. Today, we are used to updating software via data links.
– “I have been involved in the change in the way work is done, both as a seer and a doer,” says Anssi.The introduction of agile management methods was a good thing. I have noticed that over the years agile practices have started to erode. Agile can be applied flexibly, but too much flexibility seems to lose the benefits of the method. The time is beginning to be ripe for Agile 2.0 or some such new way of managing projects.
– As a software tester, I have had the opportunity to study a wide range of systems under test. After a break of many years, I was able to return to programming and learn programming languages new to me, such as Python and Java.
While much has changed, much remains the same.
– The client still doesn’t know what he wants and the supplier still doesn’t know what the client wants, says Anssi, the first thing he says. But there have also been many good developments, for example in people management, which has become softer and more trustworthy.
Time to live
After retirement, Anss has one plan: start living. The idea is not to go back to work, but to focus on other important things in life.
Anssi wants to encourage future IT professionals who are building their careers to keep learning.
– It’s also worth getting an employer who is committed to training even during working hours.