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My Summer Internship at Tietoevry: Diving head-first and learning to swim

Niko spent his summer as a Business Intelligence Intern at Tietoevry for the second year straight. Now he’s sharing his take on what it takes to work in a big and multicultural tech company.

Recruitment Team / August 26, 2019

What do I do at Tietoevry? If you ask my girlfriend, she’d probably say that I Skype with my friends or do some kind of ‘click-click’ work. Even my parents are not sure what I actually do, but by now, they have figured out that it has something to do with computers.

Diving head-first…

To be honest, a year ago when I first started here, I had no clue as to what I would be doing for the next four months. I applied for the summer trainee position of “Junior BI (Business Intelligence) Specialist” and had only a basic knowledge of what BI meant. No wonder I was terrified when starting on the first day of May. Luckily, another trainee started on the same day, and somehow, we managed to survive the summer (actually, we managed really well, to brag a bit). In fact, I was offered a part-time contract after my first summer, even though I still had three years of school to go.

… and learning to swim

Now, if we time travel to this moment, it is my second summer here at Tietoevry, and I just signed another part-time contract for the next year. In one year, I have learned the basics of SQL programming, ETL loads, different data tools, DevOps, agile teamwork – you name it! Most of these things have been completely new to me.

My major is economics, but during the past year I’ve focused more on information technology and database systems. Working at Tieto has made it clear to me that I’ve always liked working with numbers and that I am a bit nerdy about computers. Mixing these two makes perfect sense, as nowadays you cannot separate technological solutions from economics. The way we process data is the beating heart of business intelligence.

Starting off my career while studying has not been smooth sailing all the time. My experience reminded me of a Finnish saying that goes something like this:

No matter how deep the water is, if you haven’t drowned, you’ve learned to swim.

I am glad I ended up in a completely different field than I originally planned – and have learned to swim along the way.

Friendships at work

At Tietoevry there’s a really active group of young professionals who organize all sorts of events from skiing trips to summer BBQ evenings. Through this network, I have met a lot of new people I hang out with during lunch and breaks. I also realized that Tietoevry is truly multilingual and multicultural as so many of my colleagues are originally from somewhere else than Finland. I myself come from a tiny city in eastern Finland, so even Helsinki felt like a foreign country in the beginning. But with such a great community and a mix of different people supporting you, I soon got over whatever culture shock I may have had.

I’ve worked from our head office at Keilalahti but also remotely from my family’s summer cottage and my parent’s house. Sometimes the change of scenery and office has felt like a mini-break. You also get to enjoy longer weekend trips and spend more time with family and friends. And to my surprise, I’ve noticed that I’m more productive working from home. I think we can all agree that at the office the temptation to talk to friends and get distracted is always there.  

So what do I do at Tietoevry?

My best answer is that at Tietoevry, I learn something new every day while working side by side with experienced colleagues in demanding customer projects.

This may sound like a paid commercial (trust me, it isn’t), but I’ve really liked my time at Tietoevry. The trust and support I’ve received from my co-workers has helped me develop professionally, and I’ve been included in challenging projects and given responsibilities that match my current skill level. What I have worked on has never been too easy or too difficult. My job is to provide new insights and question old habits. To me, it sounds like a win-win situation.

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