The 6th Day as Junior Apitalist

It is like walking or dancing. To change in any new direction you need lift up your back foot from the ground to take the next steps. For a new direction you need additionally to control your body muscles to adjust your balance towards the new direction. All this happens automatically after rehearsal. The same thing is happening to me in my work life for a couple of days now. However, changing the direction in work life is hardly ever rehearsed properly in such details that the transition would become smooth. In job change it is question about tens of successful but unrepeatable trials, while to learn to walk you’ve done it hundreds or thousands of times and which is important, you can repeat the successful moves to become a master. This is never happen in work life.

Humbleness is the right attitude to restart the next chapter in your career.

Being a senior person in software business doesn’t automate your start with the next chapter. Even if the ingredients in the new chapter are or resembling to your experiences in past, you are a junior in a new job. You must be humble to start a new learning journey. With arrogance, one just creates unnecessary internal pressure and other obstacles. It might be difficult to start over, but there is no other option. Surprisingly in some established businesses the humbleness is seen as a weakness. People fear to say they are humble. Instead they must say to be bold and beautiful for the job. We talked about this with some of the recruitment professionals and with couple of job seekers. No wonder, if some countries have matchmaking challenges in the labor market. Well, it is fair to say that it depends also on the job. A job what I was seeking for must had strong growth element in it and the purpose to help people in their every day life. Nothing readymade and simple. Rather other way around. Humbleness is the right attitude to restart the next chapter in your career. Humbleness is just one example. There are many other similar reasons why match making fails in labor market today.

Day 0

The Day zero was a little bit longer road. I got used to know some of the people first. Jarkko Moilanen visited in one of the events in TreStart environment. TreStart is an organization in Tampere, Finland, which enables match making by hosting a few semi-productized event types for curious job seekers and the companies who are ready to exploit the opportunity to let the experienced job seekers to help the companies to go over or around the their challenges. This doesn’t mean a recruitment only, but about when problems and solvers face each other open-mindedly it might lead to some new win-wins.

I told Jarkko that his story line about APIOps and Apitalist communities was quite interesting one. It makes sense. Perhaps we could discuss more? We agreed that in some day in the near future there is better time to sit down to discuss. Later on we got a lunch together and during the discussion we found several meaningful connections with Apinf and me.

Team fit belongs to the category of “fail fast”

The team fit is extremely important. I’ve learned this many times during my career and in life. One of the priests for team fit is Jarkko, who gave even an emotional rant in one of the training courses while I was in Startup Coaching program 2012. He was clearly still pissed off. Team fit belongs to the category of “fail fast”, because it is really of waste of everyones time if the team fit is not going to settle down. In this context I also met Vesa Härkönen, one of the hackers in Apinf, who happened to be my class mate in the same Startup Coaching program. I knew him the closest amongst the people in Apinf, so it was natural to discuss with him about my fit with the company and wise versa.

And there is more. I had to go in the APIOps meet-up events a couple of times to conform the feelings about the purpose of the API Economy and how it is addressed by APIOps network. There I met advanced developers who shared their bad and good experiences working with APIs. Pieces of puzzle started to thump in their places. I also learned to know key people like Nazia, Taija, and Philippe from Apinf.

Finally I visited the office. First I met Laura, the Marketing guru, for the first time. Then I met Chandra, the CEO of Apinf. I actually saw the first time in startup environment in New Factory in 2012 or 2013, when he was setting up some Sampo Software thing. At that time I had to leave New Factory behind to focus a business and leadership training program. Now in the second time we actually started to learn from and about each others with Chandra.

The reasons behind the motivation to start in Apinf were the individuals, the purpose and the team.

I was sold. I wanted to start with Apinf. The reasons behind the motivation to start in Apinf were the individuals, the purpose and the team. About my fit I can only interpret that my experience and attitude what I was able to show in my career, but also towards API Economy. That must have something to do with the my fit to Apinf. I was told to be welcome to the family when arrived to Apinf office in Day 1.

Day 1

Getting started. The first day in the office. Ilari was the next new Apinfer for me. I also learned to know Matti.

After coffee and chitchat I was shown a the place to work in. I cleaned up the table and started with my own laptop. It is amazing how many moves one have to do setup a fluent platform for your work to your laptop. That reminded me about closed systems what are used by software companies to protect their business. The customer is far far from being the first. Okay, perhaps completely within their systems, but customer should sell their souls to one and only brand. So old fashion way of thinking what is best for the mankind with roots in the 80's.

Jarkko set the first things to do.

Day 2

The first Monday. I learned to know Rebecca. We’ll have common project starting soon.

Setting up the tools continues. Both mobile and laptop start to orient with the services and applications. Automated Data Processing takes place. Cool.

I received a 100 days project to support while becoming a true Apitalist.

Day 3

Kirsi introduced herself and set her challenge to for a message to play with.

First customer projects review meeting to share the status and expectations for the Apitalists. Nice playground!

For some reason I become completely exhausted in the early afternoon. This was it. Wrong timing to start fasting. I used to fast in earlier times to kick-start a personal fitness program to loose some weight. Perviously it worked with good results. I lost max 25 kg in about 15 months. I won’t give up now either, but perhaps it is better to fuel the change process with sufficient energy for now. I made a pivot. I had to eat before the APIOps meet-up.

APIOps meet-up in the evening, hosted by Nazia, was again a very good experience. The meetup is available for you in youtube (unfortunetaly the volume of voice is not optimal). Great presentations by Marjukka Niinioja from Digia about challenges of API Economy and how to solve some of the challenges with APIOps Cycles methodology framework. Aapo Talvensaari from Kong described the highlights of API Gateway for micro service APIs. Jarkko Moilanen from Apinf explained about API management platforms for smart cities and beyond.

Winners of the most active contributors were rewarded in the meet-up. Marjukka and myself won tickets to Mindtrek 2017 2-day event due to our contributions for APIOps network.

Day 4

No new tools today. Focus on taking pile of virtual papers forward.

Finalizing the last mile of tools setup.

Day 5

The day of first blog as Junior Apitalist.