being in tech

I wanted to do some reflections about my first assignment at Skandia. I had initially signed on for a 4 month contract, which got extended for a year in 2023 for a total of 16 months within the company.

I had initially taken up the project with the primary goal of forcing myself to use the Swedish language more and I would like to think I have been successful at that. I probably still make a ton of mistakes but I would like to believe I have managed most of the time to communicate my point in Swedish.

The company made use of the SAFe framework as their way of working. Even as a contractor, I was entitled to a training session as a newbie, and even got to get myself certified at the expense of the company.

The team I joined was very high performing and the whole SAFe engine was working well. I felt like even though there were things we were working on that felt a bit vague at the start, the framework help to scope the work so that we know what we would focus on in the span of the product increment. Work never felt stressful and it really helped to be part of a team that was open and collaborative.

This was the second company I worked at where SAFe was used and I can see how it makes sense for really big organizations to help synchronize work that needs to be done across large enterprises with many teams working on a cross cutting initiative. SAFe uses the train analogy and I can understand why.

As a company, it seems like a great place to work. There were people working for 20+ years, there were your adults, just starting their families and they felt happy to be working there during these times in their lives.

The company had to downsize on their consultants and instead focus on hiring employees which makes perfect sense for them. If I had not just started my journey with ItsyBiT, I probably would have considered applying for employment there.

It’s a great place to work, there’s opportunities to do rotation among different teams. There is a lot of variation in the types of work that needs to be done, and it seems that the company does put an effort in trying to find out what would make employees stay within the company, and they put focus on making sure that their current employees get the support they need when they are in critical stages in their lives: starting families, going into retirement, etc.

It was my first experience in the insurance industry and I hope that it won’t be my last since it does seem like a very interesting space.