The fine art of working

”You need to have something else in your life to balance work. Life should be based in passions – a dream job, a meaningful spare time. During my working history I’ve tried e.g. mail room, phone sales, construction work, IT. When I was young, I had two dream jobs: an airline pilot or a computer geek. Well, I didn’t get to be a pilot because of my eyesight, briefly tried some odd jobs but found myself inspired by the unlimited possibilities of IT. In the beginning it was games, coding, WAP, etc. Never in any other job have I felt this kind of true passion.

Balancing between work and family is of course always challenging. The only way to make it happen is to have a flexible job with people you can trust. So that you can be sure things will be done. This is why we try to give our employees the opportunity to have hobbies and pursue their dreams.

In my free time I spend time with my family a lot, but also do extreme sports. Maybe because these “inventor brains” easily go into overdrive if the body isn’t tired enough. I’m also into meditation and would love a week-long retreat in the forests. Sometimes movies and games (Fallout 4 & iRacing) can work as a retreat, and hopefully soon VR. In general, I’m interested in sciences, especially space science, and I follow science publications daily. And I just enrolled in a rocket science class. ”Big data is not rocket science.”

Family: Wife Merja, Aleksi, Pinja and little Elias

Hobbies: downhill skiing (tired of the small southern slopes. They’re skiable when teaching your child), mountain biking, diving (personal bests: breath holding 3,5 minutes, freediving 11 metres), meditation, hifi/movies

Special powers: fair resistance to heat. Not your regular sauna stories but holding a red-hot iron grill griddle with my bare hands and moving a hot baking tray without oven mittens. Sounds crazy, but I think it has to do with mind control (mind over body) – or maybe my nerves are just broken 🙂

Another odd feature: I have never refused to eat any kind of food. The strangest so far has been the rotten grayling served by the guys from Madventures.

Please comment or ask something, I’ll answer on video.

Sami Porokka

My work history begins at the family farm, so I could easily put “farmers’ holiday stand-in” in my CV. My first serious application was at the farm too: a bookkeeping app for my father, done with a C-128. I studied computer science at the University of Oulu for five years before I made the mistake of applying a summer job at CCC instead of haymaking at the farm. And I’m still on that path today.

This career, being a database expert, has always tickled my mathematical mind. And a lot more tickling happening lately with Big data ja IoT. My latest project is the automation of my own house, monitoring its “activities”, e.g. swimming pools heating. The numbers end the speculation.

My work is mostly remote work. This modern way of working gives employees freedom but also the responsibility to get things done on time. And todays connections make this job highly flexible – so it’s easy to be flexible towards the clients as well. Flexibility at its best? To wake up in your car next to a surf beach, working for couple of hours and go surfing.

Hobbies: kitesurfing, roller skating, kayaking, drinking coffee in Nuuksio National Park, movies. Renovating my house, with a dream project just now. Kitesurfing being the biggest passion. It’s a sport which requires knowledge of risks and your own limits to be safe. My intention is to keep surfing till I’m seventy.

Most proud of: Saving a life. A Brazilian kitesurfer was at the same beach with me in Brazil – and suddenly he was in the water without his kite, and he didn’t know how to swim. I found him, far away from the beach. It was a good reminder: know your own limits and weaknesses.

And what else? Year and a half ago I learned to ride a unicycle. My neighborhood is already used to me unicycling to the local shop but many of the ones I bypass still are surprised. I’m waiting for the rest of the world to realize the excellence of this vehicle.

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Marko Marjamaa