Like most information workers, I’ve been working mostly remotely for the past few years. If you browse social media like LinkedIn, you might see pictures of happy remote workers sipping their drinks at a pool telling how remote working is fantastic. Good for them, but based on what I’ve seen, read and heard, usually remote working means working from home. We Nordic nomads also tend to be at home during the workdays. 

Working from home has it’s benefits

The benefits of working from home are quite clear, no commute and you can create an office you like (if you have the opportunity). If you have a family, the option to be at home in the mornings and afternoons is quite precious. Here in Finland the weather plays a part also. Especially in late autumn, commuting every day in the dark and rain during rush hour is not actually an uplifting experience. The marketing people at Slush said it well: “nobody in their right mind would come to Helsinki in November”   

Change it up

There are also drawbacks to working at home. You might feel alone, social interaction is done virtually and in general it may start to feel that the walls are closing in on you. To help you get rid of the usual work-at-home-in-your-pajamas routine you can try coworking. Coworking is an arrangement where workers from different companies share an office. It can be a joint rental agreement between companies or a provider of a coworking space who rents out the space temporarily to a companies and/or individuals. For individuals, the term we usually use is a hot desk. The desk is not actually warmer than any other desk, it just refers to the fact that it is not dedicated to you. We will concentrate on the hot desks for the rest of the story. 

We Nordic nomads have a subscription to Spacent, an “Uber of coworking”, which has a nice coverage of coworking offices’ hot desks in Finland. I’ve now tried approximately 10 of their spaces divided between several different cities. The spaces have varied from hotel lobbies to Spacent’s own, dedicated office space. Besides coworking offices, I’ve worked at cafeterias and libraries. They also fall into the category of hot desks as you usually don’t have dedicated desk there.

What to expect from a hot desk

In its simplest form, a hot desk is just a chair and a table in a random location. If you are paying for it, you can expect a bit more. Based on my experience, I compiled a check list for a good hot desk:   

1. Electricity (obvious, but the sockets should be near, preferably on the table)
2. A working internet connection (wifi with password somewhere to be found)
3. Working adjustable chair and table (non-functioning electric table is a real bummer)
4. Working toilet with toilet paper nearby(!)
5. Coffee and water available (mugs would be nice too)
6. Peaceful environment (preferrably not in a corridor)
7. Phone booth/meeting room for calling (related to point 6)
8. Some lunch options nearby (unless you bring your own lunch)
9. Good availability (free/cheap parking, public transportation)
10. Separate room for breaks
11. A safe to check in your gear while at lunch
12. A way to move freely in and out of the coworking space (tag, key or access code)

A good vibe or just a space to work?

The list is pretty much the same as what you would expect from an office of your own. Some coworking providers are just renting out free space, others really try to concentrate on creating a good coworking experience. The effort shows and the best ones I’ve been so far in are Ofisio in Kuopio ja MOW Supernova in Tampere. They tick almost all of the points but are not perfect either. Ofisio has only a single room for calling and MOW has pretty expensive parking for a hot desk user if arriving by car.

Make some noise, but not too much

The challenge with coworking offices is that they are best when they are sparsely occupied. If every desk is taken and all rooms are rented, sitting in the middle of hot desks may not be a pleasant experience. On the order hand, if there is no one else, moving yourself from home isolation to coworking isolation does not make any sense. The sweet spot is a handful (amount depending on the space naturally) of people from different companies who have come to the coworking for the same reason as you, avoiding the closing walls. 

Looking for new opportunities?

If you are a software professional who would like to work in a fully remote company, please check our careers page.

Image from Pexels by Joey Kyber

Meet our newest team member Jussi. He’s originally from the Salo region in Finland but he moved to Germany approximately ten years ago. His spouse-to-be had an opportunity to do a PhD at the University of Heidelberg and Jussi did not hesitate to follow her. “My employee at the time allowed me to keep working from Germany, hat’s off to them”. But after some time he felt he wanted to join a local company. “I worked for a few German companies and an university. The culture is a bit different then what we are accustomed to in Finland. In Finland, we tend to have lower hierarchies and the culture is more open. We tend to be a bit more agile too where in Germany it’s more process-oriented”. So after 9 years, he felt like he needed a change.  

Freedom and flexibility are what I’m after

“I was looking for a remote position so I could spend more time with my wife and my daughter. Not having to commute saves a lot of time. And I also feel I’m much more productive working from home since there are fewer distractions. And working remotely also gives me the flexibility to plan my day however I want. Personally, I start my day early. I just grab a cup of coffee and open my laptop and my day has started. Furthermore, if I want to move to a different city one day, I won’t have to switch jobs since Nordic nomads allow me to work from anywhere”. 

Family comes first

“Working remotely also gives me more personal time which is also important in families with small children. In my free time, I like to play video games, learn to play piano and e.g. work on my Warhammer miniatures. My daughter has started to show interest in those as well so it’s nice to work on them together also”. 

If you’re considering moving to Germany 

“I like living in Germany, it’s our home now. For those considering moving here, there are lots of benefits. The healthcare system is good as well as the public transport system. Munich is also a very centrally located city so there are lots of places to visit and they are easily accessible. There are many parks to spend time outdoors with family and the Alps are just a short distance away.

Jussi’s tips for working remotely 

When working remotely you can easily get lost in your work since there are fewer distractions. You really must remember to take breaks and it is a good idea to schedule them in advance. I also suggest taking breaks where you go for a small walk in the middle of the day, it will keep you fresh, especially in the afternoon. 

Quality first

At the moment Jussi is working on a project for an international social media advertising company. I take pride in my work and I always want to deliver reliable and quality code. It’s important to work closely with the customer and have an open dialogue with them.

Want more information?

Senior hands-on architects, read more here.
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Continuous learning

Keeping up with the latest trends and technologies is a must if you want to stay on top of your game. That is why we encourage everyone to continuously learn new things and share knowledge and provide support to others whenever possible. 

A while back we decided to take a look at Go. Here I’ll will mention a few key points which we

discovered were interesting during our journey.  We are nowhere close to the end of this journey, as a matter of fact, we have just begun. Hence, this is not going to go in the pearl harvesting depths of the ocean of knowledge, we will rather scratch the surface. 

If you are deciding whether to continue reading it, note that it’s not a programming tutorial. We just hope you will get some insights, and encouragement to learn Go after reading this. 

Preamble for Go.

So we said, let’s Go. Seriously, we looked at one of our existing application written in famous JavaScript which needed refactoring as soon as it was *cough* complete, and decided that we want to let it rot and manufacture a shiny new application written from scratch in the famous new Go.  Before beginning this journey, we mostly worked with high level (very) languages such as JavaScript, Java, Python and TypeScript.  

We were aware that Go is similar but also slightly different when it comes to a handful of conventions (we discuss those below).  The main reason to choose Go with Go (lol) was the main feature of Go that it claims to have, such as safety, concurrency, conciseness etc.  which we found was true.

The journey of a mile begins with a first single step.

We were not under any strict deadline or commitment so we started in a quite relaxed way. We decided to do pair programming and learning by doing.  And before we started our first session of pair programming live in Jitsi meeting, we took a few days to read the Go language documentation.  It was our first step and the most important one as well. If you are

thinking of learning Go or starting your new career as a Go programmer, we advise you to start by reading the language documentation at this link.  It is very well written and it will guide you through the process.

First Impressions

One important attribute of Go that we noticed immediately was the  conciseness of the language. It is very concise, compact, full with  interesting behaviors as a matter of fact. For example, consider the following:

func uselessGreet() (String, Error) {    return “Hello, World!”, nil}

This tiny bit of code packs in itself:

• Conciseness,
• Strict static type checking,
• Defined return values,
• And multiple return values with provision for error.

Those features are already enough motivation for trying out a new language. But as we started converting our beloved JavaScript code into Go, we started discovering countless gems spread across this wonderful language ecosystem.

In a quick glance it may even seem that it isn’t much different from JavaScript or any other conventional procedural languages as it also contains variables, functions, conditionals such as if, else, for, switch blocks etc..But there lies something special: Go inherits best practices and patterns from a lot of  programming heritage and manifests them into a concise and fun language with a few idiosyncratic inventions of its own. 

A few of other goodies go offers are:

• Goroutines (look it up, it’s awesome),
• Type inference,
• Formatting and linting with additional tools,
• Small binaries,
• Really good packaging system etc.

And not to mention, maybe important of all, a really enthusiastic developer community and thriving, ever growing, ecosystem.

The worst and the best ideas

I must admit now that converting our beloved JavaScript code into Go was the worst idea ever. You ask why? Because Go is different with very different conventions than JavaScript. So we started re-designing the application in Go way. And that was the best idea.

This read is long, should I Go now?

Information Technology is changing very fast, we must keep up with the trends. But, do not get me wrong, I know it may not always be required for job security to keep up but to expand our horizon, to get a different perspective and to understand the world a little more, we should keep learning. 

Not to mention, if you already want to learn a new programming language, learn Go. If you are starting out, learn Go. 

Yes, you can Go now.

Common values

As we have talked to a number of people around the world, we have noticed there are many ways to interpret remote work. Therefore I see a need to clarify how we see remote work, how we work in this environment and how values play a key role in this. 

In this post I’ll go through what it means to be a remote company, why we hire only senior developers and a little bit about our position in Finnish software consultancy scene.  

Hearing our company name, Nordic nomads, one may imagine Viking-like people wandering around Scandinavia, picking berries and hunting deers. 

Well, the truth is actually somewhat more boring. We are ordinary software professionals who have homes, families and cats, for example. We all value work life balance and want to work in a company where we are among like-minded people.

Are we anti-office?

We are not against offices, it’s rather a matter of being able to choose freely. I would personally prefer to work in a nice office than from home. But to me, it’s more important that I don’t have to commute to an office everyday. Living in the backwoods of the Helsinki Metropolitan area with two kids also affects my thinking. Having said that, I do work at a coworking space from time to time when I need a change to the work environment. But that’s the key, the choice is mine.

The majority of work time of a software consultant is spent on customer projects. Back in the days it meant sitting at a customer’s office. Nowadays it usually means a hybrid working model: partly remote, partly on-site, depending on the customer.  If a software consultant is lucky enough to have either a customer site or own office nearby, commuting there is probably not a big deal. Either way, the consultant is actually working remotely either towards the customer or own company.   

We are all about flexibility and choice

We have chosen to be fully remote in our own company. It means we are not leasing any downtown office with amenities. In addition, it also means everything we do in our own company is done in a virtual environment and is accessible by anyone in the company. It does not mean we have to work from home. We can, if we want, work from a cowork space even five days a week. Our model does not even forbid you to go to the customer site. We are not dogmatic about working from home and we do what is the best for the project or our company. However, we do not accept 100% on-site projects because it is against our values. For practical reasons we aim for fully remote projects since our developers are around the world and we can not promise on-site presence. 

Our commitment to quality

Getting your first job as a software developer can be a daunting task. An old joke is that you have to be 25 years old with 15 years of experience in technology which emerged 10 years ago.  When we founded Nordic nomads, we gave a lot of thought to what kind of a company we wanted to be. We decided to hire only experienced developers and have set the limit of being experienced to 5 years of work experience.

Our reasoning is that in 5 years a developer has seen enough of their work life and knows whether a remote company is a good next step in their career. Another reason is that, as we are a new and still small company, we unfortunately can not offer good enough support for junior developers. And finally, since we are a remote company, we don’t want to be perceived as a cheap offshoring company. Quality is very important to us, that is why we have set our bar a bit higher. 

FOMO does not apply to us

At least in Finland the amount of software consultancy agencies has skyrocketed during the last years. Every company offers exciting projects, fancy offices and most exclusive coffee roasted from a sustainable source. We also like good coffee, but we have decided to not to have a static home base. Our strength lies in the fact that we can offer a Nordic workplace for practically every senior software professional in the world. We offer full-time employment that conforms to your local legislation (and taxes). You get a salary and accumulate vacation days even if you are not in a customer project. There is no fear of missing out on anything if you do not live in Finland. We are all equally remote and close to each other, regardless where we live.

Interested?

If you want to know more about us, please check our open positions here and let’s discuss more.

Nordic countries have a certain reputation. A reputation for such things as offering a good work-life balance, good healthcare, equality in the workplace and well, just for being a place where the world’s happiest people live. 

Nordic nomads was founded in Finland, which makes us indeed a Nordic company. Our home is here in Finland, or is it? We actually don’t have a single office anywhere so technically, all we can do is create a Nordic environment and a culture where Nordic values are present. 

Values 

In the Nordics, we are advocates for openness and transparency. We demand this of our government, our politicians and the companies we work for. We at Nordic nomads embrace this and share everything with all our employees and are transparent in everything we do. 

Be kind, compassionate and treat everyone equally and with respect. Treat others the way you want to be treated as they say. We live by these principles. We embrace differences. Since we operate on a global model and recruit people from all over the world, we automatically have a team of people with different backgrounds. We learn about new places, new cultures, foods and how people grow up and live in different parts of the world. Learning about new people, cultures and ways of thinking opens your mind and leads to personal development. 

Inclusion. This means two things to us. Yes, we don’t discriminate, we include everyone. But not just in our company, but in the growth of our company. We include everyone in all decisions we are making. Everything we are doing is openly discussed and we all have a say in how things are done. This also supports new ways of thinking, creativity and innovation and brings us all together.   

In Finland, we trust our institutions, our government, our friends and family and even strangers. Finns tend to be very honest people. We say what we mean and don’t have a hidden agenda. In Finland you can leave your phone on the desk of a coffee shop and trust that when you come back later, you will find the phone at the cashier. At Nordic nomads, we trust each other, we hold ourselves accountable and we always have our colleagues back.

Well-being 

Nordic countries offer a good work-life balance. We usually work 8-16 and most people don’t work evenings or weekends unless you’re working shifts. We want our employees to be motivated and charged and even demand our employees have a good work-life balance. The length of the work week varies by country and those variants apply to us. For example our work week in Finland is 37,5 hours and 35 hours in France. Yes, you can choose to work later some days and less on others but here you don’t get to work overtime. 

We want everyone to feel energized. We make sure we recharge during the work day and recharge during your free time. During the day we take breaks to discuss topics that are not related to work. We are not allowed to book back to back meetings, there always has to be a break in between so we can recharge. And we avoid meetings in general since we tend to do most of our communication asynchronously. But we have social calls where we just connect where we don’t talk about work related things. We also make it a requisite to take breaks to interact with people and start meeting by discussing non-work related issues. We want our employees to connect on a personal level. 

Healthcare

In Finland, we have great public healthcare but on top of that, we have mandatory occupational healthcare. Since this service cannot be offered in every country, we provide our employees  in other countries with premium health insurance. 

Vacations, holidays and time off 

Paid vacations vary a lot by country. In Finland, in our industry we get 25 paid vacation days per year. We offer the same 25 paid vacation days to everyone in our company. The amount of public holidays varies by country. At Nordic nomads public holidays are paid time off. Our employees are applicable to the public holidays your permanent country of residence offers. When our employees get sick, they take sick leave as needed. We also offer full family and birthing parent leaves.

Salary 

We believe in equal pay. Equal means it’s the same regardless of who you are or where you live or work from. The only thing that affects your salary is your experience and skills. Our salary levels are of IT companies operating in Finland. On top of your salary you are entitled to all of our benefits.  

Education 

Finland’s education system has been ranked as one of the best in the world if not the best. And what makes it different from many other countries, it’s free for all levels including universities. We believe in personal development and growth and want to do all we can to support our employee’s development. We offer our employees access to online courses, e-learning platforms and audiobooks so you can regularly update your technical skills and improve yourself.

Happiness 

Not to brag, but Finland has been ranked as the happiest country in the world. Four years in a row – a world record at that. Take that Sweden! No, really, we love our neighbor, there is no rivalry, really… But every time these polls are revealed, Finns joke about how that’s possible since we live in darkness half of the year and Finns are by stereotype very unemotional. But the truth is, Finland offers many things we sometimes take for granted like all of the things mentioned above. And while it is pretty dark during the winter months, the sun barely sets during the summer. We at Nordic nomads want to create an environment, a culture of these great Nordic values is present and offer our employees all over the world these same benefits.

Interested?

Take a look at our open positions here

Ramesh moved to Finland about 13 years ago to study computer science and engineering. “I wanted to experience something completely different and new and Finland felt exotic. The education system and culture appealed to me”.  “When I first arrived in Finland, I must admit it was a bit of a culture and environmental shock. The quietness and darkness kind of surprised me”. But it didn’t take long for Ramesh to get settled in. I learned to enjoy the peace and quiet Finland offered.

As a kid, I grew up in a place that never gets any snow so the climate in Finland was surprisingly new for me.” And soon Ramesh found himself doing what most Finns love to do. “I just love the sauna, I’d go four, even five or six times a week. I often visited public saunas, sauna boats, you name it. And I even like swimming in icy cold water like a lot of Finns do while enjoying a sauna. And I liked the work culture. People are kind and professional and I like the quality of life and work-life balance too”. 

After 13 years in Finland, it was time for a change. Ramesh gave away almost all of his possessions, packed his bag and moved to Nice, France. “I guess the biggest motivator was the weather. I’ll miss walking or riding my bike in the Finnish forests, but I won’t miss the cold or darkness of the winter. It’s late October now and I’m playing tennis outside and swimming in the warm Mediterranean sea. I would prefer walking in the forests of Espoo, but the warm blue Mediterranean sea and the gardens of the French Riviera are not bad options”. 

“However, moving to France was my second culture shock. In Finland, we are used to communicating digitally and most government, municipal and banking services are set up and operated digitally. Here, many processes are manual, a bit slower and require meeting people face to face. And there’s more bureaucracy compared to the nordics.” 

“But those are relatively small things. I really like the fact that there are lots of good restaurants to eat at and markets nearby where I can pick up fresh fruits and vegetables. Oh, and I just picked some olives from our backyard yesterday, not bad. I like the atmosphere here, it’s quite relaxed and I like that people spend time with their families. Public transportation is also quite cheap and a good way to get around”. 

Ramesh is an advocate for remote work. “It combines work and personal life in a good way. I believe it makes work more personal and people take more responsibility. I personally enjoy work a lot more when I can work from wherever I want. I love the fact that I don’t have to commute to an office in a fixed location and I feel everything in this setting raises my productivity since I have a lot less distractions.” 

Ramesh is a seasoned developer and a system architect. He’s worked as a freelancer, startup founder and a CTO. At the moment, Ramesh is working with one of the largest gaming companies in the world. “I look at things from a business perspective and I see the big picture easily. Quality is very important to me and I always try to find the best solution. I always try to see where I can add value. The biggest challenge I face in such projects is working with people in multiple time zones with many hours difference. In this setup communication and planning is the key. And of course flexibility.”

Want more information?

Senior hands-on architects, read more here.
Senior full-stack developers, read more here.

Ville, originally from Oulu, Finland, has lived in Shanghai for four years in total. He studied there for a year in 2012 and in 2018 he had a feeling he needed to see the world, so he decided to move back to Shanghai to learn the language and more about the culture. 

“Shanghai is different. Different in so many ways. I love the big city vibe, the culture, the people.” And the food culture, that is something that Ville enjoys also. “There is a good mix of Chinese and Western cuisine and so many places to choose from. We eat out quite often”.  Living in a city of close to 30 million people, the question of safety comes up at times, but Ville has a surprising answer. “Shanghai is a very safe city, one of the safest I’ve ever visited”. 

“My daily routines don’t differ so much from when I lived in Finland, I start my day here with a cup of coffee and then start working”. I enjoy working remotely because I can start my day early without having to commute to work first. I like the freedom and flexibility of not being tied down to a physical location. I feel more productive in this environment and since my free time starts when I close my laptop, there’s more of it. In my freetime I hang out with my friends and I also try to exercise 4-6 times a week to unwind and maintain a good physical and mental balance. A good work-life balance is important to me. I also like traveling outside of Shanghai, the nature is amazing here and it’s easily accessible due to the quality and reach of public transportation. 

Ville doesn’t plan on moving to Finland any time soon, but there are some things he misses – other than rye bread, which you can of course pick up from your nearest Ikea. “Although I really like living in Shanghai, I do miss Finland sometimes. Living in a big city, you sometimes miss the absolute silence and nature that only Lapland can offer. And being a true Finn, I of course miss the sauna. But I must admit, I really enjoy the “endless summers” of Shanghai, something that Finland unfortunately cannot offer”. 

Ville is currently working on an interesting mobile app project for a large well-known retail company in Japan. “I’ve worked in an international environment for years, I don’t even think about it that much anymore, it’s just how I’m used to working”. Current tools allow us to efficiently work with customers all over the world. 

Ville is an experienced web and mobile developer and architect. He has worked with such companies as Tiffany’s, Starbucks and Adidas and has knowledge especially in banking and B2C eCommerce sectors. Ville prides himself on writing quality code and always finding the best solution, not cutting corners. “I see myself as a good and transparent communicator. I’m pretty straight forward and I don’t like unnecessary bureaucracy. If I see something’s going in the wrong direction or could be done better, I’ll bring it forth. And I’m a team player, I always think about how we best work together and how we can improve collectively. I also try to look at the big picture, not just isolated tasks.”  

Want more information?

Senior hands-on architects, read more here.
Senior fullstack developer, read more here.