I met my first work colleague in Finland F2F for the first time
418 words (~3 mins read)
April 2021. I had just moved to Finland after getting a consultant job at Netlight. My first day at my new job was also the first day working for my client Fortum. I was hired as a Java backend engineer. New job, new client, new home, new country… and remember that this was in the middle of the Covid pandemic! 😅
Fortunately, there was another Netlight consultant in the same client and project, who had been there for quite a while already. Juho provided invaluable support as I got to gripes with the new environment, easing my mind on the stuff I didn’t know or fully understand, while encouraging me on the stuff that I did get right. And looking back, 5 years ago my hard skills were quite lacking: I was decent at programming in Java and Python, but my Spring Boot and Git skills were mediocre, and I had no clue about RabbitMQ, AWS, or even Docker, all of which were heavily used in that project. Juho left Netlight just 2 months after I joined, and we never had the chance of meeting in person due to the pandemic, but even that short time together was important for me to adapt to a project where I stayed for almost 2 years.
Fast-forward to today. A bit over a month ago I was looking for a new job, and one of my interview processes with a certain company progressed quite well. I did my due diligence with the LinkedIn filters and it turned out that Juho had worked at that same company some years back! I reached out to him and asked about his experience. He kindly answered back, I thanked him, and asked him if he’d be up for a lunch sometime to catch up. We did indeed meet up: today we had lunch at a nice Thai restaurant. This turned out to be the very first time that I personally met my “first colleague in Finland”… 5 years after we worked together! 😂
Whenever I feel like networking is intimidating, I remind myself that reaching out doesn’t need to be awkward or complicated. Be genuine, and life will open up opportunities naturally. Some of these events will turn into funny anecdotes, like mine. 😁 Also, there’s not enough gratitude in our world. You can never thank enough. I made sure I told Juho how much I appreciated his support, even after all these years. Everyone (including you) will feel better if you’re grateful, I promise!
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