Decoding the Consultant Life: Real stories from real consultants
Olli Alm, Senior Software Engineer, about working for our customer Smartvatten
I am Perttu Pakkanen and my interest as Codento’s talent acquisition lead is to better articulate why consulting could be a great career choice.
When potential customers ponder whether they should use our services, they usually like to see some reference cases. Why wouldn’t our potential employees think the same?
So, I had a chat with our Senior Software Engineer, Olli Alm. Olli has been working with our customer Smartvatten for their water efficiency technology. They are leading experts in the field in Northern Europe, helping their customers save hundreds of millions of liters of water every year.
I asked Olli to sit down with me in our office’s meeting room on a Tuesday afternoon. The weather outside was a bit rainy and dim, but it didn’t slow us down.
Here we go:
What kind of solution have you built?
I’ve worked on building a system for leakage monitoring and water consumption measurement, utilizing GCP infrastructure.
The client’s system is a water metering solution with two main functionalities: measuring water consumption and sending alerts, for example, in the case of leaks. What makes this particularly interesting is that it’s an IoT system, which means we’re constantly also dealing with hardware solutions and how they indirectly influence the larger system.
What I find fascinating is the challenge of keeping the whole system cohesive and building a unified architecture. In the IoT world, there’s an abundance of real-time data coming in from various countries and time zones, which raises unique challenges like efficiency, data accuracy, and synchronization.
The solution indeed seems like a unique one. What kind of tasks have you done in the project?
My work has been primarily focused on data-oriented back-end development, though I’ve also contributed to some front-end work.
On the social side, I interact daily with the client across multiple levels, including product owners, the CTO, and a smaller stakeholder team. The collaboration has been so close that I can confidently say that we have a good sense of trust with the client.
I’ve also been heavily involved in architectural work, which has been both challenging and rewarding.
Why I’ve enjoyed this project: The relationship with the client is very good and straightforward. There’s no unjustified pressure, communication is easy, and mutual trust makes it a pleasant working environment. I feel like an important part of the project and can see the impact of my work.
Those are good qualities in a working environment. What has been the most interesting thing you have done working for the customer?
One highlight has been working with time-series data and developing robust data pipelines. I also enjoyed contributing to the overall system architecture to make it more stable and efficient. Both aspects required creative problem-solving and provided a lot of professional growth.
What brings enthusiasm to your workdays?
There’s a constant but manageable level of pressure, which keeps things exciting without being overwhelming. Every day brings new and unexpected challenges – there’s always something fresh to tackle, which ensures I never get bored.
My days are usually quite busy, with a mix of maintenance tasks and new development work. The diversity of tasks keeps things engaging. Occasionally, there are urgent issues that require immediate attention, but that’s part of the fun.
Over time, I’ve learned so much that I can now work far more efficiently. It’s rewarding to see how much I’ve grown professionally through this experience.
What has been the most difficult part?
In general, learning to deal with uncertainty has been a big takeaway for me. It’s something I’ve improved at significantly during my time as a consultant.
A reflection on consulting: Consulting is like a marathon. Building a strong trust relationship with a client over the years allows the work to flow more smoothly. But occasionally, you’re faced with tough problems that take time to solve. The longer you work with the same client, the more efficient and effective you become.
What have you learned?
Working on a small team means the range of tasks I’ve handled has been extremely broad – from building infrastructure to fixing UI bugs. This has helped me develop a wide skill set.
Over the past three years, I’ve worked with Google Cloud Platform every single day, which has allowed me to deepen my expertise significantly. I’ve also refined my skills in routines, documentation, code quality, best practices, and multitasking, often juggling multiple responsibilities simultaneously.
It’s hard to point to one specific thing I’ve learned because the experience has been so comprehensive. However, I’d highlight Clojure as an interesting element – it’s something I’ve enjoyed exploring and using in this project.
That’s a lot of learning! Any last words to wrap things up?
In this project, my tasks have been very self-guided, which is a typical aspect of working on a small team. I appreciate the responsibility that comes with the role and enjoy the freedom to make my own decisions. This autonomy enhances my sense of self-efficacy and allows me to express my capabilities fully.
Codento fosters a professional environment with a strong emphasis on trust and responsibility, allowing me to thrive and deliver quality results in my daily work.
(We then continued to talk about different stuff not related to the subject per se and ended up using almost an hour for this. This was a great talk and I also learned a lot.)
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Being part of pioneering projects like this allows for both personal and professional development. I strongly feel that at Codento you can engage in work that is not only challenging but also highly impactful in many industries.
Read more about us from our career site and see if there are any suitable opportunities for you!
About the interviewee:
Olli Alm is a Senior Software Engineer at Codento. He has 20 years of experience in different software development and architecture positions as well as teaching and research.
About the interviewer:
Perttu Pakkanen is responsible for talent acquisition at Codento. Perttu wants to make sure that the employees enjoy themselves at Codento because it makes his job much easier.
