Feeling small and cozy – while being big and capable

About two months ago I started my new Cloud journey in a company that has grown - and grows - very fast. Initially I had an image of a small, nimble and modern company inside my head - and it was a surprise to realize that Solita has 1500+ employees nowadays. But has it become a massive ocean-going ship, too big to steer swiftly? A corporation slowly suffocating all creativity and culture?

Fortunately not. As our CEO Ossi Lindroos said (adapting / quoting some successful US growth company) in our starter bootcamp day:

“One day we will be a serious and proper company – but that day is not today!”

Surely, Ossi is not saying that we should not take business seriously and responsibly at all. Or that we should not act like a proper company when it comes to capabilities towards customers – or ability to take care of our own people. We do act responsibly and take our customers and our people seriously. But instead the idea – as I interpret it – is that we have that caring small community feel even when growing fast – and we want to preserve it no matter how big we grow.

Can a company with good vibrations preserve the essentials when it grows?

Preserving good vibrations

Based on my first weeks I feel that Solita has been able to maintain low hierarchy, open culture with brave and direct communication, not to forget autonomous and self-driven teams, people and communities. Like many smaller companies inside a big one, but sharing an identity without siloing too much. Diversity with unity.

I started in Solita Cloud business unit and the first thoughts are really positive. Work is done naturally crossing team or unit boundaries. Teams are not based on single domain expertise, but instead could act as self-preserved cells if required. Everyone is really helpful and welcoming. Company daily life and culture is running on Slack – and there you can easily find help and support without even knowing the people yet. And you get to know people on some level even without meeting them: that guy likes daily haikus, that girl listens to metal music etc.

“One day we will be a serious and proper company – but that day is not today!”

Petrus Enjoying Good Vibrations

Some extra muscle

And size is not all about downsides. Having some extra muscle enables things like getting a proper, well-thought induction and onboarding to new people that starts even before the first day with prepackaged online self-learning – and continues with intensive bootcamp days and self-paced, but comprehensive to-do-lists, that give a feeling that someone has put real effort on planning all this. Working tools are cutting-edge, whether choosing your devices and accessories or using your cloud observability system.  And there is room for the little bonus things as well, such as company laptop stickers, caps, backpacks and different kind of funny t-shirts. Not to mention all the health, commuting and childcare benefits.

And for customers, having some extra muscle means being a one-stop shop yet future-proof at the same time. Whether the needs are about leveraging data or designing and developing something new, or about the cloud which enables all this, customer can trust us. Now and tomorrow. Having that small community feeling and good vibrations ensures that we’ll have brilliant, motivated and healthy people helping our customers in the future as well.

Culture enables personal growth

And when the culture is supporting and enabling, one can grow fast. A while ago, I used to be a rapid-fire powerpoint guy waving hands like windmills – and now I’m doing (apologies for the jargon) Customer deployments into the Cloud using Infrastructure-as-Code, version control and CI/CD pipelines – knowing that I have all the support I need, whether from the low-threshold and friendly chat community of a nimble company, or a highly productized runbooks and knowledge bases of a serious and proper company. Nice.

Now, it’s time to enjoy some summer vacation with the kids. Have a great summertime you all, whether feeling small and cozy or big and capable!