Meet our People of Solita. We have employees in different locations with different skills and backgrounds – each with a story to share about what they do and what inspires them.
This is Anahit, our Lead Cloud Software Engineer and AWS Data Hero.
I like learning and helping others to learn
Constant learning is the thing that makes me thrive at work. If you become too comfortable and stay stagnant in this industry, you actually start going backwards. That’s how quickly the industry develops.
I’ve had the opportunity to learn a lot during my 11 years at Solita. Sometimes people wonder why I’m still working for the same company, but I don’t see any reason to change jobs since I’ve had such a wide variety of projects and my role has changed and evolved during the years. I have never been limited to any one silo or unit but was given an opportunity to collaborate with people all around the company. This opens up a lot of opportunities, enabling various learning and development paths.
I started at Solita as a full-stack developer over 11 years ago, working mostly with monolithic on-prem software. Several years ago, I got interested in cloud computing and AWS and started taking courses to learn about this, at that point still new and somewhat unfamiliar technology. Since then, I have completely moved to the cloud and didn’t ever look back. In my work, I’ve been focusing heavily on cloud-based event-driven architecture, Serverless, and data services on AWS.
In recent years, I’ve got truly passionate about sharing what I learn with the community. I had the pleasure of speaking at multiple local and international events and have been a guest on various podcasts. I have also been blogging about AWS and the things I work with. Last year I became a part of the AWS Community Builders program, which opened up even more opportunities for learning and giving back to the community. All these led to the exceptional honor of being recognised as the first AWS Data Hero in Finland.
It’s been really rewarding to share knowledge and help others learn from my experience. Solita has been very supportive along the way, and I’ve been able to integrate all these into my day-to-day work.
In my experience, Solita is encouraging people to learn and grow. I’ve always felt that there is time and space to try new things and explore, and never came across the kind of mentality that we should only focus on recognising revenue. Even though Solita offers support and guidance as well, I’ve enjoyed the freedom of leading my own career development, attending courses, and doing certifications at my own pace.
Beautiful code and architecture bring me joy
I appreciate beauty, be it in nature, art, or work. Clear and beautiful code and architecture bring me joy. There is a little bit of minimalist in me, and it comes through in the things I work on. It’s important for me to aim for excellent quality and improve the solutions that we are building. I like to think that I leave things in a better shape than they were before I touched them.
I’ve been working with the Finnish public broadcaster, Yle, for the past few years. I’m a part of their data team, collaborating with professionals from many different companies. It’s been exciting to work and learn together! Our tram’s goal has been to help to improve Yle’s digital services, including Yle Areena, the leading streaming service in Finland that is more popular here than Netflix. With the help of data and machine learning algorithms, Yle aims to provide a more diverse and personalised experience for each user and create better, more meaningful content. In a nutshell, the goal is to provide better services to the entire Finnish population. I personally find that very motivating.
I’ve experienced a strong sense of belonging
I’ve also had some beautiful moments with my fellow colleagues from Solita. Like when, some years back, we went to Las Vegas together to participate in one of the biggest AWS conferences in the world. Since I had mostly been working at the customer’s premises, I didn’t get to see my colleagues as often as I used to. But I remember the instant sense of belonging during that trip. It felt nice and warm, being part of this community. It’s the many moments like this that have shaped the past 11 years for me.
It’s a nice feeling to know that even if you don’t interact with your colleagues daily, or even weekly, they are always there for you. Kind of like good friends, you can count on them and always reach out to them if you need help or support. I think that’s something very special.
Anahit Pogosova is a Lead Cloud Software Engineer in our Development Community. We are looking for new talented co-workers. Join Anahit and our Solita Community; check our open positions here!