One day at Headquarter

Today is my officially first day at /// to do my research there. Actually I have already engaged for around 6 weeks by now with this work, but I sit at W@KTH lab as we still waited for G, our manager at /// that also my research supervisor, to prepare everything for us at ///'s office. So there in the morning, I came to one of the ///’s offices building around Kista. This actually the area of /// head quarter. I have been there before, couple weeks ago, when we were introduced by J, our teacher at KTH that also supervise my research, to G. Uhm, before I make you confuse, we are actually quite lucky as we have 2 supervisors, the first is J, the academic supervisor, and G, the industrial supervisor.

According to G, currently more than half of their employees are at Kista, while the other spread around several offices in Sweden, mainly for R&D. That number actually represents almost of 5-10% of Swedish population. That’s awesome right? I remember one of my friends told that working at /// is already like military office, since almost every one who ever live in Sweden, might probably ever work or at least with something relate to ///. That is amazing.  I call it nationalism :D

So, back to ///, G sit quite long with us. He explained a lot about the company organization structure at headquarter, the culture and people interaction, written and on spoken rule, etc. The unit where I am doing my research is actually quite nice; as the environment is very cozy, remind me to the pictures of google’s office.  According to G, there is no permanent working desk in there, so every body is expected to dynamically and have freedom to choose where ever the work desk they want to. This is quite smart, I think, as their works relate to market and business strategy, where there are nothing such constant elements there. The company (and of course the people behind it) is expected to react fast and flexible on facing changes in the environment. And seems the system works nicely to manage that large amount of resources, as we can see /// actually is currently among the biggest players in the battle field.

So, after long discussion, G gave each of us one of new laptop and explains how to use it. The security mechanism is quite complicated, as we need to type twice authentifications, first before the booting process, and second is the usual authentication before entering the user account at the OS. I’ve never seen the first one actually, so amazing until then I could not make my password work there *phew. So confuse while talking to the guy in support centre, until a lady that also was sitting in the area came to us and asked if there was something she can help. That was amazing and reminding me how nice people there and willing to help. This was actually typical Swedes interaction, where they seems to look like so indifferent, but that is wrong. Swedes actually are very nice, so nice that they do not want to disturb you. I have crosses some European countries, and to be honest I can conclude that thing. 

At that time, I remembered what my friend told me: “By the way, I've seen that you are joining /// for your master thesis. Congrats! I am finishing my master thesis here and I am starting working now in March. You'll see that there is no place better :)” And Yes, I can see it from since the first second I entered their building, or even since the first second when I worked with C, my previous supervisor at /// Indonesia couple years ago, and repeated again when working with G now. During that day, we was approached by couple people, said hej, had small talk about what we are doing and is our research about. G also introduced us to the top-level manager guys. And one thing I have to say and keep remember about working in Sweden is, you cannot separate who is the Boss just to see or have small talk to them. Most people dress and act very casual, and then to interact in informal way. That is actually another typical of working environment in Sweden, the country that love so much their social democrat principles in every aspects of live.

Back to my new dynamic office, so I picked a corner in the public area there, together with other colleagues that also doing research in peer with me. As G told, we do not need to bring our laptop charger later, as the laptop chargers and LAN cables are already installed around the area, so basically just choose where do you want to sit, connect, and work. Great. And It is not Swedish office if there is no coffee machine, so there is also cozy kitchen, where we can freely take whatever drink we want, coffee, cappuccino, chocolate, etc. The only minus was, there are no free fruits like in our lab at W@KTH :D But, what can you expect, everything is awesome. Inside the building, there is also restaurant for employee at that building. The food quite cheap actually compare to the restaurant at Kista galleria. According to my friend, the food porsion is quite a lot, as we can take what ever portion we want with price for 60 – 65 kr. Well, this is actually cheaper rather than Forum building’s restaurant or Electrum building’s restaurant, 2 of the building at KTH Kista campus, but that is because we can buy student coupon, so there is discount for around 15 kr. So, overall, I like the restaurant as well, and the foods are quite diverse, even they served kind of curry at that noon.

So, that are all my experiences at my first day at /// headquarter for my research. Hopefully everything will run well according to plan as I do not want to be disappointed person. Insyaallah. 

And here some of the pictures I have taken during my time in the office.. yes, waited until everybody went home, I don't want to be seen as weird guys there :>