All good things must come to an end, and so does my time here in Denmark. I arrived here in the middle of the pandemic in September 2020, and after living close to four years in one of the most happiest countries in the world, I am now heading back home.
I want to share here my thoughts about what this experience has taught me, both professionally and personally.
1. Small is beautiful
Prior to coming to Denmark, my professional experience was mostly spent working on big corporate projects. During my time at IBM, I worked for clients that were some of the biggest companies in France & Europe. These projects usually involved hundreds of people (on different levels of course), and were generally pretty top-down and quite slow to implement.
Fast-forward to right now : the team I belong consists of 6 people, and our responsibilities go from developing the internal back-office website used by dozens of agents everyday (built with React), to designing and implementing all the backend services that our client apps use with millions of users yearly (mostly Rest APIs written in Java & Kotlin), and even provisioning the servers, performing database maintenance and upgrades, setting up and maintaining CI/CD pipelines (we have no DevOps nor Ops team), etc.
And yet, I have never seen a team as productive as ours. I think the secret lies in the combination of 2 things :
- We have full responsibility over the whole software development chain, from technical design to operations, which means we can only rely on ourselves
- We are a small team of very capable engineers (I forgot to wear my modesty suit today)
I insist on the “small” part, because in my opinion, this can only work because we are indeed small. Being only a few individuals can be challenging at times, but it means we all have to be proficient with all the technologies of the stack(s), and we all have to get along very well and know how to work well together. It can make recruiting difficult though, because we’re in need of engineers that are very autonomous, full of initiative
2. Business is business
I’ve had the chance to work in 2 really great companies here in Copenhagen. Both were relatively small companies (25 - 80 employees), with truly great camaraderie. I’m lucky to be able to say that I have made friends among coworkers, and have never had anything bad to say about my direct superiors.
But there’s always a but. In both these companies, business decisions were made which led to some coworkers loosing their job. Despite the apparent friendliness of workplaces, privately-owned companies will always prioritize money over people. This is a lesson I will remember: no matter how great the work & workplace is, one’s future is never guaranteed.
3. France has a huge problem of “presenteeism”
I still remember that in one of my first weeks working at IBM in Paris as an apprentice on a 35 weekly hours contract, some senior coworker told me as I was leaving the office at 17:30 : “Did you take the afternoon off ?“. In France, one does not simply go home when the job is done. As stupid as it sounds, it is frowned upon to leave the office before a certain time (which vary depending on the companies).
In Denmark it is almost the exact opposite! In my first job here, I was working extra hours in the beginning to show my motivation and seriousness. That made my colleagues start worrying about me, because I was always the last one leaving the office. I then learnt that motivation and seriousness were not measured by the amount of time spent in office, but rather by quality of work. How odd?
4. It’s a hard thing being an immigrant
Immigration is a hot topic these days, everywhere in Europe. As a matter of fact, I have been an immigrant for almost four years. I certainly don’t mean to compare my personal situation to immigrants that are leaving their country because of war, starvation, persecution or any other atrocity. I left my country with a good situation, having a proficient english level as well as a master’s degree in a highly requested field. Yet, I remain an immigrant still, and I have faced challenges that all immigrants face.
Arriving in a new country, as close as Denmark can be to France, always mean adapting to new customs, a new language, different cultural references, and so on … It can feel lonely sometimes, being away from friends and family, and it’s really hard to make friends when you don’t speak the language well enough.
When I moved to Denmark, I told myself I would not actively look into meeting fellow french people, because I truly wanted to integrate. 4 years later, at least 50% of my friends here are french. It’s a strange thing really, it just so happened to be like that, without me realizing or even wanting to get close with other people from France or french-speaking country.
Something to keep in mind when criticizing communitarianism.
To conclude
I’ve had a blast living in Denmark for the past 4 years. I met some amazing people who I wish to stay close to. I’ve had incredible work experiences. I’ve travelled and discovered Scandinavia a lot, probably more than the average Scandinavian!
Now is time for a new chapter of life. Excited to see what’s next and to keep learning and growing as a human 🌱