This Friday was my last day at Pelagicore (nowadays Luxoft Sweden), the company I’ve been working at for the last four years. While I maintain it was the right decision to leave, I will miss hanging out with the people there on a daily basis.

Working at Pelagicore

The people I have been working with at Pelagicore are kind, creative, highly skilled software engineers and most have a passion for open source. I will miss the random tech babble around the office, the many FIFA games where we’ve blamed the controllers, and the endless supply of helpful minds whenever my software/build/platform/computer didn’t work. Even though we had lots to do in our respective projects, there was always someone there to help out. It really tied the room together.

When I started at Pelagicore in 2014 it was my first job after graduating from university. In retrospect, the company feeling was very startup-y. We had insane amounts of LOKA cans delivered to the office every day, we had breakfast together, we programmed out on cafés, we did late night deliveries some times, and we did play lots of video games. I realize this could be any workplace, but I’m just painting my own mental image of the place. I can very much identify with being an employee at Pelagicore, I was happy to work there, and I felt at home. Compared to other companies in the car business, we did things differently, in a good way.

Working at Luxoft

In the fall of 2016, Pelagicore was acquired by Luxoft. One of the reasons I’m leaving is that I very much cannot identify with being an employee at Luxoft. Where Pelagicore was a rather small team of specialists, Luxoft is essentially a huge outsourcing company, with cheap engineers for rent.

Except for the fact that I can’t identify with Luxoft as a company, there has also been some changes related to the acquisition that has made my work less enjoyable, both administrative and practical, such as e-mail systems etc. The main benefit of the Luxoft acquisition in my opinion is the financial stability of a large corporation. Both for me as an employee, but also when it comes to being able to choose what projects to pursue. When that stability is utilised correctly, the former Pelagicore will be able to achieve great things. I really hope that happens, and I believe that PELUX is such a great thing, one that the car industry really needs.

If you believe in open source software and is interested in working with that in Gothenburg in an automotive setting, Luxoft is probably the place for you. Also, they are hiring!

Next up: HMS (not the ships)

Starting in May, I will work at HMS Industrial Networks in their office in Mölndal. They also do Yocto platforms, but more with custom hardware, and there will probably be a lot more C programming than what I’m used to, so that will be interesting for sure! The dude abides.

UPDATE 2018-05-20: I have started at HMS. I’m part of a team maintaining a Yocto platform, and doing bring-up of both internally developed hardware and other hardware that we’re working with. Pretty cool!