You have a long history with the Avinode Group — one that spans two continents! Can you share this story?

I started in 2007 in the Gothenburg office, where I was the first tester. I really enjoyed setting up the testing organisation there. After three years things were up and running and going quite well. Then Avinode acquired CharterX, which was a Portland-based competitor at the time. We were informed about this in a Powerpoint presentation at the Gothenburg office where it said they were looking to hire a software tester in Portland. I got interested and said to myself, “Well, why not?” I applied, got the job, and was supposed to be here just two years initially. But I’ve been here ever since. Portland is a special place.

And you recently took on a whole new position? 

Yes, this past June I changed my career quite drastically. I took a leap and interviewed for the position here as Product Owner after being a tester for Avinode for over 10 years. And I got the job! I’m learning a lot and I’m getting great support. And the fact that I know the products so well has been very useful during my trainee time.  

What motivated the leap? 

I felt I hit some kind of roof within software testing. I had reached how far I could develop in that kind of area and still stay with Schedaero and with Avinode. And I didn’t want to leave! Some people say, you know, “If you’ve been with the same company for more than 10 years it’s time to go.” But I still have so much fun here every day. I still feel I contribute so much and I just really wanted to stay. So even though I didn’t have any product management experience I wanted to give it a shot to see if I had the potential for it, and fortunately so did Schedaero. 

All this time, Schedaero has been evolving and changing a lot as well. Can you tell us some of its history? 

When I first joined the Schedaero team in Portland the team was only 6 people. Schedaero was a pretty new product so there was a lot to do especially as a tester. I joined them because of a very special spirit among the developers, which was so enthusiastic and ambitious and full of possibility. 

And now we have a team that is almost 4x the size and I still have the same feeling. Even though we’re so many more people we still have this feeling that everyone really cares about what’s happening. It’s not just programmers working through tasks, everyone is really involved in making Schedaero something excellent that really works for operators.