Summer in Solutions 2024 – On the Learning Path with QA and Cloud Engineer Trainees

This summer, we had the privilege of peeking into the journeys of two admirable trainees: Miko, a Cloud Engineer trainee, and Ilya, a Quality Assurance trainee. Both share their experiences, shedding light on the rich learning culture at Visma Solutions.

Q: First, to introduce yourself, tell a random fact about yourself

Miko: I always keep three things in mind: Aviate, navigate, and communicate.

Ilya: I like to be involved in different projects and volunteering outside of work. I enjoy it and am lucky enough to do some of those with friends, which blurs the concept of free time for me. When I have free time and don’t study, however, I try to catch up with friends.

Q: What drew you to Visma Solutions, and what led you to your current position?

Miko: The interest in joining came from my friends working at Visma Solutions and also Solutions’ good partnership with student organisations. Good attitude towards students and the Solutions ability to offer a great learning platform for new upcoming IT experts.
I didn’t choose Visma’s Summer trainee program, the program chose me. 🙂

Ilya: For me, it started with an application, it already hinted at the company’s character but I couldn’t tell if I would prefer Visma Solutions over other places. What made the difference was the interview with the hiring team. It was easy-going with lots of laughter and informative answers that made me think this was a good choice for the traineeship.

In a team of excellent senior experts, there isn’t a single workday when I don’t learn at least a thing or two, sometimes almost by mistake.

Q: Can you share a bit about your study background?

Miko: I’m three years into my Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering at LUT University, with additional self-studies focused on infrastructure and cloud technologies.

Ilya: I’ve just finished my Bachelor’s in Data Science at Aalto, now continuing into Computer Science Master’s.

Q: Describe your position and daily tasks at Visma Solutions.

Miko: As a Cloud Engineer trainee in the Lappeenranta office, I work with the infrastructure team on the Netvisor product which is responsible for developing, maintaining, and monitoring the infrastructure needed with the Netvisor product and product development.

My workday begins with my arrival at the office at 7:30, followed by a review of the previous day’s tasks, a team meeting, lunch, and concludes with focused work and meetings scattered throughout the day. My work is pretty self-organised but during the trainee period, I’m often in touch with my mentor who guides me through harder tasks and teaches me company and team guidelines. The actual work consists of different kinds of tasks considering our infrastructure and cloud environments. One example of my tasks could be implementing our existing cloud infrastructure with IaC-technologies. (IaC = Infrastructure as Code)

Ilya: I’m a quality assurance trainee working from our Tripla office in Helsinki. My main task is to develop a test automation framework for our mobile app from scratch, collaborating closely with the mobile development and other teams.

Every morning, another QA trainee and I attend a brief meeting with the mobile development team to discuss our progress, address challenges, and, if time permits, share other news not related to our official tasks. The bulk of a QA trainee’s work is development of the test automation framework. It goes far beyond writing tests, and includes work with CI/CD (Continuous integration and deployment), automated reporting, test automation tools, determining testing strategies and a lot of communication with colleagues from testing, development, infrastructure, architecture and management teams.

Then there are occasional trips to Lappeenranta, company- and group-wide calls and presentations, coffee breaks and chatting with colleagues, and, of course, lunch. 🙂

Q: How has your trainee period matched your expectations?

Miko: My expectations were pretty much aligned with the reality here. The level of freedom and self-organisation in my work was a pleasant surprise.

Ilya: My initial expectations were quite broad, focusing on the practical aspects of my role, team dynamics, and traineeship objectives, and the reality has aligned with these expectations. What did surprise me, were areas not directly related to my main tasks. To mention just a few of the nice things: colleagues are just great, very welcoming, and generous with their time, there are regular team building events for different levels of Visma Solutions which I believe is extremely important for a large company such as Visma Solutions, and the office is quite comfortable and pleasant to work in.

Q: What has been the highlight of your trainee experience?

Miko: Hands down, the amount of new things I have learned during the trainee period. In a team of excellent senior experts, there isn’t a single workday when I don’t learn at least a thing or two, sometimes almost by mistake. The greatest power of a software company is the people and Solutions certainly has that power.

Ilya: My colleagues. They make all the difference, helping me to learn and making office hours fun (and I’m an avid office-goer).

Visma Solutions on Suomen johtava pilvipalveluiden toimittaja. Ratkaisujamme käyttää kansainvälisesti jo yli 170 000 yritystä. Missiomme on auttaa suomalaisia yrityksiä olemaan kilpailukykyisiä.