Just a couple of months into their Hemnet journey, we took the opportunity to have a chat with Aleksandra Safranko and Emil Ståhl Myllyaho, our latest Mentorship program additions. Aleksandra and Emil are working in one of our product teams - Team Payments, where they each work with a mentor, Joel Junström and Karl Johansson. 

Read more about their first impressions of Hemnet and what they are working on. 

Tell us about the program!

Aleksandra - The setup is up to me and my mentor, we were looking for a balance between working on real code and tickets vs learning a new language and framework. Every month we create a realistic learning plan with material and concepts that my mentor feels are needed at that point of my journey. I feel very privileged to have such support.
Emil - It works really well, it's a luxury having a dedicated mentor with whom I can customize a way of learning that suits me, totally adapted to my needs. We also set goals in relation to that program and my growth. This is the first role where I got thrown into reality working with production code and real tasks.

What's your background in development?

Aleksandra - I started with Technigo bootcamp, after which I did self-learning while looking for a job or an internship.
Emil - I’m self-taught and started my first course 2 years ago. One year ago I did an internship at a company where I got to use the foundations in a junior role.

Why did you apply to the Mentorship program?

Emil - I looked for a place where I could take my developer role to the next level. I wanted to learn more and develop myself. I also wanted a mentor to help me take the entire thought process, mindset and work to the next level. 

Aleksandra - The main reason for me was support from a senior developer, I feel there is a big gap between the knowledge you gain through school and what is really necessary when working in a company on real production code. I met some of the Hemnet staff at Women in Tech and that is how I found out about the Hemnet mentorship program. I also went to a meetup at Hemnet and liked the culture and people so when the mentorship program opened up I had no doubt about applying.

Why Hemnet?

Everyone knows and loves Hemnet, and we both felt like the culture seemed great. In the community Stockholm Ruby, several people wrote about Hemnet (even though they didn't work here) and said good things about Hemnet. 

What kind of project are you working on?

We're working with team payments, optimizing payments for all our stakeholders. We’re also supporting all our teams with payments. It's a big step stepping into a big code base and being able to contribute to it. You will feel at home in the big base earlier than if you play in a test environment. We’re starting from the basics and leveling up. Mostly UI tasks so far, the database tickets are a bit far away for us right now, but in time we will get there. It's still really scary merging code to production, I don't know if that will go away.

What is your first impression of Hemnet?

The culture is exactly what I read about in the ads and on the career page, both the people and working with development are exactly what I expected. Our first time has been filled with a lot of activities and meetings, and new learnings. For junior developers, this is an amazing opportunity. Almost all companies have a requirement for the candidates to have 3 years of education. One unique thing is that Hemnet did not disregard people based on fixed terms, they looked at the person. The recruitment process was really personalized, from what we knew, our background, and what we wanted to achieve, to the customized program, and what we wanted and needed to learn. 

What is the best part about working at Hemnet?

The culture is really special here. You feel very welcome and supported, that is amazing. The mentorship program is a really nice initiative. We want to give kudos to our mentors, they are taking this really seriously and they are really good developers and mentors. They are open and flexible, don't mind adapting to us and vice versa. Karl and Joel are amazing, giving us help and explanations whenever we ask pretty much immediately. And everyone just makes us feel accepted and part of the team. Also, Mary is the nicest manager, very supportive and easy to communicate with. I think more companies should do mentorship programs, it’s really valuable. It’s also important with a good match between mentor and mentee. 

It’s amazing how engaged people are, warm hearted, care about us and our background, cross team and at Hemnet in general people are so welcoming. It’s really amazing how this is exactly up to my expectations, both the program, mentors, tasks, culture and people.