Driving change in a fast-moving industry

What motivated you to join Spirii?

Spirii caught my eye pretty quickly. The vision of the company and the general vibe I got from everyone that I talked to at Spirii made me really want to work there.
Everyone I’ve talked to is passionate and talented, while still being laid back. I quickly got a sense that the culture in the company was something I’d fit right into, with a great focus on people while still being ambitious about getting a lot done in the EV space.

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What’s been different from what you expected?

I was honestly a bit surprised at how people-focused and stress-free Spirii is. I knew there would be afocus on everyone not stressing, but I didn’t expect the vibes here to be this great. We get a lot of work done, but if someone needs to step out during the day or take an hour or two in the morning, then no-one bats an eye. The work-life balance is great (though I need to get better at managing my own balance, but that’s not on Spirii!).

What made you feel you’d made the right choice?

I tried (and failed) to take in the huge, complex network of stuff that is EV charging. I was told on day one by my manager: “I don’t expect you to be productive soon. Don’t stress about it”, which really helped me relax and focus. I still took it as a challenge that I would contribute something in the first week, which turned out to be what I think was a pretty small improvement to the Spirii platform. The reception I got from that and the kudos for already doing something in week one were amazing – lots of support from everyone around me!
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What do you find exciting about the industry?

I’m generally pretty climate-focused and I think the world needs to get on board with electric mobility ASAP. This in combination with solving a real problem people have and making it easy and simple to charge made Spirii a natural choice.

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What are you most looking forward to working on?

Lots of things! Since I’m in the engineering part of the company, there is an infinite list of ways I want to improve the reliability of almost all of our software systems.
The EV industry is by nature messy and complicated, but I see a lot of ways we can simplify things and make our systems resilient so customers can easily use the Spirii platform without ever seeing a “Something went wrong” message.
The great thing about Spirii is that if you’re motivated and want to drive things, then it’s easy to change things around you for the better!

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Spirii in three words?

Kind, relaxed, and also hectic (in the best way).

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Favourite thing about the office so far?

The amazing colleagues! (And the snacks – I eat too many in the office. Someone make me stop, they’re too good.)

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What does a great workday look like for you?

I usually get up early and focus from home before hitting the office. So a great workday consists of investigating/designing/defining system changes or features from home for a few hours and then biking to the office in the sun to meet up with the team.

I look forward to saying hi to colleagues and syncing up with the team when I get to Nørrebro, where we figure out what everyone is working on, discuss any concerns or questions, align with the other teams and talk about the cool things they’re building. Then everyone gets to work, and we produce some amazing software together (interrupted by a great lunch)! Lots of hanging out, talking, socialising and building really cool things.
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What's something you want to learn this year?

I generally want to really dig into and understand what it actually means to “charge a vehicle” end-to-end. Charging infrastructure is surprisingly complex and super interesting!

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What counts as a win, and how do you celebrate it?

We’re actually doing this pretty regularly! Given the team’s responsibilities and how far-reaching our changes are (they affect the revenue of the entire company), we release and change how Spirii’s finance flows work quite often. So lots of wins!
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I try to make sure that we celebrate finished projects by showing them off at internal presentations, both for awareness and to show “hey look, we made something really cool!”.

Within the team, we also make sure to slow down after a finished project and take a breather before tackling the next big thing. Team demos also make it fun to show off what you’re working on and get feedback and kudos.

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What would make you proud a year from now?

Very nerdy and day-to-day specific, but: “we have invoiced every single charging session for customers in the last year fully correctly down to the cent/watt”. The EV charging world is messy, chargers and charging infrastructure behave strangely and lots of different entities need to be paid/invoiced along the way to charge a vehicle, but I’m confident we can get there. Closely followed by “your team is the happiest team at Spirii!”.

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What's one thing people are often surprised to learn about you?

That’s a hard question! I think people are surprised to learn how many raves I go to (hard techno is the best!).
On the more work-y side, I think some people get the impression that I’m more opinionated and less pragmatic than I actually am. My mantra is “strong opinions held loosely”, which I think fits Spirii well. There’s constant change - both at Spirii and in the EV industry generally - and having a strong stance on how problems should be solved is important to ensure a good direction for the future. But we also shouldn’t make it more difficult to follow change and adapt than it has to be!
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