A man has to make a living somehow!
I'm lucky enough to do what I love for a living! I write software for Teleperformance.
I'm directly involved in designing, writing and deploying the software I build, and so far I've enjoyed unrivaled autonomy. I guess I'll keep my autonomy as long as I keep the results coming.
Under the Software section you can find a part about TPAlert, which is the project I'm currently doing at work as of July 2010. I think I'll leave it to that section to go into details about what I'm doing at the moment.
The past
Before I started signing my e-mails with "Software Innovator" I was a Technical Mentor assisting technical agents in their daily work. My specialty was notebook computers with their related software, and I received comprehensive training in Windows 7 even before it was released.
I enjoyed being a technical mentor, but I always felt I could do more. There are so many manual tasks at the company that could be a lot more effective if automated, and that's why I jumped at the chance to do so!
Even earlier in my career in the company I was an "Assisted e-support agent", answering technical questions from end-users via e-mail. The company also does chat support, but that has not caught on so well in the Nordics yet, so we didn't do that while I was there.
What I enjoyed the most about being an e-mail agent was the opportunity to take my time and write a good and proper answer to the customer. Doing the research needed, and putting in the work required, so that each and every answer was something to be proud of.
Before my days as an e-mail agent I was a phone agent, where we simply did not have the time to do that kind of heavy research. The answers had to be good, but more importantly they had to be fast.
Sure, focus is always on quality above quantity, because if the answer is poor the customer will just call in again, but you can't research things for 10-15 minutes with a customer on the line; It's just not polite!
Distant past
In my former life, as I refer to the time before I joined the company, I had a lot of diverse experience.
- Teacher's assistant in a school
- Telecom salesman
- Attempt at starting my own company
- Wandering aimlessly from job to job
- School
I enjoyed being a teacher's assistant and had the opportunity to work with kinds that had special needs. Having grown up with, shall we say a colorful record from school, I could relate to these kids. It gave me a chance to see the world of education from the other side. While I didn't do a whole lot of classroom teaching, I was present to assist the kids in any way that I could. I learned a lot from seeing them fill their heads with information. It was quite simply inspiring.
While I was a Telecom salesman I learned something very important about myself: I'm way too good a salesman. It turned me into a monster!
I'd never lie to a customer to make the sale, but I have a knack for phrasing negative things in a positive way. Even short battery life would be an awesome feature in a cellphone. Sure, it brought in the sales, but it made me feel like I was manipulating people, and that's not a feeling I like.
It did bring me a lot of experience I later used both working in the school and especially while I was a support agent, but let's just say I won't be looking for a career in sales any time soon. Don't get me wrong, I like to do it, I just don't like what it does to me.
Way back in time, as seen from my point of view, my very best friend (I refer to him as my brother) and I tried to start our own company.
We called it Nocturnal Design, and wanted to get in on the Web Boom at the time. Everyone wanted a website, and we were going to provide them with it.
We even had our own pretty unique business- and website concept, and we could have made it big!
So, why am I not a multi-millionaire sipping drinks on my yacht right now? We were simply not mature enough to make it happen. We had the passion, the drive and the stamina, but not the focus. Too bad, really, because now the moment has passed, and a lot of other companies have since came up with variations to our idea, and it is no longer something you can base an entire business on.
What originally inspired me to attempt the huge task of starting a business was a period of doing almost nothing. I was idle, except for a few odd jobs here and there, and it was making me stir crazy.
Of course, I contemplated going back to school, but the reason I left school to begin with was still there: You cannot fit a round peg in a square hole!
I didn't fit in with the idea of the Norwegian school system at the time. There were no openings for interpretation or questioning of so-called "facts".
While I always tried to be civil towards my teachers, I would often get very frustrated and upset when my questions of "Why?" were answered with "Because I say so!". The teachers would misunderstand and think I was trying to wiggle out of doing any schoolwork, and I would misunderstand and think they didn't know the answers.
It was actually a long time after I got out of school that I realized I'm not at all twice as smart as everyone else, I'm just twice as skeptical.