L'articolo An Advent Calendar for Developers: day 19 to 24 sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

L'articolo An Advent Calendar for Developers: day 13 to 18 sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

The New Witch-Hunt

(originally published on Y / 03 /2017)

The new threat to the civil development of the Western society is not capitalism, but radical liberalism, by hand of politically correctness. I am observing a worrying trend especially on social media, by which any opinion that vaguely contradicts the self-calling liberal loud voices, provokes waves of indignation, derision, rudeness, even bullying. Healthy debate is out of trend and the new concept of "respect" does not include discussion. The game is succeeding at polemicise on anything or find two-faced meanings that allow us to fill with indignation.

This is simply the modern version of witch-hunting, with torch and pitchfork held high against who threatens the modern "mono-thinking". Spits and public humiliation, anything is allowed, including strip of humanity and identity layers any virtual stranger. Feeling strong from their ideology, some people feel authorised to scream in the face of those who disagree.

To show an example, few weeks ago the story of a (Caucasian) girl who had slowly poisoned her (Afro-American) college roommate and bragged about it on Instagram went viral. I came across it when the picture of the accused, complete with full name, went viral with the caption "Be a nasty bigot and we will make you famous for it". I found myself wondering which one was the worst example of human nature, the original story or the long series of deplorable comments and threats which followed. A woman with the same name has to temporarily suspend all her social media accounts out of the verbal abuse she had endured.

I believe our ideas never allow us to rejoice of other people's misery, nor to verbally assault or superficially judge others. From those who claim to champion for diversity, I except that they do the same with ideas. I conclude by quoting Evelyn Beatrice Hall's famous words, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".

L'articolo The New Witch-Hunt sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

L'articolo An Advent Calendar for Developers: day 7 to 12 sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

L'articolo An Advent Calendar for Developers: day 1 to 6 sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

L'articolo The future together sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

Who changed?

(originally published on issue  Y / 06 / 17)

August will mark the start of my eight year in Finland. I left Italy to go on an Erasmus period and I never went back. With Finland, it was love at first sight. The nature, the peace, the deep honesty in people. I have grown up in a country where "honest" is synonym to "stupid", where you meet those who brag about not paying taxes and get public approval, where if you are not someone's daughter you don't get anywhere. And let's not mention sexism.

After few months in Finland, I realised no one was treating me as a woman, but simply as an individual - you may take this for granted, it's not - and my efforts were rewarded with good grades and a job offer. I observed Finns and I was fascinated by the love they felt for their country. There's an unwritten rule, by which only Finnish people can complain about Finland. I looked around and saw people of several nationalities and languages - again, not the norm everywhere - and I thought that maybe my place was really here. I called my boyfriend and told him to pack, we were going to move.

Seven years later I'm a Finnish citizen, I have two children and a new job. Over the years I've met other immigrants and heard of several small injustices, I've followed the news about the migrant crisis, and even hosted in my house a full family which was waited to be deported. In my other ear I've heard of thousands of migrants coming through Italy every day and I compare that with the ridiculous migrant quota Finland set. I remind myself of all the times not being a Finnish-speaker played against me, as a parent and as a professional. I think back to the love of Finns for Finland, and I now see a terrible insecurity as well. Was it there seven years ago? One good quality of Finnish people which impressed me at the start was how they are able to react fast and with imagination to any social issue. Today I struggle to see that aspect, or it seems very selective. And I wonder, who changed, Finland or I?

L'articolo Who changed? sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

The importance of networking

I know, same old, same old... but I want to give suggestion about how to network in practice especially in Finland. For starting, complete and enrich your LinkedIn profile. The picture is crucial (or do you ever stop on profiles without one?) and please choose it wisely. Take care of writing a good self-description, complete with your experience, attitude, and aspirations. Ask your old study and working contacts to take few minutes to write a recommendation in English or Finnish. It's not just a matter of being present on LinkedIn: sometime company recruiters check your profile after you send your resumé.
Explore local groups on MeetUp. There are regular meetings, usually held at companies and often in English language, which are literally hunting territory for candidates. If you have studied at the local university, consider joining an Alumni association and take part to its events.

Explore the net

There are some website worth checking every second day:

• the national recruitment agency: TE toimisto. For instance, search by keyword "English",
• job postings on the national newspaper Helsingin Sanomat,
• job postings on Oikotie,
• Glassdoor,
• Indeed,
• Duunitori.

In addition, make sure to follow the companies that may have a suitable opening on LinkedIn (you can also set up automatic searches, so that you get new postings in your email) and on Twitter. On Twitter search for the hashtags #rekry and #tyopaikat. There are also some Twitter accounts which only post job postings for Finland. I am not on Facebook, so I cannot say anything about that, but I'm sure there will be some nice pages to follow also there.
When you search, try to identify the keywords related to what you want to do. They'll make your searches better and better. Try to identify also Finnish keywords and do not be discouraged to send your CV even if they ask for fluent Finnish language (unless it really seems hopeless). Once a week, search which Google and limit your query to results of the past week, to be always up-to-speed with new postings. I know it sounds intense, but I've witnessed postings live one week only. Keep track also of suitable companies, so that you can regularly check out their websites for new openings.

Call people

I don't want to istigate you to call people asking for a job. That's rude and it never works. Find professionals who are in the position you would like to be right away or in the next few years. Establish a contact and ask for advice. I was lucky to meet lovely and available people who shared with me their experience of needs their working area had at that very moment. In that way I could focus on underlining the right skills when applying. When contacting people, be respectful and grateful they are willing to share their time and advice with you.

Be prepared to rewrite your CV a hundred times

Limit your CV to a couple of pages: think that a recruiter gets tens, sometime hundreds of them. I don't want to give specific advice to write a resumé, because the internet is full of pieces about that. Just keep in mind that you need to review your CV for each job you apply for. Yes, every single one. Even if you apply for a job with the same title and most requirements in company A and company B, you may want to first explore their respective websites and get to know them. Do they share the same core values? What kind of company is A with respect to B? What is A looking for in a candidate, and what B?

Studying never ends

The above process of job search will also give you regular indications of the areas where you need personal development. Be proactive in filling such gaps. Resources are endless, even to cover advanced topics in little time. Checkout online courses (for instance EdX, Coursera, ...), videos, forums, your local library. You cannot stop studying and learning even when you have a job, so surrender to it. Is knowing Finnish or Swedish really crucial to find a job in your area of expertise? If so, apply for a course right away, not after one year of unemployment. Remember: learning is never an empty investment.

L'articolo My two cents on job searching in Finland sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

Learning Finnish is painful, takes a lot of time and energy. Personally, I'd say it's a good personal investment if you plan to live in Finland for at least 5 years. Also, you need to be consistent with learning and be courageous with training yourself in your daily life. I've met several people who had more certifications than me and still did not have the courage to actually start speaking Finnish in their daily lives, even outside work. Unless you are really gifted at languages, expect a via crucis... but also great satisfaction when you'll reach your goals, I can guarantee.

I have been studying Finnish language for five years - slowed down by my maternity duties - and after about 3,5 years I started feeling confident about understanding most contexts. At the time, I was working at the university, an environment which is basically defined as international. During the previous years, in working mailing lists there had been sparse but persistent appearances of emails exclusively in Finnish. I had never paid attention to them, thinking that I'd be notified in case they concerned me. Boy, I was wrong.
When I started understanding contents of such emails, I found out many - not most, thankfully - concerned everyone. They were advertising job postings or, worse, grants. Most online forms for Finnish grants were in Finnish only. That was the day I thanked the myself of the past for having such determination about learning the language. I also started realising that not knowing Finnish could be a terrible limitation in my future working life.

After such epiphany, I started switching to Finnish language in social situations and encourage my colleagues to keep the conversation in Finnish. There came the second big realisation. I felt my colleagues were sharing a lot more information when they were talking in Finnish. It felt as they were different people. Beware: I am fully convinced they didn't even realise that! They were much less formal and clearly more free when they were speaking in their mothertongue. There I got it: without Finnish language, I would have stayed an outsider forever. Only a visitor. After observing this social phenomenon, I turned my eye to myself and noticed that "Paola speaking Italian" has a slightly different (perceived) personality than "Paola speaking English" and even more than "Paola speaking Finnish", since I don't yet have the confidence - for instance - to have a sense of humour in this language. I found out there are even studies and articles about having "multiple personalities" linked to different known languages. You know all that talking about the importance of networking in your career? Well, there I understood not knowing Finnish would have put an invisible wall between me and my colleagues.

In many countries, knowing the local language can make the difference in survival in everyday life. In Finland, this doesn't happen because Finns are very good at English and languages in general. Finnish is objectively very hard to learn, and these two facts combined tend to convince immigrants that it's not worth the effort, at least from the career point of view. Finns themselves - even most immigrants - will tell you that you don't need Finnish to work in Finland. Personally, I strongly encourage foreign workers in Finland to sit down and make a career plan for the next years: if at Easter of 5 years from now you see yourself eating mämmi, it's time to collect your sisu and apply for a Finnish language course.

L'articolo How learning Finnish language will benefit your career in Finland sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

Why all this? Women are severely underrepresented in mathematics, especially in Scandinavian countries, even though they top charts for gender equality. Recently EWM collected data from the country coordinators to describe the single situations and filed a report. The situation in Nordic countries is too extreme to ignore:

L'articolo Women in Mathematics in Finland: Amal Attouchi sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.