Meet Alejandra, one of our promising talents and senior engineers at the Madrid Office. She arrived in Spain less than a year ago from Argentina and is now happy to share with us her first impressions of Klarna and her insights on our ways of working.
Hello Alejandra. As of now, you have completed your second month at the Klarna office in Madrid. Congratulations! How do you feel?
Yes, thank you! I am really happy to be here. So far, I am very comfortable with my team and the work that I do. I feel like I really fit in at Klarna.
What made you decide to join Klarna?
My husband’s cousin was already working as an engineer at Klarna’s office in Stockholm. He told me about the culture, and how it’s so different from other companies. And then he mentioned that Klarna was about to open its new office in Madrid.
But one of the main reasons why I especially wanted to join Klarna was because he told me how he was able to improve things in his team. I wanted to find out if it really is possible to drive change at such a big company as Klarna. And I wanted to find a working place where I would feel more connected working in a team.
So I decided to go through the interviewing process and ask a lot of questions during my interviews. And I finally decided to take the offer I got from Klarna. Now I can confirm from experience that it’s true, it’s completely different here. For the better.
What has been the most rewarding experience you’ve had so far during your first couple of months at Klarna?
My team offers a lot of Java-related services and one of the tasks I had to complete in my first month was migrating into a completely new platform that was developed by another team here at Klarna.
In order to be able to migrate, I needed to do a lot of research and talk to people. So when I reached out to the internal community channel, I was just amazed by how fast they answered me. Their response was almost immediate. Someone was available to help me with exactly what I needed help with. I couldn’t believe it.
Completing this task was super fun because it’s the first thing I actually produced here. When you work as a system engineer, everything that you can make work is rewarding. It’s the satisfaction of making it function.
So what has been the most challenging during this time, then?
The most challenging is still understanding exactly how everything works at Klarna. We have a lot of processes and the infrastructure of the company is very big. I can help with the stuff that I already know, but I haven’t connected all the dots yet (in terms of understanding the company completely) and I feel like I can’t give the best of myself just yet. I need to understand the whole picture. So that’s the challenging part.
It’s only been two months, you will definitely understand everything as time passes – don’t worry! So tell us, what are your expectations for the future?
Right now I’m just working as a senior engineer, but I would like to soon gain a better understanding of how things work to be able to improve myself and my knowledge, and also be able to provide better feedback or think of improvements that can be done in my team.
Additionally, I really like coaching and helping others understand things better. I used to work as a technical lead and team lead. So once I understand the infrastructure and domain better, I would like to get back to that and also provide workshops. I really like doing that.
If somebody is interested in applying to Klarna as an engineer, what are the 3 most important things you would want them to know?
The first one is that the environment, the culture, and the people here are great. For every task that I am working on, my team is always there to support me. They are very nice and they always have their cameras on during meetings. That sounds like a basic thing, but it really helps to feel connected and create a warm environment with each other.
The second thing is that I already see some things that could be improved. And when I talk about my ideas, my team is super open to listening, to understand what the problem is and how it can be improved. That’s great here, you can really take ownership.
The last thing is that it’s really good to get to know people from so many cultures and their ways of thinking. Being open to working on your communication skills is the most important thing when you work with someone from a different country. Maybe in their culture, it’s just common to do something that’s not usual to you. And I believe when you learn from these kinds of interactions, you are also growing as a person. You will see a lot of different cultures and diversity at Klarna – that is one of its greatest things.
We are excited to see where Alejandra’s path will be taking her in the coming months and will soon be checking in with her again to catch up. Until then, we invite you to have a look for yourself at the current opportunities we have up for Madrid on our careers page. We always have room for great people. Come find your moment in the middle of ours, and unlimit your possibilities!