Jesper Olsson: a digital native

Twelve years old, Jesper Olsson sits at the dinner table and listens curiously as mum and dad talk programming. Both parents work in IT and computers are as natural a part of Jesper's upbringing as Saturday sweets and pocket money. He experiments early with writing code and gets a kick when he realises he can get the computer to do what he tells it. There and then Jesper decides that this is what he will work with as an adult.

Like most teenagers Jesper plays video games. But he also dives into game development and programming and discovers that he loves problem-solving. "When you write code you can end up in an intense flow where the hours just disappear," Jesper explains.

Built an app for sale-price comparison

His eyes light up with enthusiasm when he talks about a group project he did during his studies for a bachelor's degree in data technology at Karlstad University.

The task was to build a mobile app that helps you plan the week's food shopping by giving you the opportunity to check which supermarket has the lowest special offer prices on, for example, ketchup or eggs. The group needed to analyse and plan the work carefully. Write several pieces of software that fetch special offer prices and product information from supermarkets on the web. Integrate databases that store all collected information, design and build the interface in the form of a mobile app, and then get all parts to communicate with each other through integration solutions.

"Everything is about data manipulation and problem-solving. You need to understand the main problem to be able to break it down into smaller problems that you can solve one by one. It was educational and fun to test everything that is required to develop a digital service of this kind," says Jesper, who is always curious about the technology behind things.

Video games taught him strategy, communication and collaboration

In his spare time he plays video games. It's for fun, but also deadly serious. Jesper is competitive and together with friends from all over the world he previously entered tournaments for amateurs.

Just like any football team, Jesper and his friends met a few times a week to train skills and collaboration.

"With six people in a team everyone has to work together as a unit. The more we train together the better we become at coordinating our efforts. Everyone has different roles and we plan strategy and tactics based on how the geography of a course looks and what we know about the opposing team. We have to keep track all the time of what resources we have and how we can use them in the best way."

A bit like life in general.

Will automate and streamline the work

For the past few weeks Jesper has been employed at POJI to develop software that can automate and streamline the work of dimensioning and constructing modular houses. The methodology and logic are set. Now Jesper's work begins with refining and improving the code, the integrations and the user interface.

"As long as I get to learn new things and get better at my work I'm happy."

Welcome to your new team, Jesper!