First Person Meets… Linus Hakansson: Why AI means it’s a great time to enter the workforce

Matt Egan

Hello, hello, hello, welcome to First Person The show where we meet the most interesting people in it and learn from them what makes them tick by focusing only on their firsts.

I'm your host, Matt Egan, asking you to enjoy, like and subscribe wherever you find us, and if you are an interesting person in it, do let us know you might be the next first person. The next voice you will hear will be today's guest.

He is Linus Hakansson, enjoying a stellar career. Linus is a Chief Product Officer focused on helping his customers control APIs, events and agents.

Linus is definitely one of the most interesting people in it, and we're delighted to have him as a guest on first person so Linus, welcome and first of all, what's the first thing people should know about you? Linus Hakansson

I think you just said it, Matt, to be honest, I'm someone that is very invested into who I work for and what I do when I wake up and, you know, go to work.

So the fact that I'm the chief part officer at gravity, helping, you know, create products in this amazing market with AI and everything that comes around it, in terms of the challenges that's, that's the main thing. It's, Matt Egan

it's it's certainly pretty interesting time to be in this industry and in this particular part of the industry, right? And I think hunting for value, particularly for customers in the space of AI, is a pretty cool place to be, I would say, so excellent. Looking forward to this.

Let's move to section one, which we call First things first. And this is where Linus we get to know about our guest by understanding some of their first times. So please, if you would, can you tell us something about your first job in this industry?

Linus Hakansson Yeah, sure.

So after university, I had the pleasure of working as a developer. I always knew that I was going to go into technology, since I was a kid. I'm sure we get to that as well.

But my first real job after university was as an Android developer, so a mobile application developer at Sony mobile. So that was, that was amazing.

I really got to learn, you know, how he was working for a big company, what it was like developing things that actually are put into people's hands, in terms of, yeah, of consuming electronics, and I was extremely lucky, and I'm sure we've come to that luck has been something that has been prevailing all through my career, to be honest, in terms of timing, because within a year of being a developer, someone came and said, Hey, Linus, we're going to do a project on this thing called the cloud and Amazon Web Services, and we don't know anything about it in the company.

And why don't you have a go at it? So I've been very lucky to kind of been put into timelines and just being at the right place at the right time in terms of market evolution. But yeah, first, first real job, Android software developer for Sony mobile.

Matt Egan

I mean, I love that you talk about look, in my mind, I think look is winning the lottery right fortune is being the right place at the right time, but being able to take take advantage of it, because there was a reason why they came and spoke to you about cloud, right?

There was something about the way you worked that suggests that that you were able to take on. But I'm really interested as well. Like you said, you always knew, or you knew when you were at school, that technology was the industry for you.

I'm wondering, how did that happen? What? Where did that come from? Do you think Linus Hakansson

so when I was born, my my dad was a developer. So, you know, growing up.

Growing up, I think I got my first, probably, C sharp book, or some C Plus Plus book when I was seven, and my dad helped me start, you know, coding in Visual Basic when I was here six, seven.

So I remember my first couple of years in in elementary school, bringing my friends over and actually trying to develop, you know, software games and that sort of stuff. So I always knew that, you know, that that's what I what I wanted to do.

So all my summer jobs when I, you know, grew up in it through elementary school, was always at my dad's place, you know, getting his colleagues to teach me, teach me binary, probably when I was like, 1112, years or something like that.

And, yeah, that's always been the path for me. Interesting. Matt Egan

That's so cool, and not something you hear very often. Actually have to say, but then you've managed to to kind of marry that to the business and product side, right? Like, which, which, I think is a really important part of anyone's development.

I'm interested in how you got from so you're at Sony. They, they're asking you to take a look at this new cloud thing. How does one go from there to building product for the organization you work with? Linus Hakansson

Yeah, it is a very good question. And I think I remember being tasked with building this architecture up for something that was via B to C, sort of, sort ofService and, you know, storing end user data.

So it was a very sensitive sort of architecture that I built up without any real experience in that area.

So I remember having one of the very senior people from the headquarters at Sony mobile entertainment, or Sony, whatever network entertainment system, I think it's called the PlayStation division, flying over from from HQ in the US to Sweden, and me walking through that person to architecture, I remember being so nervous of, you know, completely messing that up, but it got his stamp of approval.

But then after that, I was also almost by luck. I was, I was head hunted by Oracle to become and become a solutions engineer.

Did that for three years, went into consulting for a few years, and then really, really missed selling solutions, and I think ultimately that's what I'm still doing.

So at my current position as a chief product officer, not only do I actually have responsible for Solutions Engineering, which is the value proposition to technical audiences on why our platform helps their life become easier.

Yeah, that's kind of what I do in a product role as well, right? I build things because I know what these different roles need, right?

I was, I was there myself one, so I think it's not been that much of a, you know, gig saw so career path, I think Solutions Engineering and being someone that builds and decides what to build from a product perspective, ultimately, it's about how end users work with technology and solve problems.

Matt Egan

Definitely, solving problems is, I mean, it's right there in the title, right solutions. And I think it's interesting when we have these conversations, when you talk to successful people, they've almost exclusively been able to marry technical ability and knowledge and curiosity with solving to real world problems.

We all know those people are technically brilliant, but not necessarily working in the most effective solutions kind of thing. So I think it to your point. It makes total sense to follow that path, right? And it definitely makes sense for you.

And obviously, along the way, you know, you've been headhunted, you've been asked to take on this, this architecture work, you've had the seal of approval from the senior person within the corporation, like, you know, they're all confidence boosts, right?

They must make you realize that you're good at the thing. But also, you kind of need people to help you. And I'm wondering if there were any sort of great bosses and mentors along the way that helped you kind of make these transitions and developments 100% Linus Hakansson

I've been very fortunate to work for really, really good bosses, all since my first job to where I am today, where I followed my current boss and the CEO, Rory from our previous kind of journey together at snap loading. So worked for him now for probably six years.

One person I do want to highlight is, I think boss's job is to make sure that you're successful someone that is a mentor, and potentially without any selfish gain, help you in your career progression, or even more worthy to kind of point out.

So that's one person that comes to mind when I joined Oracle. I've just been two years into my career, working for Sony, going into this more cloud architecture, and then landing my first Solutions Engineering, Solutions Engineering role, or pre sales role at Oracle.

Now coming into Oracle, this was in 2015.

I was hired there to kind of help work with their traditional software technology, software products, you know, web logic, web center, these sort of solutions had probably been around for 20 years or so, which also meant that early in my career, I had to compete with very senior people at Oracle who'd been in these roles for 2530 years, selling these sort of technologies.

So again, I was very fortunate to come into Oracle at a time where they were really pivoting the company towards the cloud and creating and building all these new cloud native products.

And immediately I realized that, you know, I could spend 15 years here, climbing the ranks, trying to kind of get the experience of these very senior people, or I can really bet on becoming someone that really picks up the new sort of products and become the expert there.

And I think within my second month, I was presenting one of those new solutions to some internal people at Oracle. And one of those person was a person called Euan at Oracle. He was very senior at Oracle.

He'd been in this position through acquisitions and been there for many, many years. And when he watched that, that presentation for myself, he he reached out immediately after and said, Look, that was one of the best presentations. I've seen since I joined Oracle.

And now, what are you doing next week? Because I'm working in a team that travels all across the world to enable the local teams to sell these new products, basically. So next week, I'm going to be in Italy, and I'm going to running a session there with fantastic.

Fantastic if you could, kind of, you know, help me and support me doing so. They basically took me under his wing.

I think after the first time, he said, Look, I'm going to make it my mission to get you into the senior team that I'm working in, basically, and, and there was obviously no necessary gain for him, but he kind of really, really mentored me and kind of made me navigate the the big enterprise that is Oracle, and how to be successful there.

So I've got a lot of things to find thank him for. I think he really helped. Probably excelling, accelerating my career by five or six years or something like that. Matt Egan Probably helps.

I mean, this is, this is the thing about being a good boss Ryan is something I think we all have to learn, developing our own practices.

That selfless act will have benefited him and his team, because you were good at what you did, right and and part of the responsibility of being a leader is recognizing talent and putting it in the right place.

But, yeah, very cool, because not everybody does act in such a such a selfless manner. So it's it's good to call out. I think amazing. What a great start to our conversation. Linus, I'm really enjoying myself, but I'm enjoying myself too much.

So we're going to move to section two now, which is what we call first fails, because we are not only here for the good stuff, we do learn more from our mistakes, and quite frankly, I get bored hearing about success stories.

So Linus, would you please be able to tell us about the first big mistake?

Maybe there's a mistake that you kind of lie awake at night worrying about, or more often, actually, it's a thing that you learn from, but, but do you have one of those in the lockers? Linus Hakansson

Yeah, I'd say I'm sure there's been tons of mistakes. I'm sure I'm doing them every day. To be fair with you, luckily enough, not any mistakes that I'm laying awake kind of pondering about.

But after Oracle, I think I got a little bit too caught up in, in chasing the money, basically, and wanting, wanting something that was, you know, oh, I want to do this, because I think here's more money in this, or it's going to make my life easier, because maybe there's, you know, a better trade off in terms of, you know, allowed to be more close to an office, Whatever it might be.

So I did, went into consulting for two different fairly big firms, and my I got a salary increase. I probably got to spend more time out of work doing other stuff. But I found out that's not what I enjoy doing.

I am someone that needs to be extremely motivated by fighting, basically, whether that is to build a better product than a competitor, or to sell something in a more effective way than someone else does.

And I didn't really feel at consulting that I had those for me, and also I'm someone that always needs to be challenged and almost be on the, on the verge of, I don't want to say working too much, but it's definitely the most, most, most stressed out I've ever been in my career when I wasn't stressed at all, if that makes sense, and that's that's a position I found myself in, and really quickly had To change the sort of, yeah, environment that I was working in.

Matt Egan

So in a sense, the mistake was the career choice. But then I guess you learned from that. And I think it is, I think it is interesting, right, this question of balance.

Because, you know, I love the way you phrased that the most stressed ever been was when I wasn't stressed kind of thing.

I think it's, you know, for some people, for people at certain points of their career, it is perfectly fine to have a transactional relationship with work, right? We can't all always be inspired every day. But equally, it's important to recognize where you get your energy from.

And you know, if you're fortunate enough to put yourself in the right place, it's amazing. You know, how much more fulfilling that can be.

And I guess that fits into another question we like to ask, but I'm going to ask you anyway, just in case we get anything else. But I think as we develop and mature, sometimes we find that things we were really sure and certain of aren't the truth.

You know, in this case you're talking about maybe your motivation wasn't quite what you thought it was around money and time. But is there a first time you realize something you thought you knew that that might actually turn out not to be the case? Linus Hakansson

What I would say is that going into a leadership and managerial role, managing quite, quite a few number of people, as an individual contributor, I almost looked at that as, look, I'm going to be able to be in a position where I don't have to work every evening or every weekend, because I actually get a team that can help me do that.

Yeah, I think that's probably the biggest misconception that I've ever had about going into leadership and a managerial position. So I think being an individual contributor before going into leadership, that's kind of how I viewed it. A little bit, it's going to be potentially an easier, smoother path.

Matt Egan

But, yeah, no, completely. I always remember appraising a colleague who really wanted to get into sort of next step, but like, and I remember him saying, I want, you know, I want the office and I want the salary I just don't want to do the work.

And, you know, it always sticks with me, because I completely, you know, agree, right?

We get promoted because we're a really good individual contributor, but when we're managing other people, because we're being promoted, you're responsible for all of them being a really good individual contributor, and they're all different.

So it becomes like it's not only that many more things to worry about, it's exponential, because you've got to figure out how to support different people in different ways.

I think that's a really good thing to call out, because I suspect everybody has that experience at a certain point in their career, and it's a really good thing to learn and learn quickly, ideally. Linus Hakansson

And I think here, I'm sure it's similar to a lot of companies, but here at gravity, whenever a manager is being having their appraisals, you know, we do twice a year appraisals, and looking at the performance on a manager, they inherit all the performance from their team effectively, so they can think that they're, oh, I'm, you know, I'm showing up at time.

I'm, you know, working professionally, I deliver this over here. Well, if your team is not operating in that manner, that is going to be reflected on you as a manager, right?

So that, as you said, it becomes an exponential performance requirement for you as a leader, where accountability right like and I think that's a really, really useful thing. Matt Egan

Honestly, I've witnessed it in corporations where that hasn't been taught and, you know, maybe it isn't always explicit to people.

I remember again, another training session very early on, which really stuck with me, where everybody was asked to draw an org chart of their team, and everybody draws like that right with themselves at the top, and the HR person just turned them all around and was like, This is how you should think about it.

Right at this point, your responsibility in the way you're judged is on the output of these people that you've put at the bottom, but are actually like at the top and need the most support kind of thing, which is really simple and obvious, wasn't obvious to me as somebody who would like excelled as an individual contributor.

So again, I think it's quite a wise thing to call out in us. I appreciate that. Okay, I think we've probably had enough trawling for disaster and failure, and you've really let us download in us, because these are all good learnings and successes that you've had.

So let's move to section three, which we call quick fire firsts. This is where we want to get to know you beyond your professional veneer. So let's find out about you as a real person using something I've personally developed our random question generator.

So if you could Linus, please pick a number between one and 14. Linus Hakansson One of 14.

Well, let's go in the middle. Let's go seven, hopefully seven. Matt Egan

Okay, this is, let's see what we get from this. You You're in your office, you find a dusty old lamp, you're a bit and a genie pops out. What's the first thing you would wish for from the genie? And you cannot wish for infinite wishes. Linus Hakansson Wow.

It's like I can, obviously health is the most important thing, right?

I've always been very fortunate in my personal life to kind of have the health with me, and I think that's sometimes something I reflect about in terms of career wise, other people that you know have sick family members, friends or themselves being sick, what a massive career impact that must have, must have had, in terms of priorities, in terms of time, able to spend time in your career.

And I've been extremely blessed, knock on wood, to not be in that situation that much. So that is the number one thing I would wish for, you know, health.

And yeah, health really for my my immediate family, friends, and obviously myself as well, because it is, it is almost a precursor for having any type of career, or at least having a smooth sailing career. Matt Egan

Well, I was, it's a really good point, and it makes me think of a couple of things.The one is, like as an individual, you never know. We all think of ourselves on our best day, right?

We rate our own performance as if we're like a robot and we're always excellent. But you'd never know what's going on with anybody, right? Like, in terms of their own health, their family, to your point, you know, they might have a pet that's ill, right?

And, and, and rationally, that's that's not going to impact work forms, but it might, right and and then I think about it from an organizational perspective, what you just described is a really untapped talent pool. Right?

There will be people who are struggling to commit to work in the way you described about your own career. And I'm certainly been the same for reasons outside of work.

And, you know, we talk about this sometimes in the context of outside of amazing countries like Sweden, in the context of parenting and, you know, the gender gap and how that is just a massive it just creates untapped talent. But actually, there's a health thing there, right?

When people who maybe have.

Of chronic illness or illness within their family you know could be supported to be useful and successful in senior roles, maybe with just a different work life balance, but it but that can't happen if it's not seen right, and it's not thought about and proactively.

Okay, let's go for another one. Then that was really interesting answer. Give me a number between one and 14. That isn't seven. Linus Hakansson Let's give three.

Then let's do three. Number three. Can you tell me something about I mentioned this before, a first pet. Have you ever had a pet? Can you tell me something about that? Probably not, not the question I should have had, I, I've not had a lot of pets.

I remember my first one was, was a calf called Lady, I think I probably had her at my grandmother's. And then I had two, two rabbits, one called Roberta, and one ronaldinha, or something like that. From, from, from, inspired by football player names. Wasn't my thing.

So I actually do not have any pets. At the moment, my family do not have any pets. I always wish for a dog when I was a kid, but yeah, first one would be a cat. I actually did have a is it called a walking stick?

Is that a thing? Is that one of those? Yeah, but unfortunately, it escaped in a forest as I was taking it out to to enjoy the woods. It was, it was a, not too easy to find it, to be honest.

But, uh, yeah, those would be the ones I'm Matt Egan interested in.

The names, obviously, Ronaldinho, yeah. Okay, I know who that is. Who's Roberto. Who's Roberto named after? So I think it was, it was a female so I had to name it Roberta.

But I wanted, I wanted to name it after Roberto bagio, the Italian striker Linus Hakansson in the 90s.

But unfortunately, well, I'm not sure it mattered that much, but, yeah, I had to make it a female name. So I had a spin on it. Matt Egan

Okay, I'm getting a sense of the kind of football you like at least, you know you're definitely after a flare player in the number 10 role, I guess, just behind a forward.

And you're not averse to extravagant hair, in the case of both Ronald Reno and Roberto, yeah, yeah. Okay, excellent. You can succeed. Ronaldo inspired haircut I currently have? Yeah, yeah. We'll do what we can with what we've got, right? That's, that's, that's how it goes, excellent.

Okay, we always get something from those questions. Doesn't, doesn't, doesn't always follow quite a straightforward path. So let's move on to Section four, which is what we call first and final thoughts.

And I'm really interested to ask you, Linus, actually, from what we know of you, for the first piece of advice you would give to someone who was just starting out, Linus Hakansson

yeah, that is, that is a very good one.

I think if I look back at my career, as I've said in beginning, I've been very fortunate to be able to come into companies quickly realize gaps in terms of, you know, here's where the market is moving, here's where the current expertise and experience is in the existing kind of staff in the organization.

How can I make myself potentially leapfrog some of that experience? Because I've always been wanting to not have to chase experience.

You know, I've always wanted to find a way, you know, how can I make myself one of the most experienced people in the company, even though I am a junior person historically?

So I think being able to reflect over, you know, what is actually happening, whether it's the macro market or in leisure, segments of different markets, in technology, what is happening here? What have been some of the latest, you know, involvements over the last couple of years or months?

And how can I put myself in a position to really piggyback on that?

So if you look in today, obviously the main the main one is AI, if you're a junior person, you know, starting out of university or first couple of years in your career, and you want to really, you know, accelerate your career progression, really make a name for yourself.

I think the you have to think about, you know, what is, what are some of the roles or companies or markets that are going to be massively impacted by AI?

And you could probably, you know, if you're a junior person, if you're still in university, you could probably spend a few weekends learning about some of, you know, AI tooling, AI capabilities, having an opinion on something, and then going into almost any organization in the world now and position yourself like, look, this is what I have.

This is what I know.

I've had an opportunity to invest some of my time which you haven't had because you're having to deal with, you know, I don't know, being a manager, leading a team, and you can spend your time, you know, learning what's which actually came in the last three months.

So that's what I would do. I would really look, how can I use the existing technology and market developments to leapfrog some of the experience and. Kind of seniority in an organization to really, kind of propel my career that way. Matt Egan

I think, I mean, it's excellent advice, but I also think what I'm hearing is, you're solving problems again, right? You're looking for solutions. Because a manager of mine many years ago once said to me, I asked the same question, how do I get on?

How do I sort of, you know, develop my career? And she said, Well, first of all, do your job, right?

But the second thing is look around and get context and understand what problems the company is trying to solve for its customers and for itself, and then figure out how you can add value there.

And I think, you know, I hear some of that in what you're saying there, which is taking AI as the obvious example, yeah, it's going to disrupt the workforce, right? It's going to, it's going to take some, skills, some processes, they're just not going to exist in future.

But there's still a need for problems to be solved using that technology.

And I think you know what you're talking about, there is just take yourself seriously enough to understand what those problems are, where the solutions are going to be be sought, and put yourself in a position to add value and and support that process.

You know, it's very good advice, and I think maybe I know the answer to this as well. But if you're, if you're talking to somebody about your career, what's, what's the first project or achievement that you that you'd want to tell people about, what, what is Linus masterpiece?

Linus Hakansson

It's a very good question.

I'd say, you know, before, so after university, in the last few weeks of my my studies, before I was going into my first job, I felt, okay, well, I want to apply for a job in engineering to be a developer, probably an Android developer, you know, working on mobile phone.

You know, that was, that was the smartphones that just come about.

So I said, Well, I probably need to create some sort of hobby project to kind of showcase myself to to my first kind of employer so I can there's this thing in, well, very probably in Europe, for for those that are interested in football, called fantasy Premier League, which is basically the English Premier League.

Well, I mean, in us, is a big thing around a fantasy football, right? So the equivalent here in Europe, and at that time, there wasn't too many sort of tooling or ecosystem around that community, even though I had millions of players.

So I built one of the first, and I think the first ever sort of fantasy Premier League assistant mobile application that basically helped, you know, figure out what teams you should rotate different players with and, and, you know, who might be an undervalued player, and that sort of stuff, and, and I earned a little bit of money in those, you know, that month, that season, actually.

And it was definitely something I was, was quite proud of for a few years as that kind of, kind of existed and had its own life beyond my my normal career. So that's probably my, I'm not sure what the Latin word for is, but it's probably the first.

I was quite proud of that for quite a few years.

One of the most, one of the most I remember, is still to this day, after, you know, probably my first year at Sony building applications for consumer mobile phones, going into one of the, you know, retailers in Sweden, where you can actually buy phones, like a phone house or something like that.

And on the day of the release, you may well, I'm not sure if you still are, but you can actually play around with the phones in this kind of preview mode, and actually seeing my own applications that I've developed myself with my team, that experience like going into a store seeing something for your for the first time in your career that you've actually helped building and taken design decisions on that's that's also something I'd like.

I don't think I've ever been so kind of proud of something career wise. Yeah, those are probably the two ones, maybe a bit bit sad that those were two things, first things I did in my career, and it's just downhill from there. But, yeah, that's what I picked.

Matt Egan

Hey, the show is called first person, right? You don't get that first time back.

I definitely remember the first time I was published in a magazine that was on sale in the shops, and going, like, and basically going into every shop I could see to see it in there.

And the cool thing about, I mean, like, you know, amazing to do the fancy league thing, I need to use that, not so much on my soccer fantasy league, but definitely on my NFL one. I need the assistance.

But the cool thing about software is you made something from nothing, and it became a thing, right? That that is so cool. So I think, I think that that's the very opposite of sad. Actually. I think that they're amazing masterpieces.

Okay, sadly, we come to our final question, which is our only non first question, and it's an unfair question. But before we leave, Linus, do you have any final thoughts that you'd like to share with our audience? Linus Hakansson Final thoughts?

Not sure. I do. To be honest, I think we've covered it. Covered all of it pretty well in terms of, I think the one that I really think about is, you know, even I'm now in a position, you know, I've now, what?

How many years have I've been in this I've been in, I've been 13 years into my career. And I very much look at AI, as you know, is this how I get LeapFrog?

Is this how someone comes in and, hey, I'm straight out of university, but I'm going to be able to do a better job in your Linus because I have all this tooling, I have all this knowledge on AI and how to use that in an organization that's going to make you obsolete.

And I think that's something that that's it doesn't make me scared, it makes me super motivated, basically, because I think that's probably been, I'm just guessing here, but you know, over the years, over you know, 50 years, 60 years, 30 years ago.

I think if you're a senior person in an organization, I guess you've become quite comfortable, because you know that there's no way someone would just come in here and replace all your experience and all your hard work and knowledge like that.

But I think we're now in a situation where that is becoming a reality.

So that's amazing if you're in the beginning of your career, and then it could be amazing, because it can really drive and inspire you and make you learn things that you didn't want to maybe want to learn if you're kind of in my in my face of your career, or later.

But I think it's very, very exciting times. Matt Egan Yeah.

Well, look what's really interesting there, Linus is, most people frame that as it's a terrible time to come into the work, World of Work, right?

Most people, I hear, they're saying, Oh, it's really difficult for young people because AI is taking their jobs, whereas, and I think you're right, like, it's about opportunity.

It's about, you know, if you've worked in media and publishing, as I have for the past 30 years, it's been a constant Industrial Revolution, and so you what you describe about people feeling comfortable, perhaps, hasn't been the case, although the change is accelerating rapidly.

But I think in technology, it definitely has been the case, right? Like things have been pretty stable since the era of cloud, certainly.

But I think you know, if you've got the right mindset, and it comes back to this thing that you know, you a theme you've hit on multiple times in different ways, finding solutions right?

If you're adding value, if you're doing something that's really useful, if you understand the problems to be solved like AI is an enabler, and it's going to enhance your ability to do that, which is opportunity for everybody, but definitely opportunity for people who are coming into the workforce.

So I think that's a really positive message and a great message. I appreciate you. Appreciate you saying that. So my thanks to you.

Linus harkinson, and thank you for watching or listening to first person, the show where we meet the most interesting people in it and learn from them what makes them tick by focusing only on their firsts.

I have been your host, Matt Egan, asking you to enjoy, like and subscribe wherever you find us, and if you are an interesting person in it, do let us know you might be the next first person.

My thanks to our guest, Linus Hakansson, thanks to you for watching and goodbye. Transcribed by https://otter.ai