Patrik Hirvinen

For free?

Leading with this instead of my value proposition maybe feels odd. It is a calculated risk I am taking. I know I would be a good hire for a lot of things, but I also know something of the other side. I have worked in recruiting and management. Hiring too many people is bad, hiring is always at least a small risk, and gaps in working are scary.

If you could hire someone for 3-6 months for free(not unpaid, paid by someone else), that should make it easier to consider hiring in general, hiring me in particular, or maybe hiring two people for the price of one!

Think of the opportunities

In addition to your usual projects, this presents a rare opportunity.

If you were to ask around, you might find a surprising amount of mostly internal things that could be improved, at least a little bit. Better tooling, systems, documentation, processes etc, which would improve efficiency, reliability and quality of life.

Maybe there is even agreement about working to improve such things, but progress is slower than you would like. No matter how justified each delay is, people feel bad.

I am the kind of person who works on things like that anyway, getting someone to help on those would improve things all around, and it would be cheap. Win-win-win.

My professional interests

Solving actual, real life problems

One of my biggest passions is solving real problems and making lives easier. By which I don't mean just something life altering; e.g. if I can free a user from having to do a boring task that takes them just 5 minutes each week, that means I'm giving them roughly four hours per year for something else. Sometimes the best way to solve some problems is by building software tools, systems and services. Sometimes something else. Software is a tool, not an end goal.

Making everything better

In general, whatever I do, at least a small part of me is thinking "how could this be better, easier, more reliable, and could it be achieved without too much of a hassle?" This applies to almost everything from customer business processes to security to internal workflows to end user UX.

Tools of the trade

Making great software is easier, cheaper, more reliable, more fun and less pain, if our tools support us properly. Not chasing after the latest hot new framework of the month that's supposed to solve all of our problems, but making proper use of the tools available, so we can move fast and not break things, when it's no longer ok to break them.

Security

So much of our lives, both work and leisure depend on software, that being able to trust it is critical. If you can't trust the security of the software, you don't want to use it for the important things. So, one must strive for vigilance against actual threats, without sacrificing functionality or agility.

What I am best at, and generally most interested in, is software development and related things, like the software layer of IT infrastructure management, but I do have experience in other areas as well, such as project coordination, management, contracts, law and regulation. Since I am mostly looking for software and other IT work, my CV does not focus on these areas. But if you have something in mind where these other skills play a larger role, I'm happy to expand on them.