Petter Wigle initially joined Funnel as a senior developer consultant, but soon realized that the development department was a great place to work. As a result, he transitioned into a full-time employee. In this blog post, Petter talks about his background, what a typical day looks like as a senior developer at Funnel, and more.

Can you start by telling us a little about yourself and your background?

My name is Petter Wigle, and I am a developer at Funnel. My programming journey began when I was 12 years old and my parents bought me a Commodore VIC-20 home computer. I started learning basic programming, and it has been my passion ever since. Fast forward a few years to university, where I studied mathematics and computer science at Uppsala University. After that, I started my career as a software developer in the pharmaceutical industry. This was almost 30 years ago, and since then, I have worked with several different companies, both as a consultant and an employee, in various roles, including developer, manager, and software architect.

In December of 2022, I attended an after-work gathering with a few friends, some of whom worked at Funnel and spoke highly of it as a great workplace. At the same time, Funnel needed a senior consultant, and my name came up because I was between assignments. Eventually, I joined Funnel as a consultant. I found Funnel to be a fantastic place to work, so after about a year, I decided to become a full-time employee. I have now been with Funnel as an employee for about four months.

Can you describe a typical day in your position?

I currently work in a team called the Data in Platform team alongside three other developers. Our primary responsibility is to ensure that our clients can reliably fetch data from their connected data sources. Every morning, our team meets to review a dashboard displaying data from the previous evening and night to ensure everything is running smoothly. As a “mission-critical” team, our role is highly important in maintaining the reliability and efficiency of Funnel.

After our morning review, we move on to programming, often using mob programming as a team. This approach has been very successful for us, allowing us to accomplish tasks effectively and reducing the need for meetings. We spend most of our time working on a major theme to improve our platform, but we also provide internal support for our data connector teams. In other words, our days vary a lot, but most of our time involves programming together as a team.

What was your initial impression of Funnel?

Before joining Funnel, I had some information about how things worked in the engineering department. However, one thing that struck me when I joined was that almost no information is shared through email; everything goes through Slack, mostly in open channels. In my opinion, the communication is very open and clear, with high transparency from management about financials and strategy. This transparency makes it much easier to understand the state of the business and how things are progressing.

From a development perspective, things are very unbureaucratic at Funnel. We work in an agile manner but without the usual ceremonies. We don’t have a traditional backlog or a scrum master; the team itself decides what to work on and how to organize their work. This might sound a bit chaotic, and for a while, it was. However, we now have alignment periods every six weeks where all teams review their current projects and future plans together. This helps us align better and collaborate more effectively to improve the product.

What motivated you to take the step from consultant to full-time employee? 

I enjoyed being an independent consultant and have done so on and off for years, but I realized that Funnel is one of the best workplaces I have ever experienced, which made the decision to join full-time easy for me. I believe you can make a bigger impact as an employee than as a “hired gun” consultant. With that said, I am looking forward to the future at Funnel.

What has been the most rewarding aspect of your journey with Funnel so far?

I enjoy learning new things from both a technical and product perspective. Before joining Funnel, I had never worked in the digital marketing domain. My time at Funnel has taught me a lot about how the digital marketing world works and what is important to marketers, especially from a data perspective.

One of my best memories was being part of organizing and hosting FunCon 05, our annual internal developer conference at Funnel. It was fun working together with our developers to organize this event and see it come to life. I believe it was a really great experience for the people in development at Funnel.

What are you most excited about in the future of tech and how do you see Funnel contributing to that vision?

AI has been on everyone’s mind for the last year and a half, but I believe we are only seeing the beginning of a new era, and it will affect everything. I am not someone who is easily impressed, and I see a lot of limitations in the AI currently in use. However, I think we will soon see a huge impact in the tech space. We have started incorporating new technology into our product development, allowing AI to take on a greater role so our clients can make more sense of their data.

Do you want to add anything?

We have a fantastic office in Stockholm with a great location and an amazing office team that creates a wonderful environment. One standout feature is the development team’s floor plan, which is the best I’ve ever seen from a collaboration perspective. The product development areas are designed to be both enclosed and open, allowing us to focus while still being able to see and collaborate with our colleagues.

Interested in working as a developer at Funnel? We are hiring. Check out our open roles!