Code'n'coffee @codencoffee-blog - Tumblr Blog

The End

Six months in San Francisco is starting to be over. I've sold my bike, packed most of my stuff and a car will come pick me up in little more than 32 hours to drive me to the airport. I'm sorry that the blog hasn't seen any updates since february, but it seems I'm not really good at talking about my daily life.

So, how do I feel about leaving San Francisco and Pinwheel behind? Sad. Hopeful. Thankful. Leaving back home creates so many different emotions it's pretty hard to identify all of them. I've met some really great people. I've grown really fond of my coworkers and it's been amazing to work with them. On the other hand there's a lot of people in Finland I've missed a lot and I'm really excited to see them all again.

Life here hasn't been without it's fair share of difficulties. I've had really bad episodes of home sickness. I've been afraid I'm going to grow apart from my friends back home. Irc and Skype now and then are really not a substitute for a human contact. I came here for three months and ended up living here for six months. The difficulty is that you're all the time living under temporary conditions. It affects a lot how much effort you're putting to building your life. Not really investing in that is going to have an effect on you in six months.

On the other hand there's so many things I've gained and learned. I actually now know really what I want to do as a software engineer. I've seen how great a team can be when you invest a lot to building it. The expertise of my coworkers at Pinwheel has been amazing and I'm still trying to gather all the stuff I've learned into something I can put to words. I've also been fortunate to be able to teach things back.

I've written previously about San Francisco as a city so I won't go into too much detail, but in general this city rocks. If only the weather were nicer =) The nice thing about SF is that you also end up meeting a lot of interesting people. For some reason I've also ran here into people I know randomly a lot more than in Helsinki.

This post will probably also be the last one in this blog. I've got something else planned and will be updating when I've had time to turn those plans into reality. I'm also looking forward to the exciting new challenges ahead but that's a different story.

Thank you San Francisco and all the people that I've had the pleasure to meet here! It's been an amazing experience! I'm really sad to leave all of you behind for now, but I'm pretty sure we'll be seeing again at some point! Coming here has been the best thing I've done with my life so far.

Routine

I noticed several weeks have passed with only one blog post. The main reason is probably settling into routine here and the lack of interesting big events. So why not talk a bit about routine here and what's my regular week made of?

I usually wake up around 8-9am and head somewhere for breakfast or grab a coffee and something to eat from a cafe on the way to work. I bought a bike when I got my apartment and it's my main means of transportation. Since I only have a crappy 3g internet connection at home and the time difference to Finland is +10h, breakfast at a cafe with a wifi is usually a good place and time to skype with friends and family back home. I've noticed I spend on average probably a few hours on skype each week, so it requires a bit of scheduling to manage all the calls.

People arrive at our workplace usually around 10am. I've usually been the first one here if I've come to work before 9:30. Lunch is usually takeaway from the many restaurants around our office. It's not very common to go eat lunch in a restaurant, which is a big difference to Finland.

I usually leave work around 7pm and I'm usually one of the last ones to leave. I don't think anybody's told me what the office hours are, which is actually really nice. All that matters is what you accomplish. I'll probably write a bit more about working here after we get our product announced.

Evenings are then spent in various day to day activities. As I've noted, the city's full of great places to eat and drink, to which I have no objections. I have to say though that the result has been that I've cooked myself only a few times and should probably try to do that more often, since I have a few great grocery stores nearby and our kitchen's at least decent. The fresh produce are awesome here and the shops have loads of different kinds of fresh herbs, vegetables (lots of avocado, yay!), fruit etc. I even managed to find rye flour and we made some karelian pasties on sunday.

I also have awesome flatmates with whom we've done great stuff, including playing ultimate and biking. Mostly my social circles here revolve around them and other startuplife folks. I haven't been very active in going to networking event etc but that's starting to change. At first it felt I didn't have time from all the apartment hunting etc and then it took a while to find the proper channels to find out about events. More networking with locals should also change the social circles to a bit more non finnish direction, which isn't bad at all.

Somehow following Facebook, Finnish news and all the blogs and webcomics I usually keep an eye on seems surprisingly hard. Currently my Google Reader ticker shows unread count of about 300 and I've probably last time opened hs.fi on friday. Some of it might be because of the time difference, since when I'm awake here the finnish internet activity is down.

All in all, the routine here isn't that much different from what I've had in Finland. The setting is different, with it's good and bad sides, but in general this city is really well suited for my kind of lifestyle.

#routine #san francisco

The city called San Francisco

I've now been here for a month and I've come to the conclusion that San Francisco is an awesome city. Why? Basically it's so full of life. When you're walking around, you end up in really different kinds of places all the time. You pass several blocks of residential area and suddenly end up in a small town central like area with lots of shops, cafes and restaurants and a buzz of people. Walk a little bit more and you end up in the next one, with its own kind of appeal that's different from the previous one. Even if San Francisco has a population of almost a million it still feels like a small city.

Getting around SF is easy. You really don't need a car here. Most of the stuff is inside walking distance, and even when it's not, you can always use public transportation or bike. Bus service is surprisingly good here. Walking and biking are my favorite, because you can see all the little stuff happening around you. Somebody's left their handprint and a greeting on the sidewalk pavement when it's been still wet or you notice a house has five pairs of stuffed jeans as flower pots in front of it.

When you come here, get a bike. Biking is easy and everyone's doing it. Remember to buy a good lock, because bike theft is unfortunately a big problem here. During the time I've been here two of my colleagues have gotten their bikes stolen. If you're not accustomed to biking on the streets it might be a little bit scary at first, because biking on the sidewalks is not generally allowed. On the other hand most streets have dedicated biking lanes and car drivers are really careful with bikers.

Did I mention the taxis are pretty cheap also? That's great because the city has so many awesome restaurants, bars and cafes that you don't want to spend you nights sitting at home. Eating out is really popular. Many restaurants are small and don't often take reservations. People just go to the restaurant of their choice and wait for a free table. Sometimes it takes an hour or so, but it's not a big issue.

One thing I miss here is good patios at bars. I've come across just a few of them so far, so don't expect to come here and spend a nice sunny afternoon hanging on one with a drink of your choice.

People of San Francisco also love dogs. Seems like everyone has one. All the parks are full of people playing with their dogs and most of the cafes I've seen offer dog treats to their customers. I've even seen a puppy in a bar.

San Francisco has its downsides too. There are a lot of homeless people. Really. You see people sleeping next to shopping carts loaded with bottles etc almost everywhere. You get people bumming money, food or cigarettes every day. Some are nice and polite, some are not. It's pretty easy to lose your empathy and just close it all out in here.

Living here is also expensive. Getting a nice apartment is hard and it'll cost you at cheapest a little less than $1k a month. That's usually including several flatmates and some interesting building solutions...

But all in all, this is a great city. I can really recommend coming here to experience the buzz of life.

Things I've learned so far

Things I've learnt during the first week of staying in San Francisco:

When coming to the US, always have several credit cards or Visa Electrons or similar with you. I learned that all finnish Visa cards have a fixed limit for cash withdrawals per day or per withdrawal, which is around $350 at the moment. If you want to withdraw big amounts of cash, Visa Electron (and sizable account balance) is your friend.

Skype (or Google voice) is also your friend. I've had to make a few calls to finnish landlines mainly regarding credit card issues and have spent like 30 minutes of time and 1€ on Skype.

T-mobile has a nice $50/month prepaid plan which you can use with your own phone including unlimited data (EDGE only though...), calls and texts.

SF apartment market moves really fast. Prepare to pay for your apartment (1st rent and deposit) when going to the showing or open house. I almost missed my chance when I had to spend almost an hour trying to figure out how to withdraw enough cash (see point 1).

Blue Bottle Coffee and Philz Coffee are great places to go for a cup of great coffee. The former sells mostly espresso based drinks and the latter has an awesome selection of "normal" coffees. People have also been recommending Ritual and Four Barrels but haven't been to those yet myself.

People are very social here. As a finn many situations may not feel like a big thing, but try to be very sensitive about other people. For example turning down offers for socialization will give very rude impression!

It's probably a good thing to bring a warm hat (== pipo) and mittens with you. Also villasukat rocks.

There's no such thing as splitting the bill in a restaurant. Just cough up your share (1 / amount of people) of the bill and be happy. It'll even out in the end.

Ask somebody what to do before trying to use public transportation. You'll have way nicer first time. It seems like all of us have made the same mistakes in MUNI =)

#san francisco #tips #learning

We played with this last weekend and now somebody has broken it...

First week

Time flies when you're having fun, right? So ten days have passed in SF and a lot has happened. Maybe I try to start from the beginning.

I visited our offices on friday and was welcomed by the happy folks at 2bkco and Pingpin. I got immediately my hands dirty by assembling my ikea desk and a bit later we had Eric Fischer giving a presentation about his data visualizations (definitely worth checking out).

Nelli invited all of us Startuplife people + visiting IDBM students (who were also on the same flight from Helsinki) over in the evening and we had great time chatting, getting to know each other + checking out the nightlife of Pacific Heights.

The weekend was spent largely in the same spirit with mostly the same people, on saturday night in Mission and a brunch on sunday in Hayes Valley. One wtf-moment on saturday evening was when we picked a bar at random (I think it was called Casanova) from Mission with Pekka, went in to have a few beers and suddenly the dj plays Eppu Normaali's Poliisi pamputtaa taas.

I also started the hunt for a proper apartment in the weekend. Apartment hunting in San Francisco is HARD. At least if you're foreigner and you're only going to stay for three months. Padmapper is great tool, also Livelovely, although they both use largely just Craigslist data. If you can find something that's not a one year / six month lease then the next problem is to get the renters to even respond to your emails.

My work at 2bkco began on monday and I got my first project almost immediately. First impressions about working here was that this is no tinkering. Stuff gets done fast, well and we aim high.

Tuesday was excursion day: we went to see Stanford Technology Ventures Program staff at Stanford and visited the new Facebook HQ in Palo Alto. Our host at FB was Rasmus Andersson, previously the head of design at Spotify, who gave us the tour and talked about working at Facebook. What's been probably the most interesting thing to hear here is how people have ended up in the positions they are now in, and Rasmus wasn't an exception.

On wednesday evening we met Mikael Silvanto at dinner, who's working in the Apple product design team. His story was really inspiring, since it's mostly about setting high goals and then just working towards achieving them.

On wednesday evening I also had one of those Inception-style moments when I left the tram way too early (actually on the wrong side of a BIG hill) and had to walk the rest of the trip. It's funny that you can end up in places where the terrain just looks like it's going in really unnatural directions.

Apartment hunting was really starting to feel desperate today but then I finally got a chance to go to a showing and it matched what I was looking for. So now I'm moving in tomorrow to North Of Panhandle and will be staying there until end of March.

I'll make a new blog post about what I've learnt from the first week, including apartment hunting, soon since this is starting to be way too long.

First task for a software engineer intern: assembling your Ikea table.

#furniture #work #2bkco

Finally there

So, San Francisco it is. Our plane touched down around 11:30pm local time being "only" about a few hours late. The trip didn't go without minor problems, since already at Helsinki they had overbooked the plane. I got my place at the plane when it was missing maybe ten people in the end of boarding. Finnair's A333s are actually quite nice - at least compared to the American Airlines' 757s - with a selection of movies and tv-series to watch on demand etc.

At JFK (New York) we were quite literally herded through the immigration really fast and despite all the rumors about the border formalities at least I didn't have to answer any questions or show my belongings. The continuation flight from JFK to San Francisco didn't go that well, since we lost the cockpit's heating and had to stop at Dallas to change plane since the pilot was freezing. It's nice to hear an announcement from the pilot when leaving Dallas stating something like "We lost the cockpit heating and had to descend to a lower altitude because I was getting numb due to the cold."

The biggest problem on both flights were the economy class seats, which really don't have enough space for my legs, at least when you have to sit for nine and six hours. Also same kind of assholish co-travelers sitting on the same row on both flights. I probably don't even have to mention what happens when you pack several small children into an airplane for nine hours?

But anyways, here I am at Mutru's mansion, where I'll bunk until I (hopefully) find a proper apartment before 15th of January. Now to get some sleep since this staying awake for 29 hours with some dozing on the last flight is starting to feel quite funny.

#san francisco #flying

Almost there

So, a lot has happened since the last blog post. I got my visa just in time for christmas and now I'm spending the last few nights in Finland sleeping here and there. I've packed the most important part of my life to one suitcase and the rest are sitting in my dad's basement. Two nights to go and we'll hopefully get airborne on thursday at 2:10pm.

It's been quite hectic for the last few weeks. Moving, cleaning, getting all the papers, insurances, bank related stuff etc in order takes quite a lot of work. Also finding time to see friends and family in the meantime has proven to be a challenge. Just a few loose ends to wrap up tomorrow and everything should be ready.

Today was also my last day at Living Junction for a while. We've been building a new version for quite a long time now and hopefully we'll be seeing it in production this week. I've mostly been spending my time with the UI and it's nice seeing it all come together at last. Stay tuned for the launch!

I'll be staying for the first ten days at Mutru's mansion, who was kind enough to offer me apartment. After that I'll hopefully have a more permanent housing solution. I'll start working next monday, so I have the weekend to do sightseeing.

Contacting me in SF will be easiest via email, Facebook or Skype so feel free to give a call or drop a message! For the Finnish people it's 10 hour time difference, so 8pm Finnish time is 10am in SF so bear that in mind =)

I'm starting to feel like going at last!

startuplifein

We’re thrilled to announce our second batch of Startup Life interns. Starting their journey in Silicon Valley in a couple of weeks (or even days!) we have a great combination of students from all three Aalto-schools: industrial designers, software engineers, business students, all interning in...

startuplifein

One of the questions we get a lot with Startup Life is the day-to-day of the internships. What does one actually work with? How much responsibility? What kind of projects? Do they get published?

Obviously not all startup stories can be shared, but we’re happy and proud to showcase two projects...

Also, Venture Garage pre-christmas party!

#aaltoes #aalto venture garage #pre-christmas party

Meeting people and visa stuff

I finally got my visa application submitted today, yay! All it took was a bit of consulting a lawyer and a few tries to have myself with all the necessary papers in the same place with a computer and a printer.

Now all that is left (I should probably start to be more careful about how to use that line...) is the visa interview at the US embassy and I should have the visa before the new year. Funny thing about the bureaucracy with the exchange visa is that it takes surprisingly long time. I got the first email about what needs to be done on Oct 24, so the expected time for the whole process to complete is two months. And I heard that of all the actual visas to the US the J-1 (exchange) visa is the easiest to get.

We also met today for the first time with four of the seven Startuplife interns and the Startuplife staff to get to know each other and talk a bit about practicalities. Seems we have quite a diverse and good looking team (which will probably be announced quite soon) heading to SF.

27 days to go...

#preparations #startuplife #visa

Here we go

I ended up applying for an internship in Silicon Valley via Startuplife in September and after a few twists and turns got a position at 2bkco as an intern from January to early April. I thought I'd try to chronicle my experiences one way or the other and ended up starting this blog.

So, what's this all about? Startuplife is an internship program for students in Aalto University to get them working at the hottest startups around the world (currently only in Silicon Valley, although cool places like Moscow and New York will be following for the 2nd batch of 2012). Aalto sponsors visas and flights and you can take advantage of the contacts and network the great people at Aalto Entrepreneurship Society have been building, so what's not to like?

Applying for internships at different companies was a really nice experience. Silicon Valley startups seem to really put effort into recruiting and gave great feedback. Long story short, 2bkco offered me a position there as a web developer intern and after that I've been fighting my way through the bureaucracy. I was greeted with something like 14 + 4 pages of paperwork and almost four weeks of handling time before getting even my actual visa application underway.

So, now I'm holding plane tickets for 5th of January, all the paperwork required for visa and a load of different kinds of brochures and guides on matters like living in the US, what paperwork needs to be submitted on arrival and before getting Social Security number etc etc. A few issues are left, namely going to the visa interview (which should be next week) and getting the actual visa.

Oh yeah, probably should start looking into finding some kind of accommodation at SF too... And thanks a lot already to all the people who have been helping me and giving great advice!

#startuplife #preparations

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Code'n'coffee