Hello Mike! Shed some light on your life’s journey.
I grew up in Sweden with my parents and two sisters. I knew from an early age that I wanted to do something with computers as I was very intrigued by what you could do with them, whether it was pixel art, programming, gaming, or connecting with people from all over the world once the Internet was widespread.
After moving out to study Master of Engineering in computer science and mathematics I started playing an online text-based game. One new year’s there was a meetup in the Netherlands with a lot of the players, and I decided to go. As a poor student I was trying to find a couch or guest room to stay at, and Bianca stepped up to house me for a couple of nights. We fell in love and I came back many times over the next 6 months before deciding to drop out of university and move to the Netherlands.
Moving to a new country where I didn’t speak the language and without a transferrable degree, I took the only work I could find. I ended up delivering newspapers. After a few months I managed to find my first full time work, to provide technical support for Norton Antivirus/Firewall/Ghost/PCAnywhere for end consumers in Sweden. Nothing quite teaches you patience as trying to guide an elderly person on how to remove a virus manually when the antivirus program didn’t block it from being installed.
After a couple of years there I moved to technical support at Compuware, working with the QA product line. In the first 12 years at the company, I mostly worked in services for the QA and Observability product lines, and I was one of the first to jump onto AppMon when Compuware bought Dynatrace. During the past 8 years I headed up extension development.
Tell us about your work and what interesting things you’re working on.
I have a team of 20+ amazing people that created and maintains ~140 technologies on the Dynatrace Hub, the extension creator app, the extension developer VSCode extension, and many customer projects. Our current work mostly revolves around making all extensions use all the new cool things that was announced at Perform, such as Smartscape on Grail, the Database app and the latest version of the Infrastructure and Operations app.
What makes you excited about being a part of the Dynatrace?
This is most likely a cliché, but it’s the people, the culture, and the product.
Every time you reach out to someone you’re met with a happy face and a can-do attitude. I talked to a new team member just last week and he told me that it was such a breath of fresh air that he was complimented on good work, and that he felt appreciated. I cannot imagine what his previous companies must have been like for that to be an unexpected positive. As for the product, being in the middle of it, it always seems like things are not moving as quickly as they could be. However, every time I sit down and compare the current product with what it was like 6-12 months ago, I’m always amazed at how far we have come in such a short time. The constant improvements make it exciting to go to work every day.
What makes Dynatrace Community important to you?
"The Dynatrace Community is one of the best places to interact with customers and hear about their experiences."
Whether it is a post about a challenge they have, or a post about a new idea, it’s always insightful to hear how our customers are using the product and how they would see it evolve.
I’m mostly hanging out at the posts with the extensions tag, where I try to make sure that every post gets an answer. Either by myself or by forwarding it to someone in the team who knows more about a specific topic.
Tell us something about you that most people don’t know. What is your biggest joy or passion in life?
I got married to Bianca last year. It was an amazing time with all family and friends gathered for a long weekend in Sweden. There were even several team members flying in from all over the world to celebrate it with us. Whenever I look back at it, I get a big smile on my face. It will live with me forever.
For everyday joys I spend time with my wife, our dog Samwise (indeed named after the best friend there ever was), and our son, who somehow already is older than I was when I moved to the Netherlands. I enjoy movies and board/computer games with family and friends as often as I can.
Since almost two years, I split my time between Sweden and the Netherlands. I love being able to see my nephews grow up and spend more time again with my parents and sisters. I don’t really have a bucket list; I should probably make one! One plan I have is to go back to Japan next year together with my son and a friend with his daughters. I haven’t been there since I was 14 years old, and I’d love to see it again as an adult.
Something that I would add to my bucket list is to go to New Zealand to visit the filming locations of The Lord of the Rings. I’d like to do that with my wife though, but as she’s scared of flying, I’m not sure how to accomplish that anytime soon. Hopefully one day!
What achievement are you most proud of?
From a private perspective it is raising a son that is a good person through and through. He’s one of the moral compasses of his friend group and makes sure that everyone is responsible and treating each other well.
From a professional perspective it is without a doubt the team I built over the past 8 years. Everyone goes above and beyond to help each other, and the results of the team are more than I could have hoped for.
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