Juha Ristolainen's guest appearances

Juha Ristolainen

Venturi's Voice: Technology | Leadership | Staffing | Career | Innovation

The Technology Leadership Podcast

Josh Cole

Andrew Smith

John Collins

John Kelly

Andrew Hill

Jeremy Keith

Bryan Johnson

David Rice

Greg Jackson

Brian Robinson

George Jones

Josh Hart

Chad Pytel

Peter Jackson

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OwlTail

About Juha:Juha Ristolainen is the Chief Technology Officer at Upvest. He is a software leader and technologist with over 20 years of professional experience in delivering and building digital services and applications. Juha has worked for companies of every scale - from startups and operators to mid-size corporations and even large OEMs. He's built high performing software delivery teams using efficient and well developed processes within organisations of varying sizes from tens of employees to several hundreds and thousands of driven professionals.Juha has extensive experience as a software engineer and app developer, building mobile apps to traditional backends and microservices. Juha is a hands-on leader who can take up coding or DevOps or CI/CD on demand. He’s also passionate about blockchain technologies. Synopsis:In this episode of The Technology Leadership Podcast, Juha Ristolainen discusses modern leadership and onboarding skills for top-rated professionals in the tech industry. While expanding on his experience scaling up as a developer, Juha details the responsibilities that come up with every role in a team. We learn why onboarding lies within the core of a successful organisation, view modern leadership as servant leadership, and mention hiring smart minds to drive towards the organisational vision and mission. On the technological front, Juha gives a quick picture of the various software and methods he’s used, including apps, microservices, and domain-driven designs. Listen in!Key Takeaways:The roles and responsibilities of growing as a senior in your team.Onboarding as the fundamental process to building an effective team - unless you’re certain they’re a good fit for your team, it would be hard to have them in your company for long.Enabling new joinees to take charge of their onboarding and upskill themselvesThe benefits of having “onboarding buddies” in your organisationModern leadership as being a servant-type leadership - you show them the greater purpose and encourage them to drive forward to itWhy your future workforce could be largely remote and globalEmpowering employees to exercise their judgement and bonding as a teamHow to keep driving the organisational mission and vision to everybodyThe importance of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)The benefits of microservices over monolithsWhy the war for talent is bigger right now, post-COVID[00:41] - Meet Juha[09:27] - Juha talks about the biggest challenges of his career[11:45] - How do we challenge individual contributors to get to the level of VP of Engineering or Head of Engineering?[14:38] - How do you quickly and efficiently grow a team?[17:11] - Juha discusses a brilliant method of onboarding [17:48] - About the first day stepping into a company as a fresher and modern leadership[12:20] - What are the traits and skills that leaders need to start to cultivate earlier in their career to be able to become a CTO?[21:24] - Why hire smart people?[23:31] - Juha’s thoughts on recruitment and hiring in the coming year[25:14] - Letting people exercise their judgement and creating a healthy working environment[27:13] - Aligning employees with the company vision[28:55] - About KPIs [30:36] - How do you measure your meeting success?[32:50] - What advice would you give to people working in startups? [34:21] - What are your reasons behind building a monolithic and then moving to microservices?[37:46] - What are your thoughts on bringing on a non-executive director or board member to your company?[42:21] - Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years?[44:34] - Juha’s weapon of choice[47:25] - How difficult is it to hire talent within a team?[50:02] - The biggest challenges

About Juha: Juha Ristolainen is the Chief Technology Officer at Upvest. He is a software leader and technologist with over 20 years of professional experience in delivering and building digital services and applications. Juha has worked for companies of every scale - from startups and operators to mid-size corporations and even large OEMs. He's built high performing software delivery teams using efficient and well developed processes within organisations of varying sizes from tens of employees to several hundreds and thousands of driven professionals. Juha has extensive experience as a software engineer and app developer, building mobile apps to traditional backends and microservices. Juha is a hands-on leader who can take up coding or DevOps or CI/CD on demand. He’s also passionate about blockchain technologies.  Synopsis: In this episode of The Technology Leadership Podcast, Juha Ristolainen discusses modern leadership and onboarding skills for top-rated professionals in the tech industry. While expanding on his experience scaling up as a developer, Juha details the responsibilities that come up with every role in a team. We learn why onboarding lies within the core of a successful organisation, view modern leadership as servant leadership, and mention hiring smart minds to drive towards the organisational vision and mission. On the technological front, Juha gives a quick picture of the various software and methods he’s used, including apps, microservices, and domain-driven designs. Listen in! Key Takeaways:<ul><li>The roles and responsibilities of growing as a senior in your team.</li><li>Onboarding as the fundamental process to building an effective team - unless you’re certain they’re a good fit for your team, it would be hard to have them in your company for long.</li><li>Enabling new joinees to take charge of their onboarding and upskill themselves</li><li>The benefits of having “onboarding buddies” in your organisation</li><li>Modern leadership as being a servant-type leadership - you show them the greater purpose and encourage them to drive forward to it</li><li>Why your future workforce could be largely remote and global</li><li>Empowering employees to exercise their judgement and bonding as a team</li><li>How to keep driving the organisational mission and vision to everybody</li><li>The importance of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)</li><li>The benefits of microservices over monoliths</li><li>Why the war for talent is bigger right now, post-COVID</li></ul>[00:41] - Meet Juha [09:27] - Juha talks about the biggest challenges of his career [11:45] - How do we challenge individual contributors to get to the level of VP of Engineering or Head of Engineering? [14:38] - How do you quickly and efficiently grow a team? [17:11] - Juha discusses a brilliant method of onboarding [17:48] - About the first day stepping into a company as a fresher and modern leadership [12:20] - What are the traits and skills that leaders need to start to cultivate earlier in their career to be able to become a CTO? [21:24] - Why hire smart people? [23:31] - Juha’s thoughts on recruitment and hiring in the coming year [25:14] - Letting people exercise their judgement and creating a healthy working environment [27:13] - Aligning employees with the company vision [28:55] - About KPIs [30:36] - How do you measure your meeting success? [32:50] - What advice would you give to people working in startups? [34:21] - What are your reasons behind building a monolithic and then moving to microservices? [37:46] - What are your thoughts on bringing on a non-executive director or board member to your company? [42:21] - Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years? [44:34] - Juha’s weapon of choice [47:25] - How difficult is it to hire talent within a team? [50:02] - The biggest challenges

Episode #7: Juha Ristolainen - Chief Technology Officer at Upvest - "The #1 way to hire the best workforce is to reinvent your onboarding and leadership styles"

Juha is the engineering lead at Transferwise. Juha is a Computer Science graduate who has spent the past 20 years working in IT and the last 30 programming.   He spent the first decade of his career building a consultancy in Finland which in time brought him to the UK and Germany. In this period Juha learned most of his programming and project management skills.  Ever since then he’s been doing more management and CTO type roles in different companies. His varied career has seen him work in startups, become a member of a few corporate innovation units and now he’s an engineering lead at Transfer Wise which is a London based Fintech unicorn. But he’d call it a double unicorn because it's actually profitable.       At TransferWise Juha leads 6 teams that are focused around the companies business customers. Transferwise was traditionally a consumer-focused company but in the last few years, they’ve started focusing on what their business customers would need. Juha’s team is working on all the features necessary for business customers like cross border payments and cross-currency payments.

Juha is the engineering lead at Transferwise. Juha is a Computer Science graduate who has spent the past 20 years working in IT and the last 30 programming. He spent the first decade of his career building a consultancy in Finland which in time brought him to the UK and Germany. In this period Juha learned most of his programming and project management skills. Ever since then he’s been doing more management and CTO type roles in different companies. His varied career has seen him work in startups, become a member of a few corporate innovation units and now he’s an engineering lead at Transfer Wise which is a London based Fintech unicorn. But he’d call it a double unicorn because it's actually profitable. At TransferWise Juha leads 6 teams that are focused around the companies business customers. Transferwise was traditionally a consumer-focused company but in the last few years, they’ve started focusing on what their business customers would need. Juha’s team is working on all the features necessary for business customers like cross border payments and cross-currency payments.

Nordic leadership - Juha Ristolainen