Johan Svensson joined Detectify as an intern in March 2017, and was hired full-time in October that same year. Now he works as a senior software engineer in the Results and Integrations team. Among his colleagues, he’s known as a wizard, cat-herder and top meme-poster.

Throughout his Detectify journey, Johan has mastered coding in Go, the language of Detectify’s backend development, and advancing the product by building things in a microservice environment. He’s gained valuable technical and soft skills along the way, particularly how to work in cross-functional teams. 

Change is the only constant 

In April 2020, just as the company switched to working almost entirely remotely, he rose to a new challenge and accepted the role of temporary team lead to a group of consultants brought in to support and scale the backend development. Through this experience, he faced the challenges of onboarding a new team remotely and learning how to be a team lead while trying to keep up work-cat-life balance. He is happy to have had the confidence of Detectify to try out the role and glad to relinquish the team lead title to focus more on the technical work.

He’s optimistic about his future at Detectify and the direction of the company:

 “I look forward to learning more about the security aspect of Detectify and all of its different applications in the future. As long as we continue to see growth, I think it’s indicative of successfully scaling up development and capacity to bring in more expert hacker knowledge to our customers.” 

Image of Johan’s cat: Purr-programming in progress?

Included and in the thick of things

His favorite part of Detectify is its flat organization structure and the feeling that you can talk to anyone in any team, anywhere in the company. Johan says, “you will, of course, need to champion your ideas, but other than that, it is relatively frictionless to get things implemented.” 

He feels like people at Detectify are heard, regardless of their roles, and he really likes that element of the company’s inclusive culture. 

Johan: “The fact that all of the founders are on the tech side of the company is a significant part of what makes Detectify an exceptional workplace. I feel active in many aspects of the company, and I genuinely enjoy that. For example, instead of having customer interviews retold through a line of people, I can participate in those meetings and get the customer feedback first hand.”

Growing lean and agile

The most notable change Johan has seen over the years was when the tech organization went through its first major reorganization and split into smaller cross-functional teams for the first time. Previously the backend and frontend teams were joined, and with the continuous growth, it became challenging to work in an agile way. 

Johan on the tech culture:

“Splitting the team made us leaner and more agile. I would say I am still mainly a backend person, but if a good idea pops in mind, I can easily share it with my frontend colleagues. I appreciate how good ideas can come from anywhere, and everyone is eager to get good ideas implemented.”

Rapid-fire Questions: 

#1 security advice?
Your email account guards the keys to your kingdom; keep it safe and secured with 2FA. If it falls, your other accounts will follow. 

Any tips for people who are interested in working in tech?
Don’t focus too much on what is hot right now. I picked a broad education and am still happy I did so. 

Favorite remote hacks? 
If you have the option, get a standing desk, it’s great for posture and concentration. I even have some leg muscles nowadays!