Finland’s largest online marketplace wasn’t built in a day:
Hang Do Minh moved from Hungary to Finland to do her masters and ended up staying. Now, as Senior Android Developer at Schibsted, she is developing the app for Finland’s largest online marketplace, Tori. A task that has proven to be both challenging and rewarding.
Cold but gold
It’s mid march, and spring has yet to arrive in Finland. The ground outside Hang Do Minh’s home office window is still covered in snow. That doesn’t seem to bother the Schibsted developer much, though.
– I’ve been living in Finland for the past eight years, and I really like it. After my masters I landed a job as an Android developer at Nordea, and in November I got a similar position at Schibsted. Now I’m working on developing the Android app for Tori. So I’m pretty new to Schibsted, but my experience of the company so far has been very promising.
A warm Schibsted welcome
Hang got off to a good start at Schibsted. Her first week was filled to the brim with employee events, so she was quickly integrated into her team and got to know colleagues that she’s become good friends with.
– I find the Finnish people to be very honest – I really appreciate that quality in them. And my colleagues at Schibsted are no exceptions.
– I really like the people I work with, the environment, and the ambience in the office overall. My team and my colleagues are all very nice. So my first impression that this would be a nice place to work, has been proven right.
Getting the message across
Tori has become a big player in Finnish society, as the country’s biggest online marketplace. If you’re looking to buy something second hand, it’s the default choice for most people – and Tori has no plans to halt the growth. These days you can find pretty much anything there; from second hand jackets to rental cars and job advertisements.
The past month Hang has been working to improve the Tori app, specifically the messaging function. That’s been an exciting challenge for her.
– Back when Schibsted and Adevinta were a unit we used a different system. After the split, we had to develop our own.
– This month I’ve been working a lot on the messaging feature, which is a really big and important part of the application, because of our plans to add transactionality. Messaging is the foundation for that, so it’s an important project.
The original system was developed by Blocket, the Swedish equivalent to Tori. Tori has kept some of the old features up until now, but the plan is to completely renew the app. It’s a huge task that inevitably involves what Hang calls small cosmetic issues.
– We are troubleshooting and collaborating with our external partners to fix them. Soon enough the app will be functioning smoothly! The thing with troubleshooting, though, is that it also offers a lot of opportunities for learning. I’ve already learnt quite a lot through this job, and in the future I think there will be a lot of exciting opportunities as Tori continues to develop and expand.
