Samuli, Operator

Samuli works as an operator at VTI since the end of 2003. He had filled in an open application on VTI's website and been asked to an interview.
"I had sent my first open application to VTI a couple of years earlier. I had good luck in that I was just about to change jobs when they phoned me from VTI," Samuli explains.

Before VTI, Samuli had worked in similar operator jobs for eight years. Over the years, he has also accumulated some experience in the restaurant business. Samuli's education is information technology mechanic."I haven't worked as a mechanic a single day, because I was already a little older when I went to vocational school and got a silicon processing job right out of school. I have been an operator 'hard as silicon' for almost eleven years."

Samuli's operator work includes element manufacturing, such as cutting silicon wafers into sensor elements. In addition, he is a shift and service foreman in sensor manufacturing, which means that he is responsible for the working environment enabling all employees to focus on their own jobs. Samuli works in the night shift and says that he "does not have a normal working day". On working nights he wears a cutter's, serviceman's and shift foreman's hats alternately. In Samuli's opinion, variable tasks are the best sides of his job, in addition to continuous learning. He thinks motivation is a simple thing to achieve:

"Motivation comes from successes. They do not need to be big ones, a perfectly normal, successful night's work is enough. What also encourages me is that when I succeed, it has a meaning for others besides myself."Samuli is happy with his colleagues: "VTI operators have guts—there's a lot of work and it gets done. There is always work for people who are prepared to do their best," Samuli concludes.