Growing with the task at Mycronic
At Mycronic, Tekniksprångare has the opportunity to take initiatives on its own and with several interfaces to specialist technical functions. The supervisor is always at hand, of course, but for Lovisa Asplund, Paulina Engel, Ida Boregrim, Sara Madison Schaake and Jakob Tormalm, it was a matter of finding solutions largely on their own.
In a modernly furnished office just north of Stockholm, five technology leapers have really gotten a taste of the breadth of being an engineer during the autumn. At Mycronic, the tasks have varied greatly, ranging from fine-tuning the fast and enormously precise jet printers that jet solder paste on circuit boards to writing and updating existing code for the process.
Much of the work has been done independently. Trust and freedom are recurring themes in the practice at Mycronic. Of course, this was not the case from the start, according to Paulina Engel, who has worked in a team with fellow intern Ida Boregrim. But as time has gone by, the tasks have grown and the confidence with it. They then had to present new solutions and results to both managers and customers.
"It's been great fun to be able to help the customer and not just have an imaginary task, to really be useful in the work," says Paulina Engel.
Diversity is part of sustainability work
Andreas Bergström is a manager in jet technology and R&D at Mycronic, and as a supervisor he thinks it is important to take advantage of young talent.
"Mycronic strives to continue to be a world leader in the technology segments in which we operate. To do this, we need to ensure that we have access to the best engineering skills in the future as well," says Andreas Bergström.
Through Tekniksprånget, he wants both male and female young talents from different backgrounds to choose the engineering profession. This is part of the sustainability work, says Andreas Bergström, adding that diversity is needed with a variety of age, background and gender to get the best innovations. That's why technology leapers at Mycronic get to work as members of engineering groups that conduct development projects.
"They get a very good insight into what it's like to work as an engineer and what fantastic opportunities there are," he says.
Utan Tekniksprånget hade jag aldrig fått veta att jag gillar att programmera och missat en stor del av vad jag vill plugga.
Ida Boregrim
"It's great that they see something in us," says Ida Boregrim, who learned to code during her time at Mycronic, something she had never tried before.
The employer asked for a script for functions that were missing from the jet printer. The project became entirely her own, and even though it was a huge task at first, Ida Boregrim is grateful for the trust.
"Without it, I would never have found out that I like to program and missed out on a large part of what I want to study afterwards," she says.
In addition, she has finally understood what her father, who is an engineer, does for a living.
"I asked him to explain again the other week and now I finally get it," she laughs.
Safer for the future
Sara Madison Schaake and Jakob Tormalm have both worked in other parts of the company, including testing. They agree that the job has been very independent. At regular reconciliation meetings with supervisors, they have then been able to present the results and decide what is worth moving forward with. Both of them say that the experience has strengthened what they want to do next. Sara Madison Schaake has cemented her previous choice to study engineering physics and Jakob Tormalm agrees.
"Being here strengthened what I want to do," he says. Before, I might have wanted to be an engineer, but now I feel for sure that this is what I want to be. It feels just right.