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June 10, 2025 · 4 min read timeTechnology professionals tend to develop primarily through hands-on work, accumulating a wealth of tacit knowledge. The question is: how can these valuable yet subliminal lessons be shared to benefit the entire workforce? At Nitor, the SRE team responsible for round-the-clock maintenance services has found that the answer lies in something deeply ingrained in Nitor’s culture: community.
“We have a standing two-hour reservation for a weekly workshop where we tackle client and team challenges, dive into ongoing projects, or sometimes just code together. These shared sessions are always incredibly insightful. If a team member has a problem or concern, simply articulating it often leads to a revelation.”
This is how Mikko Aalto, Senior Site Reliability Engineer (SRE), describes how his team learns together, shares knowledge, and helps one another grow as they maintain services for Nitor's clients 24/7.
The SRE team ensures clients’ systems are up to date and running smoothly, and handles Nitor’s internal device management. Commonality is at the heart of daily operations as the work requires broad and continuously evolving expertise. Practices like regular workshops further strengthen this.
Aalto muses that new insight is often found through simple necessity: if a client's system faces an issue or systems need updating, these must be addressed as quickly as possible. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention.
“We also have on-call rotation in place, which means that someone from the team is always monitoring client systems around the clock. Sometimes our workshop includes reviewing a tricky situation from the previous night or weekend to see if we can find areas for improvement together. Sometimes we also develop our internal tools when the need to update usability and utility arises”, Aalto adds.
A versatile skill set is a vital asset
Aalto works as a client lead for a client operating in the banking sector, which is a highly regulated and closely monitored field. This sets the bar high both in terms of utilised technology and process reliability.
“There’s been a lot to learn – and far beyond just system knowledge. Drafting documentation, interpreting and implementing regulations, and streamlining processes while meeting legal scrutiny have all become workday staples”, Aalto notes.
Rather than being a focused specialist, Aalto sees himself as a generalist striving for broad understanding. Versatility is essential in the SRE team: technology is inherently unpredictable, and each client's systems and practices are unique to them. This means the SRE specialists constantly encounter new scenarios.
The key to success is seamless, ongoing exchange of knowledge and experience. Challenges are solved one case at a time – delving into the details, getting assistance from others, trying out different solutions, and documenting the results.
“We’ve got a fantastic team where you can always tag in a colleague to assist. No one is left to face a problem alone. We’re a diverse group of people, but we share a common language of curiosity”, Aalto summarises.
As knowledge is gained communally and naturally through the ebb and flow of daily work and specific use cases, the process of learning is very dynamic. Collective problem-solving can yield valuable knowledge to both observers and those actively participating in a given scenario.
A Digital Engineer is always evolving
Having also worked abroad, Aalto is an experienced team lead who finds social interaction both personally important and an essential learning path. Aalto's previous job started showing signs of stagnating into overly familiar routines, which pushed the curious and challenge-driven Digital Engineer towards a new career path. By Aalto's account, his learning journey is largely self-directed and reliant on visual feedback:
“I like to experiment with new things on my own first and just play around for a bit. Once questions start to take shape through exploration and wonder, I turn to colleagues or Google for help. I prefer approaching coworkers, because I feel I get more out of face-to-face interactions than from tapping away on a keyboard", Aalto continues.
Although Aalto believes that the role of a Digital Engineer will change in the future through avenues such as AI, advancements in technology will never diminish the value of understanding developed through communication. As long as one remains curious towards their own work, the chosen path is right.
“It wouldn’t feel right to stay still. I haven't stopped growing as a person or a professional – and I doubt I ever will. And I think that’s pretty great”, Aalto concludes.
The article series highlights the experiences of Nitoreans in continuous learning as part of their daily customer work. At Nitor, professional growth builds on training, collaborative learning, mentoring, Nitor Core time, and interesting customer projects. This article series stems from a desire to show appreciation for learning while working, the fundamental pillar of everyday professional development.
