Juhani Vanhatapio – My Story

When I was a kid, my dream was to become a fighter pilot.

My initial dream was to become a fighter pilot

When I was growing up, I would see fighter jets flying high in the sky. Those people seemed to have the best job in the world. Fly high above the clouds and move with a speed of 1900 km/h. The job could be described by two words: adrenaline and high-speed. Anyone who has seen the Top Gun movie, knows what I’m talking about.

In the spring 2015, I participated in Finnish Air Force aptitude tests and advanced on the third level, where my cognitive skills failed me and resulted in a failure. I felt defeated as I wasn’t part of the lucky five percent that got accepted. And just like that my dream was gone.

In the summer 2015, I did my 12-months military service and was promoted to the rank of sergeant. The year gave me confidence as I had to overcome my own abilities multiple times and do things I thought were impossible.

Military career.

Aiming towards becoming a Special Forces Operator

After the military service, I had two opportunities: start my career as a salesperson or continue within the military. After some success in the military, I decided to continue there as an instructor with a 6+6 month deal. My main responsibilities included training the conscripts into their wartime missions and develop my own skills as a leader and as a soldier.

During my time as an instructor, I heard about the Utti jaeger regiment, which is the Finnish special operations group. They were the most elite soldiers of the Finnish army. Again, I saw the challenge as intriguing and started to prepare for the cruel aptitude tests.

For the aptitude tests, I hired a personal trainer and started to work towards meeting the physical requirements. I started to work extremely hard to meet the requirements. I did running, gym, brazilian jiu-jitsu and swimming. I tried to get comfortable with cold water and conquer my fear of the heights.

Despite my intense training, I failed to meet the physical requirements. I felt the bitter taste of failure once more.

On a mission for peace.

Concluding my military career as a United Nations Peacekeeper

As my time as an instructor in Finnish Defence Forces came to an end, I decided to apply for a peacekeeping operation to conclude my military career. After a few months of waiting, I received an invitation for a position in Southern Lebanon for 2018 as a Second in Command for my squad. 

While I was waiting for the deployment to start, I had to think about my future goals once more. Peacekeeping is not really something one could do as a career. I started to think between university studies or entrepreneurship. 

In the autumn 2017, I completed Further vocational qualification in entrepreneurship training. I had no idea what kind of business I wanted to start, but imagined entrepreneurship as the most difficult thing I could try doing. 

As I started my deployment in Lebanon, I spent days with doing my responsibilities and evening studying about the entrepreneurship. While others were laying on the sundeck or having drinks, I was with my laptop learning about how to start a business. 

After the deployment I had saved +10 000 euros for my upcoming business ventures.

Starting a business.

Failing as an Entrepreneur

Late 2018 I founded my own company Midnight Academy Oy. My business idea was to help aspiring students to succeed in the Air Force aptitude tests. To start my business I learned to create my own WordPress-website using mostly no-code solutions. I had to do some marketing and SEO to discover potential customers. 

During my first months as an entrepreneur, I adapted disciplined mindset to wake-up every day at 06:00 and work until afternoon. This was work that didn’t have a salary. Only a dream within. 

After first six months of starting my business, I tried to land a funding from the bank to pivot my strategy into VR-based flight simulation, but was unable to land funding due the lack of available self-funding and failing with getting investments from any angel investors. Once more, I looked the failure straight into eyes.

I have helped over a thousand people to see the northern lights.

Becoming a Northern Lights Guide

Late 2019, I joined Beyond Arctic Oy as a northern lights guide and photographer. Northern lights are a difficult service as you are always fighting against the clouds and then hoping for favorable solar wind attributes. One of the best parts about this work was the opportunity to meet people from all over the world, tell stories and explore the beautiful places at the Arctic Circle. Despite the difficult nature of the work, most of the nights the customers were really happy with the tours and tipping wasn’t out of ordinary.

Just when I started to get used to working as a guide, the pandemic shook the whole world in early 2020. All of our work was cancelled mid-March. While I was ice fishing in the remove wilderness lake, I started to reflect my future once more. As there was no guarantee that pandemic would go into a better direction, I decided that I should try to pursue a degree. 

Remainder of 2020 I worked as a web developer for Evigo Oy, where my main tasks were related to building WordPress-websites (using no-code solutions), livestreams, content creation and photography. During my time at Evigo, I applied for Machine Learning and Data Engineering study program at Lapland University of Applied Sciences. Luckily I passed the examination tests and my journey to becoming a data professional had started.

For the past 2,5 years I have worked towards becoming a data/ML engineer.

My objective is to become a highly-skilled Data Engineer / Machine Learning Engineer

Autumn 2021 I started to study Machine Learning and Data Engineering. To fund my studies, I also worked part-time as a northern lights guide after the tourism started to show signs of recovery. I would spend my days studying data engineering concepts and nights working as a northern lights guide. I was performing really well as a northern lights guide and I started to get more responsibility with taking more demanding customers (VIPs) and training new guides.

During my first semester, in addition to my school classes, I started to practice data engineering concepts at dataquest.io where I completed the following courses:

• Introduction to Python
• Fundamentals of SQL
• Introduction to Algorithms

In the spring of 2022, our first daughter was born, which gave me even more fuel to succeed in my career. In 2022 I started to learn data concepts at datacamp.com where I have been working towards completing the Data Engineer career path.

Current Tech Stack

• Python (Pandas, Numpy, Matplotlib)
• SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL)
• Command Line (Bash Shell)
• Git Version Control
• ML with Scikit-learn
• Docker

 Knowledge

• Data Engineering Topics
• Database Design
• Sentiment Analysis
• Cyber Security
• Agile Project Management
• Machine Learning Topics
• Linear Algebra