Meet Mathias Viklund, Head Instructor .NET at SALT in Sweden. Every week we interview a Saltie and with Mathias we talked about his job as a Head Instructor and his passion for farm work. And of course also about ChatGPT 💬
What is your role at SALT and what excites you about working with SALT?
I’m Head Instructor for the .NET Full-Stack program and my enjoyment working here comes a great part from seeing the effects of my actions in real-time, be it with holding lectures, helping out students and thus helping them grow, to writing documentation, or doing other tasks internally. SALT is a growing company and there are many things that one can help out with given the interest, and with that, I flourish.
Tell us a bit about yourself and your work before joining SALT
Hobbyist programmer since about 15 years back with a history in the IT world from before I joined SALT. I have worked as an IT consultant, with all from IT-Administration on servers to troubleshooting as an IT technician.
I decided to leave that world behind when I spent a great deal of time with some coding projects during Covid and found that I really, really liked working with code. From there I switched careers and was positively surprised that my skills were much more in demand than I expected.
How is it to work in the tech industry?
Highly enjoyable! The IT industry is such a big place that there is a wide variety of what one can work with. Be it with responsibility, pace, location, remote vs. in-office, etc.
I especially like the fact that skill-wise, what you put in is what you get out. If one takes the time to read up on some new frameworks or tools, improve one’s coding, and so on, that leads to more exciting work opportunities and higher pay.
What are your thoughts about ChatGPT?
An interesting tool for the future that I believe will be a great complement for writing documentation, getting some start-up code for minor projects up and read, etc.
From my point of view, it’s not the “death of the developer” that many prophecies it to be but just another tool in the toolbox. My main reason for this view is that in the end, one needs to know what to ask for and be proficient enough to catch it when it is wrong.
What random hobbies do you have?
I could give you a list that never ends, but I enjoy repairing electronics, playing and modding Indie games, gardening, farm-work and board-games.
I’m known as the Jack-of-all-trades here at SALT.
