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The two Data Respons employees, Tom and Sondre, give relevance to the saying “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”; they are the first father and son employees in the Data Respons company. In order to check whether the saying has more resonance for the two, we met the father and son for a small talk during the Kongsberg Jazz Festival of 2022.
Sondre Ninive Andersen started his career as a hardware developer at Data Respons R&D Services just before the summer of 2022, after quitting a PhD programme. “I discovered that I wanted to work with something more practical compared to what the PhD programme aimed at”. As he was attracted to live at his significant other’s home place, Vingelen in Østerdalen, he was eager to have the option to work remotely from his home office. The years surrounding the coronavirus pandemic made both Data Respons and customers realize that most tasks can readily be solved from the home office, and Sondre became the first person at Data Respons to be offered a job position with home as a permanent workplace. Working from home has thus far been going well, and his first assignment is for our customer TechnipFMC.
Contrary to his son, Tom Holtermann Andersen has worked at Data Respons for a long time. Tom, who is the R&D Manager at Data Respons in Kongsberg, is originally from Hammerfest in the north of Norway. Tom started off his career in the company’s Kongsberg department as a software developer in the early 2000s, having previously worked a few years at the Norwegian Space Agency at Andøya, in addition to a few years at Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace. It was at Andøya that Sondre was born, even though they both hold the technology city of Kongsberg closest to their hearts.
Sondre is employed at the R&D Oslo department, and when Tom got wind of Sondre applying for a job at Data Respons, it was important for both him and his leader, Ivar, that the hiring process was done without the interference of Tom. Now that his son is an employee, Tom is very happy that his son is going to work with us, and he points out that even though an employment at Data Respons is nice to have on your CV, it also opens the door to a great variety of assignments. He elaborates somewhat modestly that his son has great prerequisites for success at Data Respons; “Sondre has a good background, not only has he an education in hardware engineering, he has also been programming since primary school, and knowing both these important disciplines creates a great foundation. I understand the choice of wanting to work with more practical development; I have always perceived Sondre more as a handicrafts technologist, eagerly taking things apart in order to see how they work”.
Sondre decided to apply for a position at Data Respons because he had experienced, both through his father’s accounts, and from a summer job when he was younger, that it is an exciting workplace. He also enjoys that Data Respons has a good size with a flat organizational structure; after having tried both a large-sized company and a startup, Sondre concludes that this is a golden middle way. Tom agrees, and emphasizes that even though the company now is part of a large group, the mindset of running a small business and the autonomy is kept at R&D Services, and the developers gain insight in all parts of the operation.
The father and son do not only share an enthusiasm for technology, but also music. They both play the trumpet, but they do perhaps disagree a little bit about what matters the most; who started playing first; Sondre 5 years versus Tom 8 years, or who have been playing the longest; Tom >> Sondre. They are now eager to round off the conversation as they are heading to a bebop-talk (!), as the first event of this year’s jazz festival. In tomorrow’s evening, Tom is the one that’s up on the stage with his funk/soul-band, and Sondre looks forward to listening to his role model play.
R&D Manager