Even after they’ve moved on to new opportunities, every Avantee leaves their mark on our culture. Nils, we’re proud of everything we did together and we know you’ll keep thriving! You’re in the Avant Alumni Club for life.
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Nils Carlsson
Former Senior Data Scientist for the Data Science team
With Avant 2017-2023
What’s it like to work @Avant? We asked Nils for his take on our culture, and here’s what he said:
1. How would you describe Avant’s culture?
It’s very interactive, and we don’t have a lot of strictly set ways of doing things. We trust that our people are good enough to get things done without needing a strict process, and as we grow and put more processes in place, we keep that spark of being able to explore new and better ways of doing things. You can carve your own path, which I appreciate as someone who likes to work independently. I think Avant gives you a great avenue for exploring your own way of working.
2. Why are you happy/successful here?
Like I mentioned, I’m a very independent worker—I enjoy how my manager and I can figure out projects for me to work on without a ton of hand-holding throughout. That’s how I operate best, and that also fits in well with how a lot of work gets done at Avant. I had one other job before Avant, at an academic institution, and I felt like I had a lot more supervision. I worked with a professor, and whatever projects the professor wanted to work on, I would work on. How she wanted them to get done is how they would get done. Coming here was a big change of pace from that, much less structured, and I found that I actually enjoyed it a lot more. Coming to Avant helped me figure out that that was my style.
3. What’s a superpower you get to apply at your job?
I’m a pretty analytical thinker, which makes sense because I’m a data scientist. I get to apply that on a daily basis, that problem-solving mindset, that analytic mentality, literally every time I open my computer. It can be an almost zen-like process where you don’t even look at the clock for a while because you’re just totally immersed in your work. Then you get that Eureka moment, like, I think I solved something here, and you realize it’s 5 p.m. already. That’s my superpower.
4. If you had to describe who you are and not mention your work at all, what would you say?
I place a lot of stock in my relationships. I have some really good friends from high school and college, and in some cases those friendships go back pretty much my entire life. I definitely place a lot of value on those. Especially during Covid, it was easy to get isolated, so I had to find new ways of reaching out to friends. I think I’m more of a quality than quantity type of person. Maintaining those close relationships is a huge part of who I am.
5. When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Paleontologist. I was obsessed with dinosaurs.
