Glitni | Summary of the First Half of 2025

We have grown a lot in the first half of 2025, and now it is starting to take shape! Here is a quick summary of what we have accomplished - and not accomplished. As honest as we can manage, in retro format.

Highlights

We accomplished a lot in the first half of 2025. Here are our highlights:

• We had yet another large client, and have plenty to do. We are working more together at the same client.
• We got Alexander O, Alexander V and Sven as new employees, and now we are 14. We are still ready to recruit more, if the right people become available.
• We are moving!

Sales and projects - New large client

Sales and projects | Roles we have taken

At our clients, we have served as:

• data platform developers and architects
• data engineer
• team lead for data engineers
• dbt expert
• project manager for data platform renewal to the cloud

Sales and projects | What we accomplished

• We have won a new large client. Glitni has over time built a solid client portfolio across industries. We are fortunate to have gained a foothold with a major player in telecoms, and got several people in at the same time. The majority of opportunities have still arisen because we have been visible over time and people have contacted us. What is new over the past half-year is that former clients, where we had concluded assignments, have come back to us with new needs. That is wonderful.

• We have earned trust as a collective professional community. We emphasise being able to work together at the same client. That way we can share experiences, learn from each other and nurture a community where we spend the most time - at our clients. We are fortunate that there is good morale in our projects, and our clients have much unfinished business in the data domain. 10 of our 14 people have the opportunity to work alongside other Glitni consultants every day - naturally together with the clients’ own resources. The goal is 14 out of 14 - but we are well on our way.

• We work on all major platforms and technologies. Our professional community shall not be fixated on any single platform or technology, and instead be able to give independent advice on architecture and technology choices. This also requires that we work with all the major platforms and technologies, and over the past half-year we had assignments on GCP, Azure and AWS, on technologies such as Databricks, Fabric, Synapse Analytics, Snowflake, BigQuery and RedShift.

Sales and projects | Where we can improve

• Hourly rates still need to go up. Through changing projects and roles, and somewhat less emphasis on the public sector, we have increased hourly rates considerably for the next half-year. Nevertheless, we still have some way to go. We unabashedly believe that specialist expertise deserves a premium over the standard market rate.

• We have not succeeded in securing enough framework agreements in the public sector. We have obtained a framework agreement together with Knowit at the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, and qualified for some dynamic purchasing schemes. But - we have tried for quite a few more, and for the time being we cannot really call this a success. Going forward, we shall be a bit more critical about whether we stand a chance of succeeding, because even though each individual agreement does not demand much of us, there is still some noise that takes focus away from assignments and other sales.

• We are still slow to productise and conceptualise. If we package things up, especially repeatable capabilities within data platforms, we could likely achieve both faster sales cycles and price in know-how. We have simply not set aside enough time.

Recruitment - We are now 14 employees!

We are extremely focused on getting the right people on board, and have succeeded well over the past half-year.

Recruitment | What we accomplished

• We are absolutely delighted to have brought in three new consultants. We got Alexander O, Alexander V and Sven as new employees, and now we are 14. All are up and running in projects.

Recruitment | Where we can improve

• We need to continue working on the balance of roles and backgrounds. We need to take action to ensure we have a better gender balance, and will likely use a headhunter more to achieve this. Some simple ratios show that our workforce consists of:
  • 12 men, 2 women. Not good enough, in other words.
  • 12 highly experienced, 2 with growing experience.
  • 7 can take data platform developer roles, 12 can take data engineer roles and 3 prefer project manager/advisor roles. Note that the same person can fill multiple roles.

Internal life - Glitni is moving!

Internal life | What we accomplished

• We are moving! We have been very happy with having offices at Spaces Tullinlokka. It is only 4 months since we got an extra neighbouring office in addition to the one we had, with 6 extra desks. Now we are 14 - and hiring more, so room for 12 is not enough. We will therefore be moving on 1 August to new offices with room for 20+. The new address will be Lakkegata 55, in Gronland, Oslo. We are all looking forward to it!

• We invest in the professional environment. 3 of us travelled to San Francisco in June - for Databricks Data & AI Summit, and were very pleased with the trip. More locally, we have good focus on our internal days, and continue with professional lunches, where we run low-threshold demos at lunch every other week, for those who are present.

• We have a truly brilliant social calendar. There is great energy around initiatives and desire to spend time together, and not least the Glitni Company Sports Club has delivered the goods over the past half-year. The Glitni Games are underway, with a winner to be crowned at this year’s Christmas party in December. The cabin trip and Holmenkollstafetten are two of the highlights.

• Holmenkollstafetten deserves its own bullet point. We clocked in at 1:24 something, with 9 runners across 15 legs. Our very first Holmenkollstafetten gave us an excuse to have a running coach beforehand, make Glitni running gear - and of course celebrate tip-top effort afterwards. Next year we will not win either. But that does not matter, so long as the spirit is as good as it was this year.

Internal life | Where we can improve

• We can systematise professional development even more as a company. We are good, but have so far planned internal days and professional discussions based on what each individual suggests as a topic. Going forward, we want a clearer connection from market trends/what we need as a company, to development plans for each consultant, to how this is reflected in our professional programme.

• Get even better control of routines and legal requirements. We have become good at rotating the topics we work on in the administration/management team. We spend extremely little time internally/on administration, and we probably cannot count on that lasting forever. We are getting bigger, so we should take a systematic approach to a number of tasks that were not so important during the start-up phase.

• Strategy and plans need an update. We reviewed our strategy at start-up, and are in full agreement that we have achieved the important targets we set ourselves. The time has come to lay a plan for the next 2-3 years - so we shall get started on that soon.

Visibility - We have consistently high activity, and are reaping the rewards

Visibility | What we accomplished

• We organised Oslo dbt Meetup no. 9 in May, with good professional contributions from dbt Labs, Sparebank1 Utvikling and Oda.

• We have continued producing episodes of the podcast “Datautforskerne” (The Data Explorers). We have launched 15 episodes so far, of which 5 in the past half-year. We can still work MUCH more systematically on content and guests - but have hopefully sorted consistently good sound. We are not giving up.

• Our marketing strategy is working well for us. Alongside the Meetup and Datautforskerne, we regularly post professional opinions on LinkedIn, even though we can always do more. The results are not always immediate, but we notice that we regularly receive enquiries from potential clients and new employees.

Visibility | Where we can improve

• Working on visibility takes time, and we can become even better! As with last half-year, we can get even better at publishing regularly and frequently enough on LinkedIn, the podcast and Glitni.no.

• We can get more people active on LinkedIn, Medium and other social media. But it needs to be driven by intrinsic motivation. Alexander O has contributed several posts, which helps build our brand.

• We shall contribute at more external events. We have participated in two professional gatherings where we were invited to speak about data engineering and data platforms. We need to do more of that next half-year.

Follow our development

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