When my father came home from Vietnam, I was too young to remember. When I got older, he told me his tales as all fathers do. In one of them, he told me that he lost a friend because of an initial design defect in the M16A1 rifle. As it turned out, a twenty-round magazine could not hold twenty without jamming, and his friend, who was a draftee like him, paid the price.
Like me, my father relied upon the GI Bill to pay for training; like me, he got his degree later than most. He graduated college the same year I did from eighth grade. He went on as an electrical engineer for the Navy first, then the Army.
From that point on, he followed his own coined term, ”Soldiers First”. But he warned me as I began my own career, to look out for contractors. He said their ignorance of conditions on the ground, and people in general, get people killed.
He always asked himself out loud “why can’t I fix this?” And he always said, out loud, that stakeholders believe that “they” won’t let him. Consequentially, he carried a blue US Government phone book in his briefcase, so that when someone said “they”, he’d pull it out and ask “who?”
So, imagine my joy to be able to ply my trade at Freya. I haven’t been in the business for too long, but have been around a few blocks. The team here really care about people and that is what it is all about. Communication is currency. And all innovations should benefit people. The best ideas bring benefits people have never seen before or have never even thought about at all. Ideas are first and foremost about people and their well-being.
It became clear to me in a matter of months that this company cares. The “they-and-who?” Right in front of you.
It is rare. Freya is not a factory. It is a team. So I am happy to disagree with my father in saying that it is possible for a company to care about people, and am thrilled that I landed with such a great group of people.
