Deputy head teacher, special needs educator, Scrum Master and group manager at a cryptography company. Lina's career follows no set template, and that is exactly what makes her the right person in the right place.
It was a tip from an acquaintance that made her apply. He had been for an interview at Tutus himself and thought Lina would be happy here. She went to the website, read about what the company does, and knew straight away that there was something there.
– What a cool thing to be working on, I thought. So I applied, she says.
Alongside her job, Lina is a group fitness instructor and teaches about eight classes a week. When she isn't in the studio she is outdoors getting some fresh air, or sitting at a table with board games. The energy is the same wherever she is, and it is infectious.
– Anything I find fun, I probably try to pass on to everyone else. I figure that if I think something is fun, someone else probably does too, even if they didn't know it before.
Her favourite game is Carcassonne, a strategy game in which you lay tiles, build cities and place small figures called meeples on roads and in cities.
– I like games that are easy to get started with but that you can keep developing. And I would rather build my own nice-looking cities than mess about with everyone else's.
From classroom to code
Lina's route to Tutus is anything but straight. She previously worked as a deputy head teacher and special needs educator, but was drawn to an entirely different way of thinking through her partner at the time, a software developer who had just started working in an agile way.
– I got to follow the whole journey with him. How their workflow improved, how they could get things out faster. His experience of what an incredible difference it made to structure the work that way. I was completely absorbed.
She read articles, listened to podcasts, went to lectures. In 2016 she took a Scrum Master course, then tried to bring the mindset back into the school.
– Schools work in a different way, and it was hard to apply what I had learned in that context. In the end I realised that if anything was going to come of this, I needed to change direction.
During the pandemic in 2020 she resigned and eventually landed in the IT industry, as a Scrum Master, then as a manager, and finally as a group manager at Tutus. In her current role she is responsible for teams of developers, and much of the work right now is about recruiting more.
– How would this person work in this group? What do they bring? I'm always looking for the synergies when I work with recruitment.
Contributing to the culture
At a previous workplace, Lina worked on something she calls a culture roadmap: a plan for regular culture initiatives, roughly once a month.
– I'm a big believer in symbolic value. Just showing that you care gets people talking about it. The effect comes later, but the activity creates a sense that the employer is also thinking about the important things outside the core business.
She brought that thinking with her to Tutus. One of her own initiatives was to set up culture conversations about communication, where staff from different parts of the company met in cross-functional groups and talked about something that affects everyone, whatever their role or department. She came up with the idea herself and raised it with HR, who thought it was a good one.
– Everyone has a view on communication. And when you meet across functions and get a bit of insight into each other's working day, it makes more difference to how people stick together than you might think.
The reaction afterwards was clear: several people came and asked when they could do it again.
The same wish to hold things together shows in how she thinks about her team, which is based in Falun. Going there to visit, even when there is no specific reason to, is an obvious part of the job. And when initiatives come from the team, such as a game of padel in the lunchtime sun, she joins in. Even if padel isn't exactly her strongest event.
– I'm rubbish at padel. But I join in anyway. Partly to encourage whoever took the initiative, and partly to show that you can take part even if you aren't the best.
More than an ordinary job
Tutus's purpose, protecting sensitive and classified information, is something Lina comes across in everyday life in a way she didn't quite expect. Not as a heavy sense of responsibility, but more as sudden moments of recognition.
– Day to day it's like any other job. You go to work and you get on with your tasks. But then you stop sometimes and think, that's right, this is actually what we do.
Such as when she was recently on an internal course, or when she hears how the products and solutions are used in practice. Something that is not a given at many other workplaces is that Tutus employees get to test the products themselves and use them in their own working day. In that sense they become their own customers.
– That's when I really think, wow, this is cool. Imagine, we make so much possible through our products. It's a great feeling.
