Lina at Tutus

It was a tip from an acquaintance that prompted her to apply. He'd been to an interview at Tutus himself and thought Lina would feel at home here. She went onto the website, read about the role and immediately sensed there was something to it.

– What a cool role, I thought. So I applied, she says.

Lina is a group fitness instructor on the side, teaching around eight classes a week. When she isn't in the gym, she's out in nature breathing in the fresh air, or sitting at a table with an analogue board game. The energy is the same wherever she is, and it's contagious.

– Anything I find fun, I suppose I try to pass on to everyone else. I figure that if I enjoy something, someone else probably will too, even if they didn't know it before.

Her favourite game is Carcassonne, a strategy game where you lay tiles, build cities and place little figures called meeples on roads and in towns.

– I like games that are easy to get going with but have room to develop. And I'd rather build my own smart-looking cities than mess about with everyone else's.

From classroom to code

Lina's path to Tutus is anything but straight. She previously worked as an assistant principal and special needs educator, but became captivated by an entirely different way of thinking through her then-partner, a systems developer who had just started working in an agile way.

– I got to come along on that whole journey. How their workflow improved, how they could ship things faster. His sense 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 talks. In 2016 she took a scrum master course, then tried to carry the mindset back into the school.

– In schools you work in a different way, and it was hard to apply what I'd learnt in that context. Eventually I realised that if this was going to come to anything, I needed to change track.

During the pandemic in 2020 she handed in her notice and eventually landed in the IT industry, as a scrum master, then as a manager, and finally as a team manager at Tutus. In her current role she's responsible for teams made up of developers, and right now much of the work is about recruiting more.

– How would this person work within 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 with 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 a bit of commitment 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 that lie outside the core mission.

She brought that thinking with her to Tutus. One of her own initiatives was to set up culture conversations around communication, where employees from different parts of the company met in cross-functional groups and talked about something that affects everyone, regardless of 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 a bigger difference to the sense of togetherness than you might think.

The response afterwards was clear — several people came and asked when they could do it again.

That same desire to bring people together shows in how she thinks about her team based in Falun. Going up to visit, even when there's no specific matter to deal with, is a natural part of the job. And when initiatives come from the team — like 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 take part anyway. Partly to encourage whoever took the initiative, and partly to show that you can join in even if you're not the best.

More than just a job

Tutus's mission, to protect sensitive and classified information,  is something Lina encounters in everyday life in a way she didn't quite expect. Not as a heavy sense of responsibility, but more as sudden moments of realisation.

– Day to day, it's like any other job. You go to work and get on with your tasks. But then sometimes you stop and remember: oh yes, this is actually what we're doing.

Like when she recently attended an internal training session, or when she hears how the products and solutions are used in practice. One thing that isn't a given at many other workplaces is that Tutus employees get to test the products and use them in their own working day. That way, they become their own customers.

– That's when I really think, wow, how cool is this. Imagine — we make so much possible through our products. It's a brilliant feeling.