Next week (24.01.2018) I am going to be attending @graduateland ’s Virtual Career Fair to talk about Tuxera; the place I work at. I’ll be there with Satu Muilu and @debbie_tux, some of my colleagues. I am hoping to chat with as many people as possible in 2–3 hours! But in case I don’t have time to answer to all of you, and inspired by this post https://uxplanet.org/learn-ux-research-methods-with-gifs-875209a83b12, I made a small guide about what it is like to work at Tuxera, in GIFs. Keep in mind this is just my view 🙂 and there are +70 people that might differ and have different perspectives.
In my opinion, if you work at Tuxera, you really, I mean REALLY like to do this at least 80% of your day.
We do this at work, and also outside (most of us are involved in open source or have other software projects of our own).
We’re a software company, but I believe not a regular one. The software we develop goes into your devices and you don’t really interact with it. So for the most part you can forget about pretty interfaces, because we are embedded deep down the core of your operating system.
Therefore, sometimes it’s hard to explain people what we do. Shortly, I’d say we help the computer understand how data is stored and retrieved. A quick example, this would be your computer (or other consumer electronics like smartphones, TVs, or even cars…) without our software:
And this would be your device with it:
In the end I enjoy being in a market that’s a bit niche. Because not a lot of people in the world can do what we do at this level of expertise, we end up working together with big brands that everybody knows and uses on a daily basis. It’s normal to get caught up in the day-to-day activities, so I try to stop from time to time and detach a little to remember this big picture. Those are my favourite ten seconds, which feel something like:
I also enjoy that we have customers from all over the world. For the ones that are working at headquarters, in practice it means we run to the kitchen (we call it localhost) not to miss any treats that sales people bring from their trips.
Another thing I think you should know about the company is that we used to be located in the center of Helsinki. Now we are in Espoo, which is next (approx. 15 minutes) to Helsinki but will most likely require some type of commute. However, this allow us to develop and invest in our facilities much more. For example, in our headquarters we have:
- A swimming pool:
- Two saunas and a fireplace
- A table tennis room
- A gaming room
And other complimentary stuff like snacks and free drinks:
I’d also like to say that the company grows sustainably year-on-year and invests in other markets and ideas besides its main line of business. I think this has the benefit that you can always find a way of developing yourself and learn, because you can take on assignments outside your main area of knowledge (=hard to get bored).
I’ve been working at Tuxera for almost 4 years now — I might still not know all the answers to your questions 🙂, but I look forward to discuss about the company. If you want to sign up for the virtual fair here’s the link from Graduateland: https://graduateland.com/event/2368.
