This time in the “Working at Vaadin” series we’ll meet Mr. Johannes Tuikkala. Johannes has been part of the Vaadin crew for eight years, having worked in various large customer projects and is currently helping our customers in the support and maintenance team. Johannes is always a positive sight at the office and respected by all others as a considerate colleague.
How did you end up at Vaadin 8 years ago and what do you do today?
I was introduced to Vaadin by my colleague at the university - he recommended that I apply to Vaadin. I eagerly wanted to learn things, and so far I’ve been involved in both internal as well as external projects, starting from our internal work hour system to currently maintaining one of the largest maintenance projects we have with a pulp and paper chemicals industry provider. I also do sales support so I would say that my role and job description is fairly broad.
What is your typical day like at Vaadin?
My typical day is very dependant on the week and the project at hand. I handle priorities within the maintenance backlog, fix bugs and create new features for our support customers. Our support role is very variable so one week can be just fixing bugs or consulting the customer (e.g. improve their web app’s scalability) and another week can be building a new component or part of the UI to a project. This is all dependant on what support requests we get. I’m personally mostly interested in scalability issues and performance, so when those kinds of tickets arise, I’m always happy to do them.
What skills are the most important for somebody wanting to join Vaadin?
I would say that problem solving skills are the most important asset that I possess - this is a skill to find a solution and see the best possible outcome for the problem at hand. I’d also like to think that I have the capability to listen to the customer’s needs and find a solution that fits them better than a stock-solution. A bit of empathy might be a benefit to understand the stress of the customer when, for example, their end user requirements are exceptionally tricky and the production time is soon upon us.
What is the best thing about working at Vaadin?
I like the freedom of working - I can choose my working hours flexibly. My team mates are the best and I have a very supportive team lead. I think that open source is nice, and the opportunity to do my own projects during working time (Community Friday projects) is amazing. Vaadin has given me the opportunity to own a small part of Vaadin as a company and it is rewarding to see Vaadin succeeding after all the hard work and years. I really want to see what we can achieve in the future.
Besides work, I’m sure there are other things as well – what do you do in your free time?
Photography is the thing closest to my heart. I mainly take pictures of nature, from small bugs to deer and from starry skies to handsome landscapes. The closeby nature intrigues a lot and there are some nice natural reserves close to our Turku office. It’s great to see and find the beauty of nature so close to you.
You can take a closer look at Johannes’ photos at https://www.instagram.com/tuikkalaj/ and for our open positions check out https://vaadin.com/jobs
