What defines a work culture?

Here to give us an inside look at what it’s really like to work at Griffeye is Eva-Lotta Liljegren. She’s a Principal Software Developer, Architect and Team Lead for one of our R&D teams and has been working at Griffeye’s since 2013. Here, she talks about her role and how she leads her team and collaborates with the other R&D teams across Griffeye.

How do you work within your team?

I strive to work closely together with the rest of the team, taking part in technical discussions, reviewing code and solutions, digging into the code on my own, and doing pair or mob-programming together with one or several other developers.

As an architect, my responsibility is to make decisions in collaboration with the rest of the team regarding how we can technically solve problems and create the best solutions for our product.

As a team lead, I strive to lead the team to work as efficiently as possible, working on the most important things first. But perhaps, most importantly, I try to make everyone feel that they are part of the team and that each individual is important. We solve things and deliver as a team. To me, an important key is that you enjoy coming to work and are so comfortable in the group that you always feel free to ask questions, state your opinion, and dare to ask again if there is something you don’t understand.

We are an excellent team with widespread knowledge, experiences, and backgrounds. We complement each other in many ways.

What does collaboration between the different R&D teams look like?

Each R&D team has responsibility for a different technical area and a different part of the Griffeye products. Sometimes, new features span over more than one area and team responsibility. This often means that the work starts with discussions between the architects and product owners involved to try to find the best solution and get an idea of which team should do what. Sometimes, two or more developers from different teams sit down together for pair-programming or help each other with code reviews and testing.

We also have a User Experience team and a Quality Assurance team, working in close collaboration with all development teams. They have the full picture of the products and work together with the development teams on a daily basis.

How would you describe the work culture at Griffeye?

I would say that Griffeye employees are humble and down-to-earth, but also have a very strong will to push forward and create better technical solutions for our users. We want to feel proud about what we deliver.

We love having you here, but what keeps you at Griffeye?

Mainly two things. There’s the workplace itself, full of friendly, skilled and motivated colleagues and a lot of laughter. But there’s also the strive to do something that really means something. When we get feedback from a user telling us that our product made it possible for him or her to rescue a child from ongoing sexual abuse, it’s very motivating. Also on the plus side is our technically challenging products that require the use of different programming languages and techniques—which means that we are continuously learning.

What would you say makes Griffeye unique?

Our close collaboration with our customers. Since they have material that we are not allowed to see (and are happy not to see), we have built long and trustful relationships with many of our customers to try to understand how we can build products that help them do good work. I think that we have mutual respect for each other’s work and challenges and there are many great discussions that make it possible for us to build the “right” things.

Thank you, Eva-Lotta!