Get to Know Us | Tommi Mäki-Ullakko, Head of IT, Helsinki

How was your summer, Tommi?

Thanks for asking. Summer was nice and relaxing! I was mainly with my family at our summer house swimming, fishing, bathing in the sauna, and doing some DIY projects not related to IT. Going back to basics and slowing down help me take my thoughts off of work.

How did you end up working at Hannes Snellman?

I graduated as a network engineer from EVTEK (nowadays Metropolia) in 2008. After that, a headhunter found me in 2009 and led me to work at Hannes Snellman as a system administrator. During my studies, I also did some IT-related work like web pages, computer maintenance, and general IT development for small companies. During my studies, I also worked as a salesman in a home electronics store, which was great because I love tech.

What do you like most about your job?

I still get to do quite a lot of actual maintenance and development work with software, network, servers, and endpoints, which I love. Information security also plays a big part of what I do, and it is taking more time year by year. I also like to keep myself up to date on new innovations happening in the legal tech field. It is a great feeling when you take into use a tech solution that lawyers immediately adopt, use, and like. When this happens, you know you are doing the right thing!

How would you describe your team?

We have a great mindset in our team to develop such systems and processes that support and enable the modern lawyers’ work. We share ideas and everyone is welcome to contribute their ideas to improve the IT environment at Hannes. In short, I would describe our team as fun, approachable, helpful, and solution-oriented.

You often refer to yourself as the IT man and you have started the tradition of surprising colleagues with entertaining visual elements or pure jokes at our office meetings? Please tell us a bit about that.

Yeah, I like to keep things fun and interesting. There is no point in delivering a monolog telling important things about IT if no one is listening. Grabbing the audience’s attention with some humour always works! Also, I try to make tech fun and not so scary for the lawyers to increase adoption.

What would be the top 3 tips the IT man would like to share regarding working remotely?

1. Think before you click
2. Make use of Teams as often as possible to connect with others
3. Go outside and breathe

Want to know more about working at Hannes Snellman? Please pay a visit to our Careers section.