‍Onneksi olkoon Suomen tiimi! Our Finland entity Mapbox Oy was certified on the Finnish Trade Register back in 2018, and today we are thrilled to celebrate our six year anniversary!

Mapbox Oy started with a few passionate local Mapboxers, and through the years, we have gone through a number of changes - outgrowing one office space after another. 

This growth has been an incredible and amazing adventure. We are proud to have built a wonderful local community of innovative and hard working team members from all around the world joining forces from the heart of Helsinki.

Growing this fast wouldn’t be possible without some of our determined team members in Helsinki. We interviewed a few Mapboxers who had a significant role by helping us grow smoothly and responsibly in Finland. Jenni Harju - HR Operations Consultant, Ilya Mikhalev - Recruiting Manager, and Ellen Alencar Santos Laakia - HR Operations.

Jenni, it seems that just a second ago we celebrated Helsinki’s top floor opening, and now we are expanding again? How has it been to grow the space in Helsinki?

JH: Yes, time is going by super fast when you are having fun, right? Two years ago, we moved into our current gorgeous office. With a growing team, we needed more room to ensure we have space to work. We are adding what we like to call “a meeting hub” to the same staircase, just one set of steps down from our current office. This new space is meant for meetings only and is equipped with meeting rooms and phone booths. All of our desks still remain at the same floor to enable effective cross-team collaboration. 

Ilya, by looking at the numbers, you have definitely grown over the last few years. As the local recruiting manager, you are the first Mapboxers bunch of our new hires meet. What is the first thing you would like to tell them about our culture, especially in our Helsinki office?

IM: We embrace Mapbox values and, in addition, have local flair in our ways of working. I consider us here in the Helsinki office to have the best of both worlds - flexibility in working remotely and the opportunity to meet in person at our well-designed office space. The engineering teams present in Helsinki are largely co-located, which allows them to move fast while maintaining open and transparent communication with the teams overseas. The team here is very diverse, with 23+ nationalities represented. There is a sense of community here as everyone feels that, besides building great products for customers, they have a voice in scaling the site in Finland. New joiners receive a lot of help not only from engineering managers but also from engineers. It's very easy to build trust with anyone here from day one.

Jenni, the Helsinki community frequently gets together on a regular basis. What kind of activities do you do locally?

JH: We have events from A to Z. For example TechTalks, developer nights, volunteering activities and after work happenings but my favorites are definitely the ones where we collaborate with our customers and local community to make the magic happen. If we are talking about after work events, one of my favorite nights was when we were at an indoor surfing bay in Pasila or when we rented the entire Heureka Science Center for a Science & Dinner night. We also did Metal Yoga at the end of last year - that was also wicked fun!

Ellen Alencar Santos Laakia, you are our newest People team member in Helsinki - welcome to the team! What was the one thing that made you join Mapbox and how do you like it here so far?

EASL: I have just joined the team and I have had a warm welcome from the Mapboxers and it made me already feel like I belong here. After reading about the position, I decided to learn more about the company and as my values were matching with the ones in the company I became more and more interested. Another important thing to me was that, it seemed as if they were a fun community supporting each other towards the same goal while having a good ride, and because of that I wanted to join that ride. I am still processing lots of information but it has been great, and having Jenni has also made a big difference as she is super kind and supportive. I feel that I am where I should be, as a People team member I am able to help the folks in the office and get things going while helping my manager to plan nice things for them!

Ilya, what do you think is the “secret ingredient" or personal trait to be successful at Mapbox?

IM: Over my two years' tenure at Mapbox, I have witnessed multiple success stories of various kinds. People have changed teams and domains, pursued people leadership careers, and some returned to engineering work. What I feel people have in common here is they enjoy taking ownership and not seeing something as someone else's problem. You will always find a place here to make an impact and solve real-life problems for customers if you are self-driven and enjoy collaborating with others.

Happy anniversary to Team Helsinki! Interested in joining the team? Check out our openings on our career site.

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