How this office extrovert got through a year of lockdowns and working from home
Kiril Todorov reflects on how the social dynamics of work-life have changed since the start of 2020.
Kiril Todorov is a DevOps Engineer working from SumUp’s office in beautiful Sofia, Bulgaria. Having joined in January of 2017, he’s watched the company go from a medium-sized startup to an international organisation in just 3 years. “We moved from a multi-datacenter setup to a fullfledged cloud operation and then started moving from pure cloud to Kubernetes. All in all, a lot has happened and continues to happen.” Luckily, he’s quick to adapt and enjoys working in a fast-paced environment. “Every week presents new challenges, so it’s never boring.”
A social person at heart, Kiril finds office-life enriching and enjoys spending time with his colleagues. “I love it, as big a fan as I am of working from home, I have to admit that some tasks are just easier if done from the office. Aside from the work aspect of it, socialising with people from different teams is great too. Just the laid-back atmosphere and the activities that we can do with each other at the office made it worth going in every day.”
Then 2020 happened.
Kiril, like millions of people around the globe, found himself under lockdown and working completely from home. All of the sudden, socialising became social distancing. And those beloved coffee machine conversations became Zoom calls, which, as cool as the backgrounds are, just couldn’t compare to real-life human interactions.
Luckily, he’s been part of an international organisation for a while now, so virtual work wasn’t foreign to him. “I think once the dust settled and people got into their daily routines it got easier. I’ve always been a huge user of chat programs, even before the Internet Relay Chat days, it’s always been one of my main ways to keep in touch with people across the world and across different time zones. So I just kept doing that. The number of video calls increased a little. I helped set up a Zoom account and had a few meetings with the extended family, so we can have a few virtual gatherings.”
While no stranger to virtual communication, the lack of socialising in the office had turned his working dynamics upside down. Kiril took it upon himself to find ways of staying connecting with colleagues. He reflected back on team-building activities that had worked in the office and brainstormed ways to replicate them online. The first thing to come to his mind? Board games.
A long-time board game lover, Kiril has plenty of experience organising game nights. “I brought some board games with me to one of the first hackathons we did. The idea was to just have them around to fill the time in the evenings. I thought we might use them once or twice. Turns out, almost everyone involved liked board games. We ended up playing every evening of the hackathon and sometimes well into the night.”
And just like that, board game nights were an in-office regularity. “I just thought it might be fun to do the same when we’re back in the office — it’s a great way to get to know people from different teams you don’t really interact with that often. It also helps humanise the leadership team. Playing a few games with the CTO of the company definitely makes them feel more approachable.
Having seen such success in person, Kiril decided to host the very first SumUp virtual game night. This time, all Sofia-based SumUppers were encouraged to join in. And while it wasn’t without its logistical challenges, everyone ended up having fun reconnecting with their colleagues.
“It was an interesting experience. What I found most interesting was that most of the attendees were new and hadn’t joined for past game evenings. It was nice to have new faces around. To be honest, I’m not sure board games work as well online, there’s definitely room for optimisation. All in all, it was fun and definitely helped everyone feel more socially connected.”
Of course, virtual board games can’t fill the void of day to day office socialising completely. Nothing can. But it has helped bring the team closer together in a time when they needed to be apart. As has the support the team has received throughout the year.
“I think SumUp’s response to the pandemic and lockdowns has been nothing short of impressive. We acted ahead of official recommendations in most countries by taking what other countries were doing as an example and applying it to our offices across the world. Setting this up was not an easy task. Huge kudos go to the IT teams in the main offices who worked extra hours to ensure everything and everyone was taken care of, regardless of how hard it was to set up a home office in some cases. But none of that would have been possible without the leadership taking the health of each of us very seriously and leading by example.”
While it’s been a crazy year, Kiril continues to make the most of it and, when possible, creates spontaneous moments that bring his team closer together. That said, he’s definitely excited to get back to normal office life and will carry a new appreciation for all that it provides.
“I mostly miss the everyday casual social contact, not just with my colleagues from the team, but with the people from the other teams. There are so many new joiners that I’ve never actually seen in person. I think when we do finally return to the office, we’ll all appreciate the socialisation a bit more. On the other hand, I think we’ll also fully appreciate the opportunity we have to work from home and the level of focus it can provide with fewer distractions.”
Only time will tell what comes next for Kiril’s team. For now, virtual social activities, whether it be board games or other activities, are here to connect us.
