Tech lessons I only learned on the road
It’s been no secret that at TopMonks we have unlimited home office. Or better said, we are all able to work remotely and most of us are doing so not only during the Christmas break or when baking cookies, but also for traveling. I am no exception: in the last two years I’ve spent about a third of my time abroad working remotely mostly in underdeveloped countries and war zones. Even though I intended to disconnect from my job, at the end of the day I learned the most valuable lessons not only about other cultures, but also about what it means to be a responsible #buidler in tech.
Anyway, this post is not about why or how to let your employees work remotely (if you are interested though, my colleague Jirka Penzes has great public talks about the topic :) ). I want to tell you more about how traveling has inspired me in my job as a lead of a high-tech blockchain branch of my company and broadened my view on the topics related to my work.
A few years back I found myself standing among my friends and realized that I couldn’t help but wonder how these well educated, up-to-date western Europeans don’t understand my reasons for wanting to get my salary in litecoin. Suddenly I’ve realized the huge bubble I’ve put myself in by working in tech. I was completely blind-folded by my surroundings, problems I was reading about, and the problems I was solving while working with VCs, startups and tech in general. But how could I be able to help others to build the real global product when I was already disconnected even from my friends?
I always loved to travel, but before my ways usually led to nice places: I’ve been to almost all western European countries. And well, after a while, it all seemed to be super similar with slight differences in a geoposition (west, south, north, and so on.) One day I woke up and booked a flight to Iran. I am not going to lie and say that I was prepared for what I’ve experienced while traveling all around the country. Then I went on to Iraq. One can never be prepared for something like that. Over time, I’ve kept on coming back to Middle East and saw Lebanon, Jordan, Iran again, Palestine and Israel. I’ve been to almost all of the Balkans, many post-soviet republics, I’ve even been to places that most people never heard of, like Nakhchivan. I never stayed only in a capital, I always went to the countryside, to the hills, to the deserts. I met people rich and poor, liberal and conservative, young and old, males and females. And I’m not finished: I am already planning my trips to far east and to Africa.
Nothing in my life has taught me as much as uncountable nights and days far beyond the borders of my comfort zone. Today I am deeply convinced that in the very core, all people are the same and are solving the very same problems, just facing different circumstances (geographical, historical, religious, cultural, social, and so on). I believe the things that connect us are much deeper and stronger than those which divide us. And I see I am no better or wiser than any of the people I’ve met. Also I saw many important things for my work as well.
I remember the first time I went to Turkey and then to the rest of the Middle East, amazed by the realization that most people skipped desktop and were using mobile phones almost exclusively.
When standing above Erbil’s busiest square and bazaar I suddenly saw all the cash (and services, and agreements) flowing peer-to-peer, from one hand to another, absolutely decentralized, unregulated, anonymous. What an inspiration!
When I saw two elderly men as passengers in a bus crash in Jordan getting out of the car, arguing, then shaking their hands and then continuing like nothing happened — everybody considered the problem to be solved — I saw proof of authority consensus mechanism. And while discussing tribes’ politics in Northern Iraq, I witnessed proof of stake in real life.
In one Iranian bazaar I had no cash left, so I patiently explained cryptocurrencies to my friend and helped him set up his very first wallet. Then I exchanged with him a great amount of deflating rial for litecoin. It was 2017. I hope Bassem stored his private keys well.
Then, this very winter, I celebrated 10 years of Bitcoin by exchanging it for some middleastern shitcoins with one Syrian lawyer. We were sitting in his apartment in Beirut, where he was hiding, refusing a refugee status. We finished our late night and early morning talk browsing the dark-net, looking for a new passport for him. The best Christmas gift I’ve ever given to anyone.
And today, having a coffee in my favorite coffee shop in Prague, my best friend, a Mexican, asked me how hard would it be to accept bitcoin in her planned foodtruck. I will be more than glad to help her with that.
There is a huge piece of the world we tend to call “the rest“ and we often forget that we are actually a minority and “global” shouldn’t be for tech savvy people from the USA and Western Europe. Today I am sure that while developing IT solutions in my projects, we don’t forget about those people: the elder ones, the socially challenged ones, the poor ones or the distant ones, the ones we only read in the newspapers about.
I tried to run away from my job several times, but technology found me even in the distant parts of the world, often with forgotten people. It taught me some of the most important things in my life. Try and go for it too. Maybe you’ll just see places. Or rediscover your compassion. Or respect. Or humility. But maybe you’ll learn that you are not that smart. Maybe you’ll reach the customers you’ve never even dreamed of. And that can never be bad.
