Work-Life Balance in the Decentralized World
If you could do your job from anywhere in the world with internet access, would you go to the office every day?
In today’s world, as technology helps us shorten the distance and be more connected, it’s more and more common for people to do their jobs and add value to an organization no matter where they are located. In technology companies, it’s frequent to see multidisciplinary, distributed teams interacting to build world-class products and services. A Company like Consensys, which mission is to make the world a more decentralized place, it’s no exception.
As a member of the Treum team, it’s normal to interact on a daily basis with teammates located in different cities across the US, Romania, Ireland, India and Chile. All of us are working to build the Supply Chain tech of the future. To achieve this it’s important to have good communication practices and a lot of self-discipline. That’s why we so highly value our culture and try to use (even build sometimes) the best tools to guarantee a fluid communication and collaboration.
Not only are we distributed in different places around the world, but it’s also common for some of us to spend seasons in a different city or country — all without impacting the fulfillment of our team responsibilities.
Last year I made the choice to spend three months working while traveling across Europe with my girlfriend. To make this adventure possible, a lot of planning was needed, and we had to be very organized. We would spend the mornings sightseeing — our daily agenda often consisted of going to a museum, visiting landmarks and historic places, or just enjoying a traditional dish from the city we were in.
Around 3 or 4 pm local time, (10 am ET) I would start my workday by joining a sync up call with the team: the daily standup. From that moment on I would do my best to work without interruptions until midnight. After that, I would rest and then prepare to repeat the itinerary the next day. Some mornings we would just stay home resting to recharge batteries.
On weekends, we would mostly do sightseeing, or take a bus or flight to the next destination. Sometimes I would use that time on the road to write lines of code or review Pull Requests. That’s how I got the opportunity to visit 9 countries and 17 cities while collaborating with the team to build a kickass product. I even had the chance to visit my teammates in Bucharest to have a few days of brainstorming, designing and coding face to face.
This trip was an exhausting and very rewarding experience. Getting to experience things like visiting the magnificent city of Toledo, seeing the ruins of the ancient Roman Empire, or enjoying the view of the city of Paris from The Grande Roue, among many others, left memories that will be with me always.
It’s an incredible opportunity to be a part of such a team — where I not only get to work with very talented people, but also have the possibility to fulfill a lifelong dream of mine like traveling the world. I find that I am even more motivated to work hard to accomplish goals and not to let my team down.
“With great power comes great responsibility” or in this case “With great freedom comes great responsibility”. The culture and work ethic within ConsenSys and the Treum team allow all of its members to be motivated to deliver excellent results and make responsible use of the freedoms and flexibility that this way of working provides, without diminishing our performance.
