Field CTO @ Swarmia. Career + leadership coach. Author of Build, ex-Stripe, ex-Indeed. I excel at the intersection of people, process, and technology.
One week down and three more working days to go for this, my second visit to Swarmia HQ in Helsinki. Takeaways: - As always, the high-throughput, low-latency conversations are irreplaceable, as much as I enjoy working from home most of the time. - Even just being in the same-ish timezone matters a ton, it hardly matters whether you're in-office or not. Different parts of the day have different vibes, and it can be hard to match the end-of-day Helsinki vibe with the beginning-of-day US vibe. The switch when I am here is almost immediate. - Stay at the Airbnb 20 minutes away, not the hotel five minutes away. My watch is over the moon about my physical activity. The only place I can walk for 20 minutes at home is back to my house. - We are doing some really cool and thoughtful and purposeful things. It's been a long while since I worked somewhere this small, and perhaps never somewhere so early. It is an endless treat to feel like my work matters in a way it never has before.
Awesome! Those are great takeaways, and a good reminder for me. I'm headed to JOB TODAY HQ in Luxembourg soon for my second trip! Timezones are even harder with the spread to the west coast, so I can't wait to benefit from all the things you listed. And my hotel is 10-15m walk which is great! Luxembourg city is a nice one to walk through. I often take detours.
Engineering Manager | Software Engineer | Search platforms | Large scale web applications and web services | Storage and databases expert | Event-driven and messaging | Low latency data pipelines | Identity and security
1yHelsinki is a very nice city! If you have the chance, I recommend spending a few days in Tallinn, a short ferry trip across the sea.