In the beginning of April this year(2022) I started at Novu after almost 5 months since they reached out to hire me and now almost 5 months have passed since I started. I will now dive deep down in those 5 months and try to figure out what I have learned and why I really enjoy working remote and with Novu.
Due to Covid-19 pandemic I worked remote 3 days a week and 2 days in office, we were allowed to work full time but an empty office is not fun to be in to be honest. When Covid-19 was at its worst in Sweden I worked fully remote and did not like it all... I missed being in an office and meeting my collegues during coffe and lunch breaks. This was one of my fear joining Novu, that I would feel the same here. But it turned out to be the opposite. As no one had an "office" to go to I do not miss it at all. Do I like to have a desk in an open office area? No not at all, call me lazy or anti-social but working remote solves a lot of the daily logistics. I do not need to travel to an office, I do not need to prepare a lunchbox (I have my kitchen behind me when I am working, literally).
Communication is hard even in a "office company" and it is not easier in a fully remote company. But my opinion right now about it is that the communication is better in Novu then any other company I have been in. I think it is because we all work remote and do not think anyone knows what I know so it is needed to be communicated. I do not say we are best in the world on communication but I think it is good because of being fully remote and also harder because of fully remote.
This was not a topic I was afriad of starting at Novu, but when we decieded to make the engineering channel public in our Discord I got a bit afriad because sometimes you ask a "stupied" question because you lazy or are not able to figure it out (rubber ducking). This fear is now gone and none existing, the public engineering channel is great because sometimes you get feedback from the community instead of your collegues and it might be even more insights full. The community at Novu is great, we have so many dedicated community members and contributers that makes Novus product better faster then the engineering team would ever be able to do. So if you are a community member and are reading this, thank you...
If you would have asked me six years ago if I would work in a company that only speaks English I would with out a doubt say no. Because my English teacher in High School told me that my English is not good enough and when you do not practice something it does not get any better. When writing this I feel as if I defenitly are speaking two languages fluently and I have had a friend from USA for five years now that have really helped me get to where I am now.
With a fully remote company I have the privilege of being able to have collegues all over the world. This is one of the best thing to me because I have learned so much about people living in other countries and also about my own countries laws that might be natural to me but not to others. I am learing about different cultures and religons that I would never been able to learn in school, like that people in Israel do have weekend on Friday and Saturday.
Oh my this header is a privilege to have in this post, the people at Novu is amazing. Nothing and I mean nothing feels bad to say or to do because they always support me or anyone in the company. I meet two of them two months ago and in like one week I will meet most of them in Cyprus and I am so EXCITED becuase people that are amazing remote must be even more amazing IRL right?
Well this post did become a bit longer then I thought initialy but it feelt really good to write it, I hope you enjoyed it and maybe you now like to be a part of a remote company or even just an open source community.