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Remote + Flexible work >> Salary

· 5 min read


This blog post discusses the importance of remote and flexible work hours, and how it can significantly improve work-life balance and productivity.

I was thinking about remote + flexible hours, and I don’t think I would ever work for a company without these. At least by choice 🙃

I mean, who would tell Morty and Sum Sum that I wouldn’t be at home to play?

I’m a strong believer that work should wrap around your lifestyle and not vice-versa.

On average, a person works 40 hours a week and sleeps 8 hours a day. This means that out of 168h per week you have 72h for personal time. In terms of percentage we have: 24% for work, 33% for sleep, and 43% for personal time.

So how come most people have almost 2x as much personal time compared to work time and they still feel like they are in this 9–5 rat race and their life revolves around work?

Well, here’s the 4 scenarios as I see it…

1. The work is not remote (and not flexible).

  • If we account for the commute and stress associated with, personal time gets directly transferred into work time.
  • E.g. with a daily 2 hour commute Mon-Fri, which is very typical, this means that your personal time is divided into 30% for work and 37% for personal. This isn’t event including the part where you have to prepare to leave the house, and the tiredness resultant from the commute.

2. The work is remote but not flexible.

  • This is much better than the previous. But it’s still not good enough. The argument here is not due to absolute time but performance and state of mind.
  • Life is not straightforward. We, as individuals, are very different between ourselves. Our bodies, mind, brain, relationships, … work very differently. By not being flexible on the working hours you are basically ignoring all of that diversity and grouping everyone into a single 9–5 + Mon-Fri category.
  • The “ironic” part is that most companies promote diversity and don’t think about this. Which just shows that the diversity topic has become very much a marketing vehicle.
  • In my case, I’m a night owl, I don’t usually wake up too early, because I am much more productive when I stay awake until 3/4 am. If I have to wake up early because someone decided that 8:30am was the time that everyone needed to “check in” you are basically not getting the most out of me.
  • One may wonder, well, this is a company problem because they are paying for an employee that is not performing as much as they could. Unfortunately, that’s not true, it’s a much bigger problem to the employee. This is because when an employee excels at a job they tend to have a much happier life which in turn increases performance, which increases happiness, and so on and so forth.

3. There is no mention for not remote but flexible because, in my opinion, that makes very little sense.

4. Now, let’s imagine the scenario where the work is remote and flexible.

  • This is where it gets interesting. When we fall on this scenario your job perspective changes drastically. This is because at this point you put yourself first and can define your own priorities while having a pool of time to get a job done at your own time.
  • E.g. you can plan activities with friends, do exercise, meditate, … whatever suits your lifestyle. Which will give you a boost of energy to perform even better at your job. On top of this, you don’t need to squash the work within Mon-Fri, once you are in this flexible regime you may use the weekend to your advantage. Flights at 20 Euros on Tuesday to come back Thursday? Fine, I’ll work during weekend to make up for this time
  • There are people that love a 9–5 Mon-Fri schedule and that is fine. For those it means that the 9–5 Mon-Fri system implemented got it right. In fact, I would argue, that they are still wrapping work around lifestyle, it’s just that their lifestyle is working 9–5 Mon-Fri and enjoying time outside these hours.

The downsides of this fully flexible work are:

  • Interaction with coworkers and communication. But with us going global due to remote work, it doesn’t really matter, since the 9–5 hours of different countries would already lead to this problem
  • Tracking employee timesheet. I think that a company shouldn’t track an employee timesheet because results are far more important than working hours, and can be just as measurable.

All of this to say that at OpenBB we have:

  • REMOTE WORK: As long as you are in a location with internet access, we are not worried. This allows us to build a strong diverse team with different backgrounds and ideas.
  • FLEXIBLE HOURS: We believe that your work should wrap around your lifestyle and not vice-versa. As long as you excel, you will not be asked why you woke up at noon.
  • UNLIMITED HOLIDAYS: Who has time to track holidays when building such an exciting project? We trust in our people to manage their own PTO and keep performing at the highest level.

AND this is how I sleep at night having no idea at what time John logged in and out:

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Ohhh, and we’re hiring!

If you provide a referral to someone that ends up joining OpenBB, I will transfer you $100 as a token of appreciation 🦋