I have just returned from Vienna, where I met ~350 of my coworkers to discuss the future of WordPress and WooCommerce; remind ourselves we are still humans and eat way too many schnitzels.

This face-to-face time is extremely valuable for building relationships that make us all productive during the rest of the year and is one thing that chatGPT cannot fake (yet). I previously covered other reasons why remote companies do meetups in this post.

An important remark on Viennese Cafés

Viennese traditional coffeehouses are an institution and particularly appealing if you like to work from coffee shops like me:

1. You are actually welcome to spend a lot of time there.

2. Tables are SQUARE, which is way more comfortable to fit your laptop

3. Chairs are meant to be comfy, and the decor is cozy. The entire place is thought of as an extension of your living room.

From Wikipedia:

The Austrian writer Stefan Zweig described the Viennese Coffee House as an institution of a special kind, "actually a sort of democratic club, open to everyone for the price of a cheap cup of coffee, where every guest can sit for hours with this little offering, to talk, write, play cards, receive post, and above all consume an unlimited number of newspapers and journals."

Since October 2011 the "Viennese Coffee House Culture" is listed as "Intangible Cultural Heritage" in the Austrian inventory of (…) part of UNESCO

Remote Work resources:

It has been a while since I shared Remote-Work-Related links from across the web. These are the best articles on the topic I read in 2022:

The Greatest Human Migration in History Will Happen in the Next Decade

Pieter Levels argues that Remote Work will allow people to choose where they want to live independently of employment opportunities. Here is his logic:

To get a possible idea of what the regular population will do once they can work remotely, we can look at what people who retire do. In the U.S., 3 million people retire per year and 1 million of them relocate once they hit retirement and are not tied to their work anymore, so about one-third.

Remote Work Will Break the US Monopoly on Global Talent

In a similar vein, Devon Zuegel predicts that remote work evens the competition between countries because it counteracts the network effects attracting workers to the same 5 cities.

Remote work opens up new opportunities for what I call "immigration arbitrage". It's historically been difficult for most places to attract immigrants with lots of education and earning potential, because those immigrants generally sought cities like London or New York or San Francisco where they could plug into an economic powerhouse. Remote work has changed this dynamic for many industries

Now you enjoy the quality of life in countries like Croatia, Costa Rica, or Uruguay on a San Francisco Salary. Furthermore, as a national of those countries, you can compete with Americans without leaving your family behind. I expanded on this idea previously in “The opportunity to move for work is a privilege “.

Remote Work is inherently unequal

Dror compiled a thread arguing that while Remote Work benefits top performers, it is also more challenging for those less effective.

Dror Poleg @drorpoleg

Creative work is inherently unequal. This is very visible in the income distributions of singers and movie stars, but less visible in white-collar professions. Why? Thanks to/because of the office. 1/7

4:53 PM ∙ Feb 23, 2022

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986Likes190Retweets

At the office, "showing up" counts for a lot, making it easy for low-performers (or whole layers of management) to survive.
Offices also handicap the best performers, pulling them down with distractions and wasting their time with meetings and commutes

He argues that because of those uncapped dynamics, top performers will be compensated similarly to movie stars and athletes.

37 Best Virtual Team Building Activities for Remote Teams in 2022

Jesse collected a list of virtual team-building activities for Remote meetups. My favorite is MTV Cribs:

Help Scout recently started an internal MTV Cribs-inspired video series, where team members show off their homes and personality in quick self-made videos a la the classic ’90s show.

The Surprising Traits of Good Remote Leaders

BBC Has shared why people thriving in Remote leadership roles are not necessarily the same ones that enjoy success in the office. In the Remote environment, it is much more about the doing, and not looking like it.

In face-to-face interactions, most of us are very easily swayed by the power of personality,” says Purvanova. “Virtually, we are less swayed by someone’s personality and can more accurately assess whether or not they are actually engaging in important leadership behaviours.

Bummer.

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I tried talking my friends into buying a few schnitzels and making a SchnitzelTorte™. Unfortunately, our meals were catered, and our plans were foiled. Feel free to steal this idea and send me a photo if when you do!