Week 52: Magnetic Week, RS Virus and a few days off

A weird and in the end relaxing December.

Dec 31, 2022

Hey there!

I was sick in bed for two weeks. Super annoying: I caught an RS virus and could not do too many things. And after being okay again, I spent the holidays with my family offline.

The week I became sick, we had our magnetic week in the second week of December. And although I only was able to participate in the first half of the week, I enjoyed it a lot.

Magnetic Week

At APX, we are remote first, which means that we are distributed all over Europe and sometimes the world. We have an office in Berlin that some of us go to, and we can use offices by our investors all over the planet. This gives us a lot of flexibility, and we think we have figured out how to be very productive and connected.

We can work from pretty much anywhere. Legally. Using service companies to make this work for all our colleagues. It is easier for Europeans in Europe, but we have figured it out globally. Generally, some of us are not living in Berlin.

In the Berlin Winter months, quite a lot of us work from sunnier places like South Africa, Chile, Brazil, and southern Europe for weeks or even months.

Technology makes this possible. We are continuously working on our tech stack. Sometimes this leads to weird situations: we have virtual meetings even if only one person is not in the office and everyone else is participating from their desks.

Asynchronous work is becoming more and more relevant in my world. I see massive potential for our productivity in this dimension in 2023.

There is a risk that we are missing a real-life and personal connection. We used to do one offsite per quarter. We like offsites, but they are “only” exceptional times. Usually, we all have to pay the price after an offsite: there is quite a lot to do when we return.

We decided to try something new: two offsites per year. One at a location around Berlin focussed on strategy, planning, tactic,s and what we do. One in a city we can reach by train to spend time together as a team with a focus on team time, non-transactional topics, and non-planned outcomes.

We brainstormed two new formats: how can we spend time together, work on our tasks and topics, and have the chance to spend planned and unplanned time together? We had a fun moment when we talked about how this can be achieved: “This sounds like the good old office.” So we reinvented sliced bread: magnetic weeks. We all come to Berlin, and the ones of us who are not living here can either stay at a hotel, or they can rent AirBnBs together. We have a “normal” office week together: There is time to work, meetings, and random encounters at the coffee machine. Every day we reserved a lunch table, and anyone who wanted could have lunch together. We also planned a few things we wanted to do together: two dinners and some all-hands meetings. And obviously, there was time for the teams to get together and meet in person.

I was able to participate in the first half of the week before I became sick and stayed at home, and I enjoyed meeting my colleagues a lot. I think the magnetic week will be a vital tool in our let’s build the best team we can toolkit. And I am still convinced that being remote-first is the way to build the best organizations (in our industry).

Working and decoupling

As mentioned above, I spent the holidays with my family, and I decoupled from most of my everyday routines. With my sons moving out, I am considering where I will work in 2023, and I think I will try multiple setups over the year. I will keep you posted. Any suggestions?