Tag: async

Amir Salihefendic, Doist: Best Practices for Remote Teams, Ep 126

Category : Crossing Borders Podcast
Posted on by

You can now find the full show notes of the Crossing Borders podcast on LatamList.com’s new podcast section. I’ll still post the audio of the podcast on my blog and I’m planning to start writing more again on my blog, like I used to.

Subscribe to the LatamList Weekly newsletter to get updated on the week’s top tech news and stories from the region.

Thanks for listening to Crossing Borders all these years! If you have any feedback or questions, please feel free to reach out here, or contact me on social media.

Outline of this episode:

  • [2:50] – About Doist
  • [4:09] – Remote work in 2007 
  • [5:10] – Global shift to remote work
  • [7:06] – Best practices of remote work pre-pandemic
  • [10:44] – Importance of asynchronous work 
  • [16:18] – Building a culture remotely
  • [19:40] – Do’s and don’ts of remote work
  • [23:37] – LatAm’s place in a remote-first world 
  • [29:26] – Advice to Amir’s younger self
  • [31:14] – What’s next for Amir and Doist?

Show notes on Latamlist.com.

No Call Wednesday

Category : Personal Thoughts
Posted on by

Ever since the pandemic, I’ve been “always on.” I can take calls, video conferences, texts at all times. People are available, without many constraints on time. Remote work detractors think that people will watch Netflix all day. But we should really be worried about people working too much, not too little.

I’ve instituted No Call Wednesday so that I can actually get things done. Some of the Magma team has started do it too. It’s been a long battle of experiments, dating back to 2017. No Call Wednesday, and its more powerful cousin Airplane Mode Wednesday, have been life changing.

The Path to No Call Wednesday

In 2017, I was the only full time Magma Partners team member and things started to get away from me. I had too many things on my plate, but we didn’t have the budget to hire anyone new until we did the first close on our fund, in January 2018.

I found myself taking walks to my favorite cafes in Bogota, Medellin, Mexico City, Guadalajara or Santiago every Saturday morning and spending 4-6 hours catching up on writing, emails and the big projects that I never had the brainspace to do during the week. These 4-6 hours were my most productive of the week.

(more…)