My Thoughts on Remote Working

I had never worked off-site before in my life. Even during the pandemic, I worked at home for only a month before I resumed commuting to the bank’s office. And then suddenly, for the first time, I found myself with the freedom of not being tied to the workspace. Actually, our entire team works remotely.

The Samolet Group adopts an unconventional approach to office space. We have a coworking area that accommodates around 300 people, despite having a total workforce exceeding 6,000. So, a considerable part of the entire large team operates remotely.

FinTech business at Samolet is no exception. About three-quarters of my team is based in Moscow; the rest are spread across the globe. We even navigate a nine-hour time difference between team members in Buenos Aires and Thailand.

When I started building the team, I was pretty worried that it would be impossible to work remotely and that the process would be a mess. My paranoid alter ego of a distrustful manager still nags me on a regular basis, saying, “They probably don’t do a damn thing working remotely out there!”.

However, it turned out just fine. The work is being done, and we are growing quickly (although things could be faster, remote work is not the issue). All in all, the results are very positive.

We don’t obsess over monitoring working hours, we don’t collect data from turnstiles, and I haven’t run any A/B tests to understand what’s best: office or remote work. But I’m happy with our performance so far, so I don’t plan to change anything.

Besides, there are some rules that we have agreed on within the team. They apply to the people that are not located in Moscow:
• The entire team meets in Moscow at least once a year.
• The CEO-minus-one level executives gather in Moscow at least once a quarter.
• Our working hours are from 10 to 19 (UTC+3), so it doesn’t matter where the employee is currently located; they must be available at the stated time.
• We try hiring key team members in Moscow, particularly in product and marketing roles, to facilitate hands-on work.

After all, remote work can be possible within a large corporation. With a motivated team, strong commitment, and the right corporate culture, an employee’s location is irrelevant. They can achieve high performance from anywhere.