The remote life.
Tags: Startup, Remote Working, History, Game Development, Programming

It’s just a draft, a few memories from my life and few thoughts about people being strange in their decisions and mistakes they repeat and repeat from thousand years described by many in books. Enchanted in letters on the pages of the past.

Beginning.

I think it began in 1999 when I left from job at local DTP & Printing company to look for a job as software developer. That was something I always loved. Reality was harder than expected because nobody wanted talented student. Everybody wanted diploma. This pushed me to take life challenge and I became a freelancer. I was making web pages, small C/C++ projects for private use and still DTP stuff for local companies. Then I haven’t realized that it always was done mostly remotely. Whenever I needed more details I was using a phone or e-mail. Face to face contacts were not more that 10% of time. This kind of contact was so natural and obvious that I have never been thinking that I don’t use this 2 small tools to do my work. That was for a living until 2003 and it was a “frontend”, the “backend” wasn’t so bright because it was not giving enough money for life and studies.

First steps — the remote startups.

The path of passion lead me to work on beloved games. At that time I was playing in Civilization, Colonization, Panzer General I, Warcraft I, Warcraft II and few more titles.

In my eyes it was just simple and obvious that we can work only remotely because each of us lived at least 40km and more away. We met on some discussion group and talked about projects we work on or what we would like to do. The only way we could communicate was e-mail or some closed forums. We were full of passion, we were focused, we assigned responsibilities to each by competence (3d modeling, engine coding, network coding [me], RPG game mechanics [all]), and the only communication channel couldn’t stopped us, we did exchange progress on public (e-mails to all teammates) or made consultations by direct e-mails. We were sharing sketches, renders, screenshot or full projects ideas etc. We haven’t use tools for time tracking, or task scheduling. We were unfamiliar with that kind of software if any existed then, or methodologies. None of us were working earlier at bigger software company. We were focusing on the upcoming chunk of work, we didn’t know that but we were intuitively making sprints just to see what is right behind the corner. Now, it’s great to have that knowledge, it’s hard to imagine what could be possible with that knowledge. I don’t regret any day of that time, it was infinite growing, failing, falling, standing up and again growing. I’ve spent several years trying to change the way we do business, how we work. It was like oblivion, simple, exciting, extraordinary to be able to remove so many barriers in communication, exchanging knowledge with just few natural behaviors or needs. Safety (well known environment), feel of independence (nobody knows if you’re eating by the desk), no race of rats, not in the direct way, fast review of work progress and results by superiors, being so far from all those shit things like toxic people. So why nobody wanted to do that, why nobody wanted to change the way we live, why nobody wanted to be free, why nobody was able to see advantages?

On few meetings with investors I’ve always been saying that remote work is the future, and it doesn’t matter where we live it’s about communication not the place. Well yes, now I see the problem I’ve been telling that by that kind of work in the world with very weak telecommunication infrastructure might produce problems with replacing people if they will decide to leave the team. Maybe not with exact words, maybe not so visionary but I’ve seen that kind of problem, working people in small city dreaming about work in a big city can always leave a team. How to replace them if there is a better job market in a bigger city than in the small one or in the village? The second or maybe the main one was that we were few years after communism fall, just few of us were successful in gaming industry. The risk was to high for most of companies on our small market with producing games and making them remotely seemed to be a joke or total craziness. But who change the world? Maybe I haven’t changed the world but I’ve always believed that remote work with spread teams is the future. It’s strange feeling because it became true by pandemia.

A Cyborg.

It was extremely strange not to use, not to document on the computer my work, todo’s, ideas for future development. I still have code, resources, documents from few projects I’ve started many years ago. Each idea, line of code is part of my mind, part of me. Am I a Cyborg? No, not really I just have logic mind or binary if you like. It can recognize two states zero or one there’s nothing between them. Because of it’s complexity it recognizes existence of other states but refuses to implement them as unrecognized or impossible ;)

Lockdown in the city.

Nobody want to stay nor in the village, nor in a small city. Everybody wants live and work in a big city. Now, after all those years we can tell how bad is that kind of thinking. Now, during worldwide lockdown most of them gets crazy in their beautiful expensive flats. Golden cages in blocks. Nobody likes cages. I do live in a peaceful countryside, with beautiful view on the trees in the wood. I can hear the real life, I can feel fresh air, it’s almost like to hear an earths heartbeat and I love it. Now I feel free, there are no walls around, just a lot of space. Why people never listen, why people always do what most of them do? Why nobody is trying to change the way people live? Why are we nestled in ten of millions in big cities, in extremely big density of human per square kilometer? Why?