Finland Developer Diaries — Work-Life Balance
An Outsider’s view of an introvert country
Today, I wrapped up my work at 4 PM. No, it was 3 PM. It’s difficult to notice time on dark winter days here.
It’s Friday, no one notices if you leave work earlier — in most Western countries I know.
In the product company where I work, it gets even easier than that. You work from home practically all year, minus meetings that happen every month. You show up in the office, not to design or discuss product bugs, but to relish an office party filled with pastries, burgers, veg/chicken wraps, fruits, cookies, and stuff that I no longer recognize.
How anyone can work in such a setup, one might ask. Well, in programming, such things are possible, if the following conditions are met:
#1: Everyone in the team trusts each other
#2: Everyone in the team can talk at the same level of abstraction, which depends on #1.
#3: The company is actively interested in checking whether conditions #1 and #2 are likely to be met, on a polling basis. If yes, it throws its full power to achieve it.
My office had a rented workspace. Past COVID, they asked devs if they wanted to return to the office on 50% weekdays. Some 60% said yes, so they stripped the office space to…
