In 2017, I got married and moved to the Dominican Republic. Working at TechAID provided me with a completely new experience because I had never worked in a distributed team before.

As time went on I found that like with any other thing in life, working as part of a distributed team has its advantages and challenges. Below are some that I could identify from my experience:

Advantages

• You do not spend 2-3 hours a day commuting back and forth to the office, which means that you have the opportunity to devote more time to the family.
• You can work from home, which means that your environment can be as relaxed as you need it.
• Your control over your work environment means you can design it to be conducive for creativity and innovation.
• You can be more efficient without the distractions of the water cooler.

Challenges

• Due to the teams being distributed globally it means that you must put a focused effort in overcoming accents, yet I found it to not be a problem and it helped me improve in my written and spoken English; I also got to practice my Spanish.
  

• In order to integrate into a team, you must be willing to learn about their cultures so that communication is not missed due to a lack of understanding. At first, it was challenging, but the team helped me and I integrated into their culture very quickly.
• You must be more disciplined in order to keep life and work separately. Sometimes this may require a separate room, but it is not a difficult challenge to overcome.

Despite the challenges that I faced, and the distance between me and the rest of the team I found a motto communicated to me on my first day of work as the guide that helped me so tightly integrate with TechAID and my team:

“Our team is one big family, we support, listen and help each other as a family should!”

 

This has been my experience as part of TechAID’s distributed teams and I’m so happy to be part of the TechAID family.

Author: Julia Sizova
Software Quality Engineer at TechAID
LinkedIn: Julia Sizova