What I’m looking for next

I’m back on the job market. I thought it would would make sense to summarise what I’m looking for in a company.

TL;DR version

1. A four day week
2. A London office
3. Ethical
4. Mid-scale
5. Realistic business model

The detailed version

First a note: To be entirely honest – the following is my ideal and I might ditch it all in a couple of months in order to pay the bills! But it’s worth shooting for the stars at least.

1. A four day week

As a contractor running my own business, I worked a four day week for two years before I joined Hopin. I can say without a doubt that I was happier during that time. I also had more time for friends, family, and personal projects. Anecdotally, I believe that I was more productive during my working hours too. There is plenty of evidence now from experiments around the world that I am not alone in feeling this way.

2. A London office

After a couple of years of ‘fully remote’ work with Hopin, I’m keen to find a company that has some local presence to work with. Although I’m totally on board with the benefits of remote, I’d like to find a team that I can work with in person for a day or two a week.

I have a couple of reasons for this. First, as a dad, raising a son here in London I don’t feel like I get the benefits of ‘full remote’ – I can’t “live and work anywhere” right now! Secondly, one of the key reasons I got into working in design to begin with is that it’s a “human centred” discipline. It would be nice to hang out more often with some diverse humans, and spend less time staring at a video call.

3. Ethical

One of the things I love the most about Hopin is their vision – to bring people closer, and to make access to events easier for people wherever they are. I’d like to find a company with a similarly egalitarian vision. I want to feel fully behind anything I work on, and feel confident that my world is making the world a better place.

4. Mid-scale

I’m on the fence here a bit. Right now I feel like I don’t want to work with an early stage startup again for a while. This might change if I come across something I’m REALLY into!

On the flip side – I don’t want to work for one of the big monopolies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, or Apple. These companies are too big for their own good. Although I still love and use some of their products, I really wish they were made by smaller companies in a more diverse and fair market.

Ideally I’d like to find somewhere that already has a few designers on board and is looking to scale up their design capability.

5. Realistic business model

I’d like to work for a company that sells a product at a profit. The product must do something useful that people are happy to buy. This means I’m not interested in working for companies that use venture capital to subsidise their service like e.g. Deliveroo (who lose money on every delivery). I have my doubts about advertising supported products, as this always seems to ruin the product due to misaligned incentives (Facebook, Google search, etc.) I’m not interested in working for ‘crypto token’ companies as they don’t have a product. I’m also not interested in most fintech as most of it seems to be aimed at making rich people richer (see point three).

In conclusion

Thanks so much for reading this far – I hope this all makes sense. If you feel like we might be a good match let’s talk!