Freelance work, remote work, great teamwork – meet dodo.work
The future of work is freelance. The future of work is remote. The future of work is flexible.
It has to be, right? Over 50% of US workers are predicted to be freelancers by 2027, while Millennials and younger generations expect to be allowed to work remotely. Those are just a couple out of tens or hundreds noteworthy trends and statistics (you’ll find some more here or here), but the point is that the change is already happening and it’s happening fast.
Why do so many people decide to become freelancers and/or work remotely? Well, there are many reasons but, at dodo.work we believe, it all boils down to one: flexibility.
As a remote employee, you have the flexibility to:
- work whenever you want, as long as you complete the tasks you are supposed to complete;
- stop wasting time on commuting, if that ever was a pain for you;
- finally get deep work done, without the usual office distractions;
- work from wherever you want – it’s not just WFH (working from home), it’s WFA (working from anywhere);
- create your own work-life balance and avoid many workplace-related stressful situations;
- not worry about dress code – although I think it’s good to look at least somewhat presentable whenever you are working and available for others to have a quick video call with you (just in case), plus it’s good for your brain to have something that tells you you’re at work, even though you’re not at the office and (comfy!) work clothes might just be it;
- have time for your family and/or taking care of yourself and your chores whenever it makes most sense, be it in the morning, midday or evening.
The list can get longer, but I think you get it and can imagine what flexibility means for you. Let me just point out that if you work as freelancer, that list gets even longer (starting with the possibility of working on multiple projects and work 3 days a week or 8 months out of 12, if that’s how you want to roll).
With great flexibility comes great responsibility, of course. You have to take care of your taxes, ensure a steady income even though you don’t work full-time, over-communicate and make sure the employer knows you’re actually doing good work… That list can also get pretty long.
Freelancing and remote work isn’t for everyone, but until you try it for yourself, you won’t know if it’s for you. In one of the next blog posts I’ll go into a little more details about how to figure it out and how to set yourself up for success.
In the meantime, let me go to the clue of this article: how dodo.work came into existence.
Freelancer or not, you probably enjoy working on projects you know you can excel at and with people who are great to work with
The idea for the platform came from a little talk we had over lunch, after I’ve had studied remote work possibilities for our team at another startup and dove pretty deep into the topic. I was fascinated with the market trends and how many companies make remote work, well… work.
I said something along the lines of:
“It would be awesome if employers could just create project-based teams out of pretty much random people, as long as they had the right skills and the time to do it right away to supplement the full-time workforce.”
Darek looked at me and said: “Well, why don’t we just make it possible?”
Ha, easier said than done. But that basic concept stuck in my head and I ended up asking dozens of people about their life as freelancers and remote workers, and talking to quite a few startup owners about what their struggles with the lack of the right skills on the team were. Slowly and steadily, the idea started to develop. And it’s going to keep developing. It’s a work in progress. Just bare with us while we’re creating something great for you: a platform for freelancers, build with freelancers, where you actually do do great work.
Our key insight is that employees value flexibility and being able to work on projects they like with people they enjoy working with.
And employers have to get used to the new reality of freelance, remote workforce and – instead of thinking how to keep employees at the office and keep them loyal to one employer only, embrace the flexibility that allows them to have an ”adjustable” workforce, available almost „on-demand”.
We have to key theories that we base dodo.work on:
- people work better and are happier as teams in which people are a good fit for one another;
- good team fit equals better projects (done efficiently, on time, and with everyone being satisfied with the result).
Both of those boil down to two key things we need to get done:
- figure out what factors determine a good fit, as well as good team-project-employer fit;
- create a community of freelancers who have influence over how the platform develops and who should be allowed to work on projects on different levels, to ensure consistent quality of work.
And all this is supposed to lead to:
- happy freelancers who have lots of great projects to work on with awesome teammates;
- happy employers, who ditch other platforms, because dodo.work is where they get their projects done well and without stressing over them, every time.
In order to fulfil our dream and your expectations, we’re working on building a platform that will match freelancers’ characters, skills and other features to the project requirements, employer profile, other potential team members profiles, etc. – all to ensure that the team created through dodo.work fits the project criteria and budget but, most of all, everyone on that team should work well with each other.
All of this is supposed to happen with the help of machine learning and some super smart algorithms, but we cannot do this without your help too.
I’ll keep updating you about dodo.work’s progress on this blog. In the meantime, please follow us on Facebook and Twitter and sign up to be notified when we launch the first working version (MVP) of our platform.
All feedback is valuable, so please don’t hesitate to message us at do@dodo.work or though our social media pages.
From Krakow with 🧡,
Anna
