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Transcript:

Valentina Thörner - Empress of Remote at Klaus

[00:00:00]

Tyler Sellhorn: Hello everyone. My name is Tyler Sellhorn, and welcome to another episode of The Remote Show where we discuss everything to do with remote work with the people who know it best. Thanks so much for listening. The Remote Show is brought to you by WeWork, remotely the largest community of remote workers in the world.

With over 220,000 unique users per month, WeWork remotely is the most effective way to hire. Today we are blessed to be learning out loud with Valentina Turner. Valentina is the empress of remote at Klaus as a consultant for remote leader. Supporting companies that want to support their middle managers to be the best leaders they can be.

Valentina assists companies with their remote policy so that their policies actually reflect reality. Tell us, Valentina, what problems are you trying to solve as the empress of remote?

Valentina Thörner: Well, thanks for having me. So the biggest problem that I see is the inco in incoherence between what companies say that is remote and what they actually live as their remote reality. Anyone who's searching for [00:01:00] a job nowadays and filters for remote, you get a lot of results. Everybody's saying they're doing remote and they're about as specific about this.

When the restaurant tells you we offer food, I mean, I would hope that you offer food as a restaurant, but I would also like to know whether you are more into Asian food or Mexican food, or vegetarian or et cetera. And with remote, it's the same. There are so many nuances to it, and nobody talks about what they offer in terms of.

Tyler Sellhorn: Okay. You're really, I I love the forcefulness with which you're drawing out that dichotomy. This is a very, very like the, the incoherence the spread between what we say and what we do. Right? This is about trust building, right? Is to say, like, when you say remote, what is it that you mean?

So tell, tell us when, when you say remote Valentina, what do.

Valentina Thörner: That's the thing. I don't think there is one definition for remote because it can, the only definition [00:02:00] for remote that really like that applies to everybody is you are not working from the office with everybody else that's remote. That may mean that you're working from home. It may mean that you are working from a co-working or from the local library, or from the cafe or from somewhere that is not the office.

And the thing is not every company can allow or wants to allow all of these options for. All of their roles. So for example, if you are, the security officer or something, you may not be allowed to work from a public cafe because you might have too much access to sensitive information. In that case, it actually makes sense to include that into the policy that you have specific rules for specific people.

Some people really want you, like some companies want to have you in a room where you can close the door because they work with, I don't know, health data or something, and they're really like unsure how they can safeguard their own customers data. The thing is, that is a valid reason. , but you need to [00:03:00] communicate that reason because otherwise it just looks like you are closing people into their living rooms, which is like not, probably not what you're trying to do.

So this whole, we have reasons for what we do, or we think we have reasons for what we do. But we don't really know how to talk about it, and actually no one is responsible for it. So we don't really know who's going to make those decisions. And actually those are a lot of decisions to make. So we'll just table it for next week and tell HR to put remote into the job offer, and then we'll figure it out and it never gets figured out.

Tyler Sellhorn: Okay. This is one that I'm gonna take away with me. Valentina. We're going to make rules for roles. Right? And, and obviously like you're encouraging us to be specific, you're encouraging us to get some specificity to what we mean when we say remote. And it, and you're just, like you said, there's isn't just one version, there's not one definition.

And in fact, there's not even one definition for, for every role at a particular company. [00:04:00] It's

Valentina Thörner: you kind of, you need to balance. You need to balance your employee's needs and wants. Who may want to have flexibility to travel or to work anywhere or to get inspiration from whether they are with your customer's needs. Whose data is needs to be secure and who that, that they need to be able to trust you.

That not anyone who walks by a Starbucks can just glance on a monitor and see their entire health history. Like this is a thing.

Tyler Sellhorn: Yes, yes. I mean, it's not necessarily gonna be a one size fits all for every role. It's not gonna be a one size fits all for, for every company, just to say remote and, and put it on the JD and, and that, that not have any specificity to it so one of the things that you were saying earlier that I think I want to, to pull on a little more is, You said the phrase have to communicate.

Right. And when we're saying we have to communicate, what do we mean that we're gonna [00:05:00] have to be? One of the ways that I express the same idea is that no one knows unless you tell them. Uh, give us some more color there please.

Valentina Thörner: So, um, location is one thing, and I think it's the most obvious thing because most people will ask in their interview, or like at some point will ask low. Yeah. Like, but where can I work? Like, how, how does this work? Do you pay a steep end for co-working? Or like, how, how will, how is, how does it look in practice?

But another thing that also belongs to remote is the whole idea about flexibility. Like, do I have to be at my computer from nine to five? Do I have to be at my computer for meetings from maybe 12:00 PM to 3:00 PM and the rest of the time I can be flexible? Does no one track anything? Like there's, again, there's a whole, there's not just one option and the other option.

There's a huge array of options. And as a company, one of those will work for you. And usually what it comes down to is kind of preference of the founder. or the leadership team [00:06:00] and what they detect is needed from the workforce, and you're going to find a balance somewhere. But in order to find that balance, you need to engage with your team and you need to figure out what is that balance that is possible, whether you can get rid of some meetings, whether you want to go a little bit more async or a little bit less async, which time zones you are in.

So how much flexibility can you actually offer? And then within this flexibility, how do you make sure that people. Communicate with each other and actually collaborate with each other. Because again, there is like a sliding scale between this company is a team with a lot of belonging where people engage with each other not only on work related project, but who are almost like friends.

And on the other extreme, you have kind of a company that. Uh, mostly works with freelancers or contractors, and that is not interested in creating this kind of community around the joint company mission, and neither is better or worse than the other. But as an, as somebody [00:07:00] who wants to work at a company, I want to know, am I coming into a very close-knit community?

Or am I coming into something? Here's your task, get it done. Get a get away, which is fine, but depending on what I need as a person, whether I'm extroverted, introverted, whether I seek friendship at work, or I have my very, very close-knit community where I live, this will vary. And it's a shame that you have to apply.

Get the job, try it out for six months only to then figure out that this what you signed up for actually does not vibe with your personality, with the way you work or with what you were expecting of your.

Tyler Sellhorn: I'm, I'm, I'm returning back to those thoughts where we're saying, what, what are we saying and what are we doing right? What, what, what are we expressing? And then what are we executing? Right? What, how do we make sure that that the things that we've said we are about are actually the things that we're delivering

that gap between the policy and the reality of what it is to work at a particular place, whether it's remote [00:08:00] or whether it's hybrid or whether it's some part of that spectrum.

I think it's really interesting to hear you say that we're gonna be balancing these trade-offs between the preferences of the leaders or what has been expressed by the team. I guess maybe the thing that I'm wondering what are the questions that you ask to draw out of a set of leaders or out of a, a customer or out of a, you know, community of, of employees?

Like, how do we find out what it is that everybody actually wants out of their remote policy or out of their remote experience? And then how do we match that up with the way that we're writing job descriptions, and how do we write that up? Like, here's our career page, what's, what's going on?

Valentina Thörner: So the, the easiest way, and this is something that everybody here can do with their own company, look at the information that's publicly available about your company and copy paste what it says about the remote policy. Like look at job posts, look at the [00:09:00] about us page, and then go into your leadership team and says, Hey, I've looked at, and actually I do this with all, with all of my clients.

Like I go to them and say, Hey, I've looked at your public available information and it looks like you are allowing people to work from anywhere. Because it's not specified anything else, to work in any time zone whatsoever because nothing else is specified either. Um, and you are paying for the equipment and there are no other perks because at least I couldn't find anything other than unlimited P t o.

Is this correct? And the answer is, without fail, always, no, but, but we do so many things. It's like, yeah, okay. Where can I find about these things? Why do I have to apply to actually figure out what these things are? Why do you think people are not applying? You're basically, you have an amazing buffet and you shut a door in front of it so that no one can see it, and then you complain that no one's coming in to try the food.

Like it's, it's ridiculous. And then you look into, you ask the leadership [00:10:00] team , but. Wait, what? And then we dive into these three things. What does location mean for you? What does flexibility mean for you? What, how does time work for you and how does collaboration work for you? And there, it's also interesting to look a little bit at the tools that are already in use because at the end of the day, what people are doing is what makes culture and what, what makes connection.

So looking at what there is, contrasting this with what they say or what they don't say. And. Outright asking people, where is this working and where is it not working for you, and where are people confused? A great source of interesting information is always people who have been at the over um, company for less than six months, because you can ask them, what was it that you found weird when you, when you started, what?

didn't really connect with what you expected. What, what were you shocked about and what were you really grateful about? And there's things that the people are grateful about. Why are they not of on, on the About page?[00:11:00]

Tyler Sellhorn: That's that, that is such great invitations and questions to be asking. Right. And you know, even the emphasis on what is the experience of a new person. Right? Because one of the things that I've experienced as a remote leader, is that you only get to onboard somebody. And this is true of any company, but like this is especially true in, in a remote company that, that like so much of what a digital workplace is is completely arbitrary.

Like, like . You have to decide everything and that person's first experience with the company or the team only happens.

Valentina Thörner: Mm-hmm.

Tyler Sellhorn: and you have to just grab hold of that person and soak every last piece of insight from them, because eventually they're gonna know things just by, by rote because they've experienced it for themselves instead of, you know what?

What was it before you knew? Right? And.

Valentina Thörner: actually you need two different onboarding processes. I always check for people that like, where [00:12:00] I'm, um, responsible for the onboarding process. I always check how much experience do they, do they have in, in onboarding and in, in remote work? And are they, do they feel that they have experience with self-directed remote work, or do I have, do they have PTSDs from a previous. Because the onboarding process needs to be different for somebody who's still trying to process the fact that their manager would check on them every five minutes. And that's not something where you just go into the new job and then be totally relaxed. So the people who are like, Hey, um, the post, uh, person just, just rang the bell.

I'll be back in three minutes. And they put this in slack because they're afraid to leave their desk because the mouse won't move. Like there's a lot of surveillance software out there. So if you have somebody like this, you need to kind of help them to, to get back the, the self-sufficiency of making small decisions.

And they can only do that if the policy is really quick, clear. [00:13:00] If you look at the internal knowledge best, and for work hours, it says most people work from nine to five because that's when people are in school, but you decide whatever you want. Everybody who's very insecure will say, oh, I have to work from nine to five, because it's the only thing that's there because there are no other examples, because there are no other options.

So like going really into the details and showing everything that is possible. Especially in the internal communication is super important and we often forget that as leaders because we end up in our own bubble where we have too many meetings and then we go off on about how we need to reduce meetings.

While that developer who's extra, extra extroverted only has two meetings per per week, is dying of loneliness and would love. To have more social meetings, but is too afraid to reach out to somebody from marketing just to chat, because nowhere it says that you can actually just reach out and have a half an hour chat on work time with somebody from a different department.

Tyler Sellhorn: Yeah. We have to tell [00:14:00] people, I,

Valentina Thörner: Yeah, we, yeah, exactly. You have to officially give permission to people to be their best selves because all our education, and a lot of companies actually drill this out of people.

Tyler Sellhorn: Okay, Empress of remote. I'm asking you since, we have leaned into the, the, the restaurant metaphor here, uh, whose cuisine reigns supreme, uh, as it relates to remote working policies that you've noticed? Like what are those things that are the top of the list for actual reality? Policies that really make a difference for companies.

Valentina Thörner: Um, there, of course, it depends. And there are two things that I've seen influence this most. One thing is the funding model. If you are self-funded, you have a very different pace than if you're VC backed. Because as a VC back company, you need to triple, triple, triple, double, double unicorn status. That is the goal.

[00:15:00] And if you don't have the growth rates, your investors are going to give you shit. And your investors don't care whether you are remote or not. They just want to get things done. And if they see that things are not getting done, they're going to tell you you should go back to an office because that has always worked.

So you need to be super intentional on how you're going to maintain the speed if you're VC backed, while, if you are self-funded, you can take it slower. You can actually. Um, get. Like, like give yourself lower, not smaller goals, but you can be more sustainable. No one forces you to actually do everything now, and that allows you also to take more time in teaching people asynchronous practices because you don't have no one breathing.

Do breathing down your, your neck. That why you are connected, why you haven't solved this in this five hours where everybody should have been online. So that's one thing. You speed is a thing. , if you have meetings, it will always feel faster. I don't mean that it will be faster, but if [00:16:00] you WEC backed this, feeling fast sometimes is an important ingredient of the company.

And the other influential part is, Preferences of leadership. If you look at the more established, um, remote companies and here, I mean, companies like that have been remote like 10 years ago, et cetera. Like in that GitLab, that's automatic. There's buffer. They are all very, a asynchronous and very written based because the founders are usually writers. like Martin Mullen, he was a blogger before he actually started. He has always been writing. The same goes for GitLab. If you look at the, at the, um, knowledge base that they have, like, it, it, this, it's not a book, it's a library because people there love to write things down, which means they have intentionally from the very first hire hired people who expressed themselves really, really well in. If we look at the people who are now wanting to be remote because they've learned about it during the pandemic, [00:17:00] they don't necessarily are gifted writers because they never optimized for writing. They always optimized for in-person conversations and for meetings. And if you combine that with founders whose superpower especially, and that happens a lot in like the startup. is VC backed. They haven't optimized for writing. They have optimized for pitching their company to get the funding, which they would never have gotten if they were amazing writers, because in those pitch meetings you need to be really, really good at presenting. So if you have a company where the founders don't write, that won't trickle down.

Like the, the, the layer bit underneath will not start writing because the founders probably won't read it because they're not readers and writers. So there you need to adapt and you probably. Nowadays with Loom, et cetera, you can be more asynchronous than was possible three years ago. But the company will be more synchronous just because of the founder personality.

And I don't think one is better than the other. So I don't think anyone there [00:18:00] reigns supreme. But I do think that if you know that you are a writer, you will probably be happier in a company that is heavily written based. And if you know that you are super extroverted and you really enjoy being in meetings because there are people who love being in meetings.

Then you are probably better off in one of those companies that don't optimize only for the written word.

Tyler Sellhorn: A theme that I'm hearing an echo of in some of the things that I, you know, obviously, you know, I, I host the podcast for a remote work, job board. So like, like, I'm gonna get a, I'm gonna talk to a few remote job seekers, and one of the things that I say to people, and I'm hearing as, as an echo in, in what you're saying now, is that it's not a worthiness problem, right.

It's, it's a matchmaking

Valentina Thörner: Exactly. Yep. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely

Tyler Sellhorn: and that is what remote working enables is that you and I right. Maybe this is not clear, but like, as a [00:19:00] podcaster, like I like to talk, right? uh, and, and for me, like places that I've worked have optimized for the spoken word. Now we've recorded most of the time, right?

This, this is, you know, definitely more so in that space. Um, but you know I'm not primarily a writer first and I probably wouldn't be very successful in a company that is. You know, really optimizing for that first, right? But, you know, somebody that's willing to listen and, and get into the details and like, like chop it up with, with a conversation, you know, even if it is like, like asynchronous voice or, you know, asynchronous video.

Um, those are things that you know, I mean, For me, I want to be able to, as you describe, I'm not a nine to five person, I'm a parent, right? And so I want to be able to, you know, work a non-linear workday where, where I'm, I'm engaged very deeply with everything that you've written down or everything that you've recorded, and I'm going to reply to [00:20:00] every single part of it.

but I don't necessarily want to be on a video conference like having to, you know, quickly chop it up with you. I want to take some time and watch it back a few times before. I think for myself of how I would best reply. And, you know, something I say is that complete communication right is much faster than quick

Valentina Thörner: Yeah, that is very true. I have to say in terms of like, uh, because I'm also a parent and, uh, now in Spain, the school day is quite like, my kids are in school from nine to five, which means that by default, I'm probably somewhere close to my computer between nine 40 and 4 4 4 4 30 because. I mean, they, it's, I won't get any interruptions then.

It's different during, uh, during holidays. But what I like a lot is when companies have actually core hours where they kind of say, okay, we understand that there will be meetings. We don't want to restrict meetings, but we are going to increase the friction to have [00:21:00] meetings because then you're going to have meetings when it matters and not just because.

So anything that's a meeting between more than three people needs to happen between in this three hour. between 12:00 PM and 3:00 PM Central European time or something like this. So you can have all the meetings that you want in these three hours and the other hours you can do them before or do them after, or do them at night, like whenever works for you.

Because you know that you are only required to be connected with headphones during these three hours, which means there's only 15 hours a week where meetings can happen. And then. , even the busiest person starts to think about, okay, which of these, like what requires a meeting and what do I actually have to push to async?

Because otherwise the meeting will happen in four weeks and by then the problem has probably solved itself anyway. So like just increasing the friction a little bit. And it usually works better than prohibiting meetings or doing endless trainings on how not to have new meetings, just make meetings more [00:22:00] difficult.

And because people love convenience, we are. always going to take the easier route. So just make the wrong, like not really wrong like, but make the, in the incentivize the behavior that you want to see and make the behavior that you don't want to see a little bit more difficult. So that's actually inconvenient.

Tyler Sellhorn: That's interesting. I mean, I, I do love the way you're orbiting around like the.

Valentina Thörner: Mm-hmm.

Tyler Sellhorn: Orbiting around the policy. What is the stated goal? What is the outcome that we're seeking? One of the things that I heard you saying was increasing the friction. Okay. So just to timestamp our conversation just a little bit recently Shopify said we are going to cancel all meetings with, with three or more people.

Valentina Thörner: Mm.

Tyler Sellhorn: If you wanna meet with one other person, go for it.

Valentina Thörner: Oh, and they only canceled all, all recurring meetings with more than three people. And I think this is important because if you have a, a meeting with like five people [00:23:00] because this, you are like kicking off a new project or something, they didn't cancel that. But if you had a weekly meeting with like 12 people, that would be canceled because I mean, weekly, 12 people, that's a very expensive

Tyler Sellhorn: I have torn my hair out inside of those video conferences and wondered, what am I doing here?

Valentina Thörner: Absolutely. Yeah.

Tyler Sellhorn: okay. Well plus one to your feelings underscoring Shopify's recurring meeting, uh, large recurring meeting cancellation and, and that idea of, of saying, let, let's increase the friction on, on that kind of expensive meeting.

Um, and e even, even the phrasing of, of calling in an expensive meeting. I think that's, that's interesting to, to, to call it out that.

Valentina Thörner: Yeah. Again, we can compare it with food. Like if you want to eat less sugar, you put the cookies on top of the fridge. And not in the middle, like not on your, uh, living room table. Because if they are on the living room table, they [00:24:00] just smile at you every time you walk by and you're going to eat more of them, then you consciously want to, because it's just so easy to get that sugar high if you actually have to take, um, Chair to reach those cookies.

You're still going to have cookies. It's not, we're not taking the cookies away, but you're actually going to have this little moment of thinking as you grab the chair, do I really want these cookies or am I just bored?

Tyler Sellhorn: Or even write down your grocery list and don't include cookies on them. I

Valentina Thörner: yeah, but

Tyler Sellhorn: saying with the policy. Go.

Valentina Thörner: Yeah, but if you, if you prohibit the cookies all again, then I start thinking about cookies and I, and I start, start missing cookies and I start like debating with myself why? And I'm then, I'm dispensing so much energy on why am I right not to having bought these cookies. Like it doesn't work with kids either.

If you prohibit something, it just puts, it anchors them in their mind as something that they really, really want. But by just making it so inconvenient that it's a hassle. There suddenly it's not interesting anymore. And [00:25:00] you can do this with a lot of things at work as well. And one thing is that like just delete, deleting all the recurring meet meetings.

If you delete those every month, at some point, nobody's going to bother to put those back in because it's who exactly was in that meeting and, and like just make it a little bit hard. Because the important meetings will still happen because if it's important enough, people are going to go this, like they're going to go through the hassle of calling the meeting

Tyler Sellhorn: Okay. Well, Valentina I'm here in my home office and I'm feeling very guilty for having some.

Valentina Thörner: You have the

Tyler Sellhorn: so some, some girl, some, some Girl Scout cookies here in the house. We, we, we have, we have some Girl Scouts in our house, so , I, I'm gonna ha, I'm gonna have to make those less available. Um, okay.

Valentina Thörner: if you don't want to eat cookies. I mean, if you're fine with eating cookies, you can do it. Like the cookies are not a bad thing.

Tyler Sellhorn: I, I, I, I'm, I'm joking with the, with the guilt and, uh, I'm, but, but it definitely was funny to have you be using that phrase,

Valentina Thörner: I think food is very [00:26:00] relatable because it's, it's something that everybody understands. So whenever I want, yeah, ev whenever I want to explain something that for the other person may be completely out of this world, because I have been thinking about and around remote for over a decade and I know that I very often go into like these little niche conversations with somebody who has never really thought about it's.

The heck is she caught. Like why is this a thing? So if I can kind of make it more relatable with food, anybody will be able to follow me.

Tyler Sellhorn: Well, I appreciate the opportunity to be learning out loud with you, uh, Valentina and thinking about the phrases and the ideas and the metaphors and the analogies and the, you know, the similes and all the different language, uh, tricks that we can use to help people become better at this. My very favorite question to be asking, especially those 2019 remotes that you're talking about, right?

The folks that were, you know, remote before, it was cool, right? Um, I, I'm, I'm curious, how do you think. The, these, these kind of periods of time [00:27:00] that have, that have been e e existent. Just, just as a, a way for us to close our conversation, just help us draw out the distinctions between what was remote in that 2019 and earlier stage and what was it during the pandemic and maybe even that's, that's part of what we're still going through.

And then what is it gonna be, you know, going forward? You know, help us, help us draw tho those distinctions.

Valentina Thörner: So I, I think before, I always say in the before times, in the before times, it was actually like it wasn't a competitive advantage from a company point of view. If you wanted a specific type of person, and it was a deliberate choice from the people who chose to apply to these companies, which means that the people who applied did a lot of research, already had a very clear idea what they were looking for.

Had probably read a day in the live of a happiness engineer at Automatic or whatever in 55 different iterations. They knew what they were getting into. and the companies were very clear about what they were offering and what they were not [00:28:00] offering. So it was kind of a very level playing field because you knew what you were getting into and they were, knew what they were getting in. Um, then of course there were the digital nods, but those were usually like solo printers who would like travel, and it was a very, I mean, there were a couple of world schoolers, but it was usually single people who could like af between study and whatever would do this. Then the pandemic happened some, suddenly everybody is remote, and it was not a deliberate choice by any means for most people and also most people.

Didn't have the optimized surrounding to do this. Like if, especially if you live in a, in a very high cost of living area, you probably don't even have the space to have in a home office because you, you are lucky enough to like that the bed fits into your bedroom then, and then you have to like work on the bed.

And then, so I'm this. It's just terminal and I, I don't think it was, for me that was crisis management. Like it wasn't a work from home experiment. It was crisis management. [00:29:00] And I understand how people got completely, like you didn't get depression because you were working remote. You got depression because you were cut off from all of your support networks and your family was dying.

Which is kind of, it has nothing to do with work. It was just the, the, the, how the world was set up at the time and now going forward. I think this experiment still has shown a lot of people how much flexibility can actually make life easier on you and how it can make it easier to integrate your work with your life.

It has also shown that we, and as a society, we need to invest a lot more into third spaces. So if we look at work. One space family as another space. We, the third space where we would get in touch with other adults, that we could have interesting information, uh, conversations with, used to be around work, but now everything is at home.

We, we don't, many people aren't really affiliated with any churches, um, anymore or any clubs or any et cetera. [00:30:00] And I think as a society, we need to and as managers actually, actually we need to push our people to go out there and have friendships outside. So that they actually leave the house from time to time.

That's the like, easiest way to, to avoid depression and loneliness. And so from now on forward, I think it, we probably still need like five to 10 years or something companies to get, really need to get really, really clear about what they are offering in terms of, and not even remote, but in terms of work policy.

What type of remote are you doing so that the people who are working can say, okay, now I'm in a moment in my life where I actually want to be a digital Nord, so I'm going to find a company that doesn't care where I work and where I can travel around while now I'm in a moment in my life, I sending my kids to school.

I'm not going to go anywhere anyway. I want to have a company that actually has headquartered in the country where I am in because I want them to contribute to my pension scheme. So I'm going to work with a company. That only hires within [00:31:00] this nation. Or I'm in a time of my life where I want to travel around my continent, and so I'm going to specifically search a company that has a very, very like consistent presence in the com, in the continent that I work in.

And I think there will be solutions, like some companies will. Everybody will need to decide what their, what their policy actually is about it. Because the one thing that doesn't work is to say, oh, we do everything. Because then you end up doing nothing really well and you end up with a lot of unhappy people and suboptimal work conditions, and that usually means they're not very good product

Tyler Sellhorn: well, you heard it from the empress of remote herself. Thank you very much Valentina, for taking this time to learn out loud with us. This invitation for us to be reflective about that 2019 and earlier time when it was a deliberate time. Right? And then there was that, those pandemic times, this is the after times where, where it was not deliberate.[00:32:00]

Valentina Thörner: That was Armageddon.

Tyler Sellhorn: Right, and now I am embracing and loving your invitation for this time to be the one where we integrate. And that we make it work for each of those stages of life and each of those stages of companies and whatever, wherever those companies happen to be working from, that there is an integration between the people that work for it and the societies that they live in.

I think, I think it is so fun to, to be thinking about all of these moments in time and to be building the future of remote work with, with you. Valentina, thank you so much for learning out loud with us.

Valentina Thörner: You're very welcome. This was fun. Thank you for the conversation.