🗺️ Working from ...

Karim Benjelloun Herrera

Team: Development

Position: Lead DevOps Engineer

Where is your workplace?

Everywhere! Mostly in Amsterdam at home. But I often travel somewhere and work from there. This year I've been to Madrid, London, Berlin, Miami and the Canary Islands.

How do you make that happen?

Since I started working at Sensorfact, I've emphasized how important it is to be able to work as a distributed team, so we would eventually be able to work remotely. And I'm very happy we did, because when Corona happened we were more than ready to work from our homes. Later Sensorfact drafted a Remote Work Policy, be sure to check it out.

The most important thing for me is to make sure that any travel plans do not interfere with important events or physical meetings. So I try to plan ahead, and make sure I communicate this with the team so there are no surprises.

Also, accommodation has gotten extremely expensive lately, so instead of booking a hotel room or an Airbnb, I started exchanging homes with people in other countries who want to visit (or work remotely) from Amsterdam. Sustainable accommodation!

What does working remotely look like?

It's not all sunshine and rainbows. Working remotely and traveling often comes with a price. Not only your Airbnb or Hotel, but you are also out of your comfort zone and still need to: find a proper workplace, find Wi-Fi, find food, find a quiet place to do video calls, and still be productive. Not to mention that sometimes the time difference might be challenging. In the Canaries or the UK you need to wake up an hour earlier! And in Miami, my shift was from 3AM to 11AM.

But it's all worth it because you can go to the beach after work, meet family and friends that don't live in the Netherlands, and get to discover much more than when you are limited to travel only twenty-something days per year. That's priceless.

What is your lunch?

When I am in Spain, I definitely eat "Menu del Dia" (Daily Meal Deal). This is a 2/3 course menu that includes drink/dessert/coffee and you will pay something between 8 and 14 euros. This is quite common in most restaurants in Spain and only during weekdays, since it's mostly targeted towards local people who work in the area.

What is often one of the first things you do when you close your laptop?

Meet my local friends. Eat all the food I come across (including my mom's). And dive in the sea as much as I can.