Why Freelance Community

is Important for Etcetera.

(and how it saved a bird’s life)

The feeling of belonging to a Ukrainian freelance community of Ukrainian freelancers is one of the greatest benefits of working in Etcetera. You become part of our big family from the first day you join and get over 30 friendly messages in the group chat welcoming you to the team. And the feeling of community in our team grows stronger with every day and month. One time, the importance of the community traditions even saved a small bird (but we’ll leave this story for the end of the post).

There are many ways we invest into building the feeling of closeness and affinity in the team:

  • Dedicated Skype chats for designers, developers, managers, and for each individual project allow you to share knowledge, ask for advise or just laugh at inside jokes in a smaller circle of colleagues. The managers turned into real friends and even organised their own non-formal chat to complain and cry on each others shoulder.

  • Online drink nights let us relax together with beer, wine, or just tea and talk about such topics that sometimes surprise even ourselves 😀

  • Online board games have been our another tradition for almost 2 years already. Those who enjoy this kind of fun gather every 1 or 2 weeks to play together.

  • Several times we’ve been together on workations (in Turkey, for example, or Carpathian’s) and this is one of the best experiences you can have in a team. You get a chance to work together offline during the day (which is a rare opportunity for freelancers), and then after the job is done we have so much fun that can’t wait to plan the next workation.

  • Offline meetings were traditional before the war started for holidays, but even now we sometimes gather in Kyiv or Lviv where the larger parts of the team are living to meet each other in person.

  • Every week ends in fun with Friday-memes in the group chat that helps to transition from the work-mode to the weekends.

  • Donations have become another important part of our team during the last year and a half. We have a special chat where those who are on the front lines (or have family in army) can raise donations for themselves or their troops.

Now the story you’ve been waiting for - How Etcetera freelance community traditions saved Ryan the wagtail.

Sometimes each project develops its own rituals. Sharing personal photos on Friday became a tradition for one of the project. That Friday the team was sharing pictures of their pets. So, it made our developer get up and go outside looking for his dog to take a photo.

He found his dachshund eating a small bird, which he rescued from the dog’s mouth. The whole team spend Friday evening figuring out how to help the little fella. We conducted a small life-saving operation, put the bird into a box and on the rooftop.

Nestling’s parents flew there every day to feed Ryan (so we called the bird), and soon it was well and old enough to safely fly away.

Of course, saving a bird’s life was important.

But maybe even more important is how this experience (as well as all the other things we’ve mentioned) helps us build trust, improve communication, cooperation and the feeling of community inside the team. So that we are not just coworkers, but a true family.

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