Going async-first

Hey,

I'm Sergio Pereira, and this is the Remote Work newsletter 👋

Last week, I told you about the changes I'm seeing in startup team compositions, and the rise of freelance and Fractional CTO opportunities.

Today I'm telling you about async-first processes, and the changes I've announced today at the Remote Jobs Braintrust.

TL;DR: Cohort 5 will be the last time I'm lecturing all course sessions live. You can grab your seat here. And from now on, I'll lecture new sessions based on topics voted on the community's Slack.

This is one of several improvements I've distilled from the feedback of 100+ community members so far.

After each cohort I had a google form to collect feedback, and besides that I've spoken with many members 1:1 at some point. With some of them I've been mentoring them closely through the different stages of their remote job search.

My key learnings over the past 3 months have been:

• Most people prefer to watch sessions async, rather than joining live.

• Members are in different phases of their job search, so watching all sessions packed in 2-3 weeks is not ideal for most.

• There are requests to cover topics beyond full time job search (eg: fractional cto, freelance work, side projects, etc).

• There are requests to cover in further depth some topics that I mention lightly in the sessions (eg: specific interview questions, salary negotiation, etc).

A self-paced course

Going async for the 6 base sessions means that members can get their content immediately as they join the community. For some, waiting a week or two for the cohort's start was a frustration. Not anymore.

It also means that people can watch each course session as they go through the different stages of their job search. If you're struggling to get interviews booked, you should focus all your energy in the first sessions, about targeting, creating inbound demand, and optimising your remote job applications.

Only once you have interviews booked should you spend time on the interview-focused sessions. And only when you're in the final stages should you be thinking about salary negotiation and contracts.

More new sessions and increased value

By making the course self-paced, I aim to increase the value to new members. But beyond that, I also get an opportunity to invest my own time differently.

This means we'll have new sessions beyond these initial 6. I aim to lecture at least 1 new live session per month. All of those will be recorded, and become available for everyone in the community.

The first new session will be “How to start a Fractional CTO or freelance career”, based on these requests (link available for community members only).

Empowerment to all community members

The topics for new sessions will be decided from community suggestions. Whenever there are enough community members interested in a certain topic I’ll add a session about it to the calendar, so I can cover that topic in depth and we can have a live Q&A. I may invite guests to help me cover specific topics whenever relevant.

I'll also continue having these fireside sessions to learn from community members' success, like we had with Cristian and Fabien. Everyone loves the encouragement from our peer's success.

Cohort 5 gets the best of sync and async

So, the timing is great for Cohort 5. All new members joining now will have the best of both worlds:

• All sessions lectured live by myself.

• The new sessions we'll start having right after.

• Plus everything that's sticky (Slack community, Notion, recordings, etc)

We're starting this month of February. Join us here.

I've helped several clients going from meeting heavy cultures to async-first workflows. It certainly makes a lot of sense to make that transition in my own course and community. The reactions so far were very positive, and I'm looking forward to everyone's suggestions for new live sessions. It will be an interesting new dynamic.

This was the announcement I made in the community this morning. The goal, indeed, is to make the Remote Jobs Braintrust the go-to place for anyone learning how to have a successful remote career.

Thanks for reading this newsletter until the end. You can read all past editions here. Make sure to share it with your friends and colleagues so they can read it too.

See you next Friday,

Sergio Pereira, 
Startup CTO & Remote Work Lover