A couple of years ago, right in the midst of the pandemic that forced most people to work from home, I had an eye-opening moment. As my country began to cautiously reopen for the first time in months, the corporate world's calls for office presence grew louder, and national media kept churning out article after article on why remote work wasn't supposed to be a permanent solution.
It was clear that the previous months had shown that most jobs could be done from home, or anywhere in the world, just as effectively. In many instances, employees were even more productive than before. Yet, companies were eager to bring people back to the office without appearing to give a second thought to the potential benefits of remote work for both employees and the companies themselves. I personally experienced this tension, when I realized that my job could be done from anywhere and tried to make the most of this new-found flexibility.
The plan was to see my long-distance partner, who I hadn’t been able to visit since before the pandemic - which was tough to say the least. Finally, after 3 months of being over 6,000 km apart, we found an opportunity to meet up in Ireland. Both of us would have to travel and quarantine, but since our work was totally remote-friendly, we jumped at the chance. While my partner's employer was extremely supportive, my boss wouldn't let me go, claiming that I couldn't do my job from anywhere but the office, even though I had been working from home for months at that point. Seeing this stark contrast in support and company culture made me realize that I wasn't at my dream job. I was stuck in an okay job, and I had lost sight of the lifestyle I wanted to have when I was younger.
Creating Dreamotely
When I started brainstorming Dreamotely, I didn't really know what I wanted to build yet. Sure, I wanted to make it easier for people to find remote jobs. But with big players like WeWorkRemotely and WorkingNomads already dominating the market with their sizable followings, I needed a unique angle. After examining countless remote job listings, it became clear that most open positions were merely remote-friendly and not fully remote. While working from home a few days a week can have a huge positive impact on your life, it's not what I consider true remote work. I was seeking genuine location-independence, distributed teams, and workflows that weren't just remote-friendly, but remote-first.
After brushing up on my Javascript and framework skills and just started. I linked up with Firestarters, a great agency from Denmark, to flesh out the UI, and slowly but surely the MVP started to take shape. The early version were a bit bloated, so I went back to the drawing board to shave off all the features that initially wouldn’t add value to my users.
At the beginning of the year I finally launched the first version of Dreamotely - for the world to see. I realize that launching a product is not a one-time deal. I have a vision and a plan, and I will continuously be launching new features - let me tell you what you can expect coming to Dreamotely over the next few months as Dreamotely grows.
Roadmap
MVP
The Minimum Viable Product is what you are seeing right now. Job posts, a blog and a ton of elbow grease. There is no user generated content as of right now - all jobs you find on Dreamotely are hand curated.
I'll be continuously tweaking the user experience page by page, while tinkering with new features and finding ways to talk to users.
User profiles
Over the next few months I will be slowly rolling out user profiles, where job-seekers can see jobs that they’ve highlighted, a history of highlighted jobs and where they can easily follow companies that they are interested in. It will be your own job search hub to keep you on track of finding the remote dream job you desire.
Profiles will be rolled out to a small group of beta testers first - not just to work out the kinks but also to gain some insight on what features the early users love and also what they would like to see.
Company profiles
With the implementation of profiles for companies, Dreamotely will slowly transition from exclusively hand-curated listings to job postings straight from the source. Like any good job platform we want companies to be able to tap into the talent pool directly and company profiles will allow job seekers to do exactly that.
Posting and managing jobs directly from your dashboard, keeping track of how much interest your listings receive and giving you info on applicant(s) (if the have a user profile) are planned features for early next year.
This year will be busy with fixes, new features and additions being added constantly. If you want to stay in the loop and be the first one to hear about new major releases, make sure to sign up for the mailing list below!