Q&A with Nikola: A MailerLite wedding proposal and coworking with your wife

Meet Nikola

• Currently lives in Belgrade, Serbia

• Originally from Vrnjačka Banja, Serbia

• I'm a Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

• I started at The Remote Company in October, 2018

• Why I love my job: Work doesn’t feel like work. It feels like a hobby, and it's fun to do!

Before we pick your brain about working together as a couple: Your marriage proposal has something to do with The Remote Company. Tell us more!

I had planned to propose to my wife for quite some time, and our bi-annual workation to the Azores gave me an idea. I would invite her and pop the question there!

Because The Remote Company is awesome, we don't need to book flights for the exact workation dates—we're allowed to stay longer and arrive earlier. Usually, my wife travels to our workation destination after our team-bonding week is done, so we can go and explore more together.

For the proposal location, I chose Miradouro da Boca do Inferno. It's a strategically great place for a proposal because if she would have said no, I could have just nudged her off the cliff (JK JK 😉).

Fortunately for her (and me 😅), she said yes!

I said thank you to my colleagues at the end of the proposal video, because I had bored my co-workers to death all week, plotting how I was going to propose.

FYI: I decided to pretend to record a time-lapse while actually recording the proposal.

You both work from home. For you, remote work isn’t new, but it is for your wife. How did you both adapt?

I've been working from home for quite a while and I was fully prepared to embrace a caveman-style type of life.

My wife, on the other hand, is much more social and enjoys working in an office. It took her a little longer to adjust to our new normal.

When we moved into this apartment in December 2019, we didn't plan for COVID to happen (who did?!) so we had to improvise setting up our home offices. Every day around 9 AM I'm getting kicked out of the bedroom because that's her workspace. I work in my home office (aka my man cave).

We work similar hours and try to have our meals together. I'm working on improving my barista skills, so every day after breakfast I bring a coffee to her office and make one for myself. Then we start our workday.

Adapting our schedules was pretty easy, although my wife had to learn to see our apartment as an office and resist the temptation to watch TV or do a chore during the workday.

To keep fit, she likes to do yoga and I have my exercise room where I do my cardio.

Do you have a clear separation between work and leisure time?

Not really. My work is my hobby, so it's kind of always there.

We're both working in the IT field, and we enjoy sharing work-related stories and giving each other advice on how to deal with certain situations. We also exchange ideas on how both of our companies are doing things (so we can gather insights on how to improve processes).

How has your relationship evolved after a year of coworking?

I thought that she would have to divorce me early after spending every minute of her day with me. Turns out, I'm quite nice to have around! Who would have thought? I think it might be because I'm tall(ish), so I get her all the top-shelf things she can't reach herself. 💁‍♂️

All jokes aside… I think it's important to have hobbies that don't involve the other person. I do 3D printing and I record and produce music, while she likes to garden on our balcony and read a lot.

My number one tip for a healthy relationship while working and living under the same roof is _____

To listen to each other, even though it is often hard (especially when I sing).