Remote work gives professional flexibility to companies and personal flexibility to employees. But you need the right equipment for it.

Everything used to be better in the old days. Really? Let’s flash back to the world of work in 2015. That was before the COVID-19 pandemic, yet we already had most of the software tools allowing remote work at that time. But remote work wasn’t common yet.

At that time, I worked in a large company, and it was strictly forbidden to work from home on Fridays — apparently, because people would misuse their liberties and extend their weekends at the company’s expense. Of course, my boss made an exception for himself regularly.

Let’s flash back even further, to 2001. At that time, I started studying engineering at university. There existed a thing called “computer rooms.” That’s where we went to solve our programming homework. We wrote C++ programs on big, ugly Unix workstations.

At the same time, my late father was an executive in a large industrial corporation. When he had to finish work on the weekend, he didn’t do it from home. He drove his car to the office, some 40 km away, because that’s where his computer and his office were.

Back to 2026. As the Founder & CEO of Yonder, a B2B SaaS company, my colleagues and I work from wherever we are. We still like to see each other, and that’s why everyone based in Switzerland comes to our physical office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. For our colleagues based outside Switzerland, we bring them to Switzerland for a work week every 6 months.

No doubt, remote work has huge professional and personal benefits. The advantages of remote work have been discussed widely, mainly at the height of the pandemic, so I refrain from repeating them. But let’s look at two specific aspects from my daily life as an entrepreneur: The flexibility remote work facilitates, and the (very modest) equipment you need to succeed in such a setup.

The Flexibility

A few weeks ago, we had an infrastructure problem affecting one of our customers who went live just a few days earlier. As usual, the infrastructure problem didn’t occur on a Monday morning at 9 am, but on a Sunday at 6 am. I was on vacation, the customer success manager was at a family gathering, and our DevOps guys were at home with their families somewhere in Eastern Europe.

Within 2 hours, the problem was fixed. How did we do it? First of all, everybody in the company was aware that this new customer was about to go live. Therefore, our DevOps guys on on-call duty knew that their assistance would likely be needed over the weekend. Furthermore, both the customer success manager and I knew that being responsive is important for any new customer, so we kept our laptops close to intervene if needed.

We don’t celebrate being always-on, but if it’s needed, we’re not shy to do whatever it takes anywhere, anywhen. Our remote work mindset gives us the professional flexibility to do so without maintaining large on-call teams that sit idle most of the time.

What does our team get in return for their professional flexibility? Nobody needs to take half a day off in our company for a medical appointment, a school gathering, or an extended lunch with a good friend. Flexibility is two-sided — if you expect professional flexibility from your team, you have to give them personal flexibility in return.

The Equipment

Working flexibly needs the right equipment. It means you need to be able to carry all necessary equipment with you at all times. So forget about large 50-inch screens, gaming chairs, and height-adjustable desks.

I got accustomed to this work setup when I worked in global sales from 2015 to 2019. Very often, I’d find myself in an airport café with a shitty WiFi signal, drawing technical plans on my laptop, which I needed to compile proposals. The proposal was then finalized in an economy class seat on the plane heading back home. Because I traveled very often, I avoided checking baggage whenever possible. This meant that my mobile office needed to be lightweight.

Since that time, I keep everything I need for my daily work in a Minaal office backpack (no affiliation here, but it’s the best piece of equipment I ever owned). All the dashboards I need to run the company fit on a MacBook Pro 16-inch screen, so there is no excuse that I can’t work on certain things because I’m working on a small screen.

Besides my laptop, I always carry my mobile phone, my AirPods Pro noise-cancelling headphones, my iPad (which I can use as a second screen), and a power bank to extend the juice of my devices if needed. The setup is complemented with the daily amenities such as a water bottle, a toothbrush, a small paper notebook, a Swiss Army knife, and a head lamp — you never know when adversity strikes.

Those 10 kg of equipment have accompanied me through the last 10 years of my professional life, and they gave me the ultimate freedom as an entrepreneur: My office is where my backpack is.