Hey hey hey,

Mads here. I missed the newsletter last week as I was traveling to Portugal (more on that in a bit...) but now I'm back with issue #70 of the Top 3 in Tech newsletter.

Let's get into it!

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1. Remote work

Since the pandemic, the tech industry has seen a growing trend towards remote work. We've realized that most development jobs can be done just as effectively from homes, coworking spaces or cafés as they can from a traditional office.

I'm a big fan of this movement. Not because I specifically prefer working remotely (I actually enjoy being in the office most of the time), but because it enables people to work from wherever they feel most productive. I also think it's absurd to force people to commute if they can save up to several hours every single day. Remote work provides that flexibility for people to design their work around their life - instead of the other way around.

The reason I'm bringing up remote work is because I actually had the pleasure of working remotely from a coworking space in beautiful Lisbon last week. Before that I'd only worked in the office or from home during lockdowns. And while I didn't enjoy working from home at all (too lonely), working from a coworking space with some of my colleagues was the perfect balance.

I found it way easier to get "in the zone" and do deep work because I wasn't afraid of getting distracted. In the office I often struggle to really achieve focus because I know that someone will be interrupting me within the next 30 minutes. And even if they don't, I'll get distracted myself by something happening around me. None of that happened in the coworking space, and I honestly think it's the most productive week I've had in a long time.

At the same time though, I wouldn't recommend remote working to everyone.

I think there's tons of value in being around your colleagues - especially if you're early on in your career.

The most important thing for a junior developer is to soak up as much knowledge as possible from their peers. And I simply think that's 100x easier if you work closely together. It's easier to ask questions and easier to collaborate on code.

I frequently get messages from juniors looking for a remote entry-level job. And I understand why that sounds tempting.

But I really think you'll be doing yourself a disservice if you don't take the advantage of working closely and learning from your colleagues by physically being together in the office. Not to mention that very few companies will hire junior devs remotely.

So, my advice: feel free to experiment with remote working (if possible) and see how it works for you. It's very possible you'll enjoy that way of working and be more productive (win-win!). But at the same time, don't underestimate the value of being in an office and having peers to collaborate with nearby.

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2. Web Summit 2022

Now the reason I w​as even in Lisbon to begin with was because of Web Summit 2022. It's (probably) the biggest tech conference, with tons of speakers, companies, events and over 70.000 attendees over a 4-day period. I traveled with my company since we, as a digital agency, are naturally very interested in the future of the Web.

The conference was a great experience overall - some amazing talks, some mediocre ones and a lot of walking and chatting with companies. So I'll save you the hassle and just share some of my favourite talks here:

"Debunking the great AI lie". A super interesting talk about what AI is (and what it isn't). Especially relevant with the current surge of new AI tools. Definitely worth checking out:

I also enjoyed hearing from the Head of Product at Meta discuss the metaverse and future of the internet:

Aside from these my favourite was definitely Brendan Eich (the creator of JavaScript) discussing privacy and how the internet wasn't designed for mega corps to harvest and sell all our data, but look where we ended up. Unfortunately the recording isn't online yet, but I'll try to include it in the next newsletter.

Overall I enjoyed my time at Web Summit and getting a feel for where the industry is headed in the future!

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3. Remix joins Shopify

​I've talked a lot about Remix, the full-stack, progressively enhanced React metaframework before. But recently the team shared some really exciting news: they're now officially a part of Shopify!

I'm personally pretty stoked about this announcement. Shopify is the leading e-commerce platform to create webshops, and they've been working on their headless React-powered Hydrogen framework for a while. But I think joining forces with Remix will be a great leap forward to help developers create amazing webshop experiences using React in the future.

Check out the announcement post here or learn more about what this means for Hydrogen here.​

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That's it for now! See you soon

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— Mads Brodt