Moving up in the corporate hieracy Bob Massarczyk realised that doing PowerPoints 80 percent of the time was not what he wanted for himself anymore.
Bob Massarczy is freelance web engineer and loves his job.
With his big round piercings he does look like a free spirit who’d never choose a corporate job.
But as they say — never judge a book by it’s cover (and who says you cannot be corporate AND have large piercings??). Bob was corporate before going freelance.
About nine years ago he moved to Singapore with a big German company to work as a product engineer in the company’s devision there. He was good at it and advanced on a corporate level.
But life in Singapore was fast paced and Bob felt something else pull: An urge to be independent.
At the same time he was bored and stuck in meetings doing PowerPoint presentations 80 percent of the time — so he quit and went freelance to be able to do whatever he wanted to do: To build digital solutions from scratch and see the end users reap the benefits. With that decision he changed the course of his professional life.
Six years later and oceans of experiences under the bridge Bob is now a member at Republikken and on a sunny Thursday morning he shared his story about finding a life partner, changing professional direction, traveling the world and now settling down in a new country with fellow members at Community Breakfast.
When he left Singapore it wasn’t empty-handed. Apart from his newfound independence he’d met his future wife. When she had to move to Europe to work, Bob decided to follow her. As freelance web designer he could, and working freelance as a foreigner in Singapore did in many ways resembled a corporate position due to Singaporean regulations — the exact thing he no longer wanted.
For the past six years Bob has lived and worked in France, the Netherlands and Luxemburg often traveling 4 days a week to be with his wife. Eventually the couple decided to live in Denmark because Danes very often use English as business language — a necessity for both of them. France didn’t do too well on that part, and London could have been a better choice language-wise if it wasn’t just as hectic as Singapore.
Corona of course hit Bob’s freelance career as it did many other’s and business was set back for a while. Today, business is back on track and Bob is pretty booked again. But he’s looking for collaborations to act on ideas and to expand his Danish professional network. So far all his business is with his network from Singapore.
Today Republikken is his go-to place after two years of working from home alongside his wife. If anyone thinks co-working spaces can be noisy, apparently it’s nothing compared to working at home with a partner who has to manage her job by phone. Sounds like home office-life can be a bit hectic too.
Luckily Republikken provides phone booths for phone calls as well as plenty of collaboration and networking opportunities.
Perhaps Bob and his wife has found a base they didn’t know they were looking for right here in Copenhagen.