Today, we visited Wargaming, an online video game company, headquartered in Nicosia. While they have many types of people working there, it is primarily developers and tech-focused jobs. I first noticed how “tech” and “silicon valley” looked. They had a cafe on the first floor, and then there was an entire gym, a sauna, and a massage service downstairs. This resembled American tech companies in the sense that they go above and beyond to make it appealing to work there. Companies such as Google and Instagram have very worker-focused and modern office spaces as well. At Wargaming, we learned about their unique perspective on the concept of “work-life balance”. They stress an outlook of, as they put it, “work-life harmony” where work is an integrated part of your life and they are not two distinct parts of your life. They also stressed trust and listening to employees. An example of this is their flexibility with employees. They do not do time sheets/punch cards to keep track of hours, but they trust that each employee will come in and do their required amount of work each day. The hours are 9-5, but it is acceptable to shift those hours, for example, 11-7 or take a long lunch and work late for example. The basis of this thinking is that freedom and amenities will increase productivity. One way they believe this happens is that people will be healthier and less stressed and therefore have fewer sick days and less burnout. 

At first, this sounded amazing to me, and even prompted me to think more about investing time into learning how to code outside of class. I do feel that personally, I could fit in with this model because I am a firm believer in productive rest to avoid burnout and using my self-discipline to be able to have freedom while still being productive at work. However, I do not feel that this would work for every person, and especially not in every industry. For example, the shipping industry’s success relies upon efficiency and promptness, so this sort of business theory would most likely not work. 

After Wargaming, we headed to UNIC to collaborate with engineering and business students on projects. One thing that stood out to me was how relaxed the students were. However, this was their last week of school, and I’m fairly sure their finals are different from ours, so I assume they are not always this laid-back. In our first “class”, a few of the UNIC students came a few minutes late and did not seem to care a lot about our assignment. No judgment, I do not think they were graded at all and it was more interesting to socialize with us as they don’t see a ton of Americans here. They were also very casual with their professors; way more casual than I am with my Pitt professors which was interesting. 

Today was a very long day, but we learned a lot about business and school in Cyprus, which is all very fascinating to observe.