Nadia Vatalidis: Extreme Async, Unguarded Feedback, Career by Initiative | Work 20XX Ep59

Nadia Vatalidis flew 10,000 miles, almost halfway around the world, to share her insights at Running Remote 2026 in Austin. And the distance is more than geographic. She doesn't live in the US, Europe or Asia. Her vantage is from South Africa, which povides a unique look 'back' if you will at the rest of the tech scene, with a differernt 'reality' check than I have here in Palo Alto, CA, in the eye of the storm, or even Asia or Europe or Austraila for that matter. Sometimes it's harder to tell what's happening when you're standing in the middle of it.

Nadia was there at the beginning. Over a decade ago, working alongside Darren Murph at GitLab in those early days, helping define what would become the blueprint, reference, dictionary, thesaurus and operations manual, the anchor document, for distributed work around the world, the  'GitLab Remote Work handbook, ' published open source, for the benefit of all. That kind of longitudinal perspective is rare, and she's added to it since, moving from GitLab through other fully remote companies to her current role as Head of People at Doist, 100% remote, 100+ people, 40+ countries.

So we got into the good stuff. Extreme async, functioning radical candor against 40+ cultures, and self managed careers. What does it take to create the conditions where honesty lands as a gift instead of a grenade, across so many different baseline cultural norms? Nadia explained their shadow program, giving people a chance to try before they buy in different types of roles, departments, and functions. And showing her care for the people, Nadia reinforced that even if that if helping someone grow means they eventually outgrow the company, that's not a failure. She celebrates the growth and development. That's the whole point. It gets celebrated. A great illustration and example of the mature, adult, professional, working demeanor required to operate in a world that prioritizes growth and improvement, at the risk of ruffling a few feathers (unintentionally).

And of course we got into how Nadia specifically and Doist generally are leveraging AI to deliver more with their existing team.

Good management is good management. These practices aren't just for remote or hybrid teams. They're for any leader who takes people seriously.

And if Nadia was willing to fly half way around the word to share, I can assure you it well worth your 25 minutes.

Please join me in welcoming Nadia Vatalidis to the Work 20XX Podcast.

Editor's Note: Recorded May 2026 at the Running Remote conference in Austin, Texas. Special thanks to Liam, Egor, Ana, and the entire Running Remote team.

Nadia Vatalidis: Extreme Async, Unguarded Feedback, Career by Initiative | Work 20XX Ep59 with Jeff Frick from Running Remote 2026

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