What Brașov is actually like to work in

Most job ads describe a city the way a brochure would. This is the version we would give a friend.

The shift is the strangest part

You would start around three in the afternoon and finish around midnight. That is the whole reason the job exists, and it is the thing people either love or cannot live with.

What nobody tells you is how it changes the rest of your week. Mornings are genuinely yours. You can see a doctor, get to the gym when it is empty, deal with the bank, hike before work. The trade is your evenings, and whether that is a good deal depends entirely on who you spend them with.

People with young children usually find it hard. People who have always resented mornings tend to stay for years.

The city

Brașov is small enough to cross in twenty minutes and old enough to be worth crossing. The office is in the centre, which means lunch is a walk rather than a drive, and the mountain is close enough that people genuinely do go up it after a shift in summer.

Rent is a fraction of what it costs in Bucharest or Cluj, and the difference is not offset by salaries being proportionally lower. That is the quiet financial argument for being here, and it is the reason a lot of people who left came back.

What the office is like during a late shift

Quieter than a normal office, and closer. There are maybe a dozen or two people in at any time, the work is real and time-bound, and there is no drifting. It has more in common with a newsroom than with an open-plan software floor.

We are in person for that shift. Not as a policy position, but because a late team that cannot turn around and ask someone a question stops functioning within about a fortnight.

Who this does not suit

If you want fully remote, we are the wrong company. If you want a nine-to-five, same. If you want to be left alone to do exactly the thing in your job description, also probably not, because on a small team the edges of a role are where most of the work lives.

If you are still reading and none of that put you off, the open roles are worth a look.