45 Days, Anywhere: Nikola's December in Thailand

You don't have to be at your desk in the office to do great security work. Nikola Ilic spent last December and early January in Thailand proving that.

Nikola is a Threat Research Engineer on our WAAP team, i.e., Gcore's web application and API protection product that stops bad traffic (bots, L7 DDoS, API abuse, OWASP Top 10 attacks) at the edge before it reaches a customer's app. His focus is on the research end: studying how attackers behave so the protection stays ahead of them.

Work From Anywhere at Gcore: 45 Days of Flexibility

To make the trip, he used Gcore's Work From Anywhere policy. The shape of it is simple: up to 45 days a year, anywhere in the world. It's open to everyone, not just certain roles or seniority levels. You don't have to spend it in one block. Nikola's Thailand stint was a single trip, but you could split the days across several. The only real requirement is a heads-up to your manager, so the team stays coordinated across time zones. That's it.

In his words:

"Working somewhere completely different changed the rhythm of my days. Thailand made me slow down, breathe a bit more, walk a bit slower, notice the small things. That turned out to be a good headspace for the work: it's easier to see a problem from a new angle when you have a change of scenery. The Thai approach to life is sabai sabai (สบายๆ), relaxed, unhurried, and I tried to bring some of that to how I approached the hard problems too."

Security work never really stops because the attackers don't take holidays. But where you do the work is up to you.

That's Work from Anywhere in practice: take your laptop across the planet for a few weeks, and keep doing work you care about, with the same team behind you.

Thailand from Nikola's lens