Waking up early has traditionally been put equal to being good, efficient, even heroic. Early risers have been praised in literature such as The 5am Club. One of the recommendations in that book is to go to bed at 10pm. Great, that’s the time when I am most creative. How about normalizing diversity in people’s biorhythms? For some, waking up at 5am is not even a challenge – they are programmed that way by nature. Then there are night owls like me. If I’d follow my body rhythm I’d probably wake up at noon and go to bed at 4am. I am an involuntary 5am club member though, as in my daily job my day often starts at 5am due to the time difference between California and our headquarters in Stockholm. My colleagues know: at 5am I may look awake but my brain is at 30% capacity. Moreover, when it gets exposed to the 5am torture it never reaches 100% that day. I found a life-hack to go for a nap when I’m done with the bulk of my morning meetings so that I look and feel like a human when I reach the office in the afternoon. My brain gets fooled by that restart and starts being creative again.

In his epic TED Talk “Choice, Happiness and Spaghetti Sauce”, Malcom Gladwell said: “By embracing the diversity of human beings you will find your way to true happiness”. Our society has done a good job embracing gender, cultural, and age diversity, and even the diversity when it comes to our taste preferences (and monetized on that). Biorhythmic diversity has not received much attention though. Working nine to five has been a standard for many office workers in the past. Covid-19 forced many companies into mandatory remote work in the past that has now transformed into hybrid ways of working, where people get to spend part of the working week working remotely, and the rest from the office. Remote work opens opportunities to work across time zones, and time your days to optimize your biorhythmic efficiency.

Our society is made for early risers. Schools start early, and I feel the everyday suffering of my kids who inherited my night owl genes. My daughter’s morning ritual in order to wake up is pouring cold water on her face, among other things like multiple alarm clocks and shaking her heavily. Even that does not always help. At the same time, she rarely falls asleep before 2am.

Let’s give recognition to the night owls, who code, write, create, innovate, design and do their best job at their most efficient hours. Let’s not shame people who turn up at the office by 10am or later – they are probably doing what’s best for the employer they are working for – working when they are most efficient.

– How will you celebrate Thanksgiving?
– We’re aliens and still learning how to celebrate in a proper way.
– Which planet are you from?
– We are from planet ABBA.

It has been two years since we moved to Silicon Valley from Stockholm. After the first year we were still in a slight shock (from the speed the things are moving with), and now, after two years we definitely landed, created opinions and found great new friends. We’re grateful for that. And with that, as you can see, we’ve joined the Thanksgiving tradition. Let’s move on. December was a month for reflection, and January is the month for writing so here we go. Here are our reflections and aha-moments from our two years in the Valley:

Diversity and Integration 👍

We had no clue of the amount of diversity in Silicon Valley. Moving to Silicon Valley is not as generic as “moving to the US”. There is a great mix of nationalities, and people speak openly about ethnicity, race(!) and background, and cherish the unique traditions. Our kids friends are from India, China, Africa, Europe, US, you name it. There are no cultural bubbles – they all hang together and learn from each others’ traditions. When our little Pablo started school here, he was 6 years old and did not speak a word of English. The school offered him an extra teacher who spoke his mother tongue and sat next to him during classes for the first six months. Pablo became fluent in English within his first year in US. When our 14 yo Elin first came to Palo Alto high school campus to start as a freshman, she got picked up by the janitor in a golf car with the words “Welcome to our Family!”. When our 13 yo Alexander started JLS Middle School, one of his first classes was Leadership and he was part pf the school’s TV production team. Silicon Valley knows how to integrate expats and kids of expats in record time.

Infrastructure 😐

This is something that you would not expect from a high-tech place like Silicon Valley, right? What we see in practice is that the roads are broken, electrical and internet cables are hanging above the road, and in many places there is no mobile internet coverage. Not surprisingly, autonomous car vendors are not relying on the road infrastructure when they build their features (we’ll come to that). In addition, we had to learn how to write checks…

House Prices 😳

At the time of writing the 4-bedroom house we’re renting has the market value of 5M USD. It has a minimal backyard, and is placed between our neighbour’s houses. People try to get as much as possible from the land in Palo Alto, and the lots are very small. Obviously, Silicon Valley salaries are still very competitive and people can afford buying properties. Many of those who bought their houses in the area say that they would not be able to afford them today, and only the yearly tax would amount to what they once paid as a downpayment on the house.

The Weather 🙃

Welcome to sunny California they said… We gave away all our warm clothes and decided to wear open-toe shoes all year around (when not wearing ski boots ofc). Little did we know… During these two years we got to experience heat waves (45+ celsius), earthquakes, flush floods, mud slides, rock slides, and snow storms, with mandatory electricity outages related to them.

Work Hard Play Hard 💪

From the start we’ve decided to be yes-men, and explore all the social opportunities the Valley brings. The social calendar got fully booked pretty quickly. Work-related mingles, presentations from tech giants, academic gatherings, and school-related activities filled every evening. 95% of them would normally be accompanied by mandatory wine and cheese, and, honestly, some of us could not eat so much cheese… so after a while we decided to be more picky. Especially because our days often start at 5AM in meetings with Sweden, and in combinations with late evenings that life style would not be sustainable. In addition, one quickly notices that every meeting in the Valley is about work. People would be pitching you their business idea, discuss potential innovations or fundraising.

Innovation 🤖

The fact that the level of innovation in the Valley is high is not a surprise for anyone. Here you can see the latest inventions in use. San Francisco is filled with autonomous cabs, Cybertrucks are on the streets, people use AR glasses in daily life, drones are making deliveries, and human-flying drone companies are testing their prototypes. Probably, one of the most important factors in all this is that the Valley is filled by early adopters, and the level of acceptance of the new technology in the society is very high.

Written by Elena Fersman and Paul Pettersson

“When the going gets tough the tough gets going”.

It’s time to reflect and make new plans. “How was your 2022?”, Paul said. “Probably the worst year of my life”, I replied. He looked shocked. “Oh, I meant on a macro-perspective. On a micro-perspective, it’s been a good year”. I already talked about the macro-perspective in my previous blog post. On a micro-perspective, it’s been an exciting first year in California for me and my family. It’s been the year of taking tons of vaccinations because we did not have our records from Sweden, buying furniture for the new house in the times of global shortages, choosing courses in the new school system, getting a car after eight years of being proudly car-free, and getting a drivers license for the fourth time in my life. It’s been the year of understanding and getting used to the new – the new school system, the new workplace, the new neighbours and the new traditions. It’s been a year of exploration, and exploration is exciting. We’re locals now; we’re from Palo Alto, California, when we get the question: “Where are you guys from?”. In 2022 we met many new friends who will be our friends for life, I’m sure. And we have strengthened our bond with the friends that we left in Sweden – luckily we meet quite often. I accidentally became a snowboarder. Elin join the swim team and water polo team, Alexander decided not to go for American football (what a relief) and went for soccer instead. Paul Jr is fluent in English and started to correct mine. We spent plenty of time with our amazing friends but that’s never going to be enough.

Work-wise 2022 has been an exciting year. After a long time working from home, we finally returned to the office. I never though that I would be missing going to the office but that’s a fact. 2022 was a year of many changes in my organisation, and 2023 will be the one where we can run faster. I have co-authored a book, together with Paul and Thanos – looking forward to its release in 2023! 2022 was my first full year as a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences in Sweden.

My resolutions for 2023:

• Less shopping!
• More time with my mom!
• More time with my friends!
• Write!
• Speak-up!

My father passed away in the beginning of this year. It’s something you can never get prepared for. My mother lives alone in Saint Petersburg after being married to my father for 56 years. Extra tough for me after my recent move to California. What I felt that day and the amount of tears was incomparable to what I felt on the 24th of February, when Russia, the country where I was born and lived half of my life, invaded Ukraine. That day I had no words, only tears. This is so much bigger than a personal tragedy of losing a family member. This unexplainable act concerns all of us. Beautiful historic cities in Ukraine are being bombed, people are being killed, and they are hiding and fleeing in fear. And Russians did not ask for this, they are horrified. There are demonstrations on the streets across the whole country and people are raising their voices against the war, under the risk of ending up in prison. The day it started I had no words, only tears. But having no words is not an option. We all have words and we need to make ourselves heard. My 13-year old son who appears to be the only Russian in his school did an interview and spoke his mind for peace. My dear friend Ivetta is organising a concert in Stockholm for peace in Ukraine, with hundreds of people attending. I love Ukraine and Ukrainians, respect and cherish their traditions, and I am in tears every time I watch the news nowadays. Russians and Ukrainians have always been brothers; how do you turn brothers against each other?

My family always had a tradition – every new years eve, while the clock hits 12 times and crosses the midnight, we would write a wish on a small piece of paper for what we hope for the coming year. When I was little and had hard times putting down my wishes my parents always said – write “PEACE”, the word is short (“МИР” in Russian), easy to write and is the most important thing in life. Both my parents were born in 1941 – my mom under evacuation in Samara, and my father in Leningrad, where he got to experience the siege. True stories from that war told by my grandparents have always been with me, like a distant nightmare. No one could think that the evil social exercise will be repeated. I kept writing PEACE on my small piece of paper, every new years eve. This time, the paper will have to be a lot bigger and the voices a lot louder. Because every voice counts.