In 2020, I got fired for trying to create a better work culture.
At the time, it felt like failure. Now it feels like the start of the most important thing I've built.
If you complained about an unhealthy pace, you would hear: "You're not ambitious enough!". Or if you noticed burned out people, you were imagining things, or that person having problems never admitted it to their boss's face out of fear of losing their job.
So when I started pushing for healthier ways of working, more trust, more time off, results-oriented metrics over hours-tracked in a company that literally sold hours-tracked metrics, it didn't land well.
After that chapter ended, I took a sabbatical. For the first three months, I didn't touch a single line of code. I picked up woodworking and drawing. I read books. I wrote. I spent time with my family without checking Slack every twenty minutes. It was the first time in years that my calendar didn't own me.
Then, in early 2021, I enrolled in a cohort-based course taught by Sahil Lavingia, the founder of Gumroad. During the second week, he shared a side project with the group. I opened the developer console, spotted a piece of code that could be simplified, rewrote it, and sent it back. He liked it. He asked me to rewrite another part. Done.
I saw my shot.
I cold-DM'd him. He asked for an email. I sent one. Four days later, at 2am on my birthday, we hopped on a call. Then came the coding challenge, my nemesis. I had never passed one before in my career. But this time, I went all in on all three parts. And I passed.
That's how I found what I now call my first calm company. They had no meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees when I joined.
I worked 4-5 hours a day, on my own schedule. And strangely enough, I got better results, not worse. I was more focused, more creative, and less anxious. When I needed time off, I took it. No guilt. No permission ritual.
Over the next four years at Gumroad, I helped build the content editor that's now used by over 55,000 creators every month and drives the majority of the company's GMV. I contributed to nearly 2,000 pull requests, roughly one per day for fifty months straight. I grew a lot as an engineer and as a person, working alongside incredibly talented people.
But the whole time, one question kept nagging me:
Why is this way of working treated like a rare exception instead of a valid default?
I also kept a quiet habit. Every time I came across a company that seemed to operate like Gumroad, autonomy-first, async, sane hours, profitable, I'd add it to a list. Gumroad was the first entry. Over the years, the list slowly grew.
Eventually, I had to face a promise I kept postponing: build something of my own.
Last year, my family and I moved to New York City. We had a twenty-month-old toddler, no family nearby, and all the chaos that comes with rebuilding life in one of the world's most expensive cities. Saying goodbye to my best friends before leaving Romania was one of the hardest things I've ever done — that strange mix of excitement and sobbing, not knowing when you'll see each other again.
I could've stayed on the traditional path. Companies in NYC were hiring engineers like crazy. Sahil offered to recommend me to other companies. I had options.
But I wanted to bet on myself.
So after 60 days in New York, I left. Moved back to Romania, where a single month of rent plus daycare in NYC equaled nearly a full year's rent back home. I lowered our burn and went all in on indie hacking.
Around that time, I pulled up that list again. The one with the calm companies. It had been sitting on a shelf for months, untouched — just a private document, a personal reference.
I stared at it for a while.
And then it clicked: this shouldn't stay a private document. It should be a product.
That's how Calm Companies was born.
It's a curated list of companies that prioritize people over performative hustle, plus a weekly job digest whenever they have an opening. Every company is there because I can point to concrete cultural signals: how they communicate, how they scope work, how they talk about autonomy, how they structure expectations, how they treat life outside of work. Not vibes. Not polished career pages. Actual signals.
I made it paid on purpose, because I wanted to keep it sustainable and focused. When something is free, it often turns into a volume game. I didn't want volume. I wanted trust.
It's not perfect. Culture is never binary. But it's a better filter than guessing from a LinkedIn post and hoping for the best.
I built Calm Companies for people like me a few years ago: skilled, motivated, and tired of burning energy in systems that confuse pressure with excellence.
I also built it for founders and leaders who want proof that another model works. Because it does.
You can build strong companies without burning people out. You can run profitable teams without treating everyone's calendar like open real estate. You can move fast and still be humane.
If you know a truly calm company, send it my way. And if you're building one, keep going.
The future of work won't be fixed by slogans. It'll be fixed by operators who choose better defaults, one company at a time.