Thursday Things — Feb 20th, 2025

"If you’ve had remote work experience, did you enjoy it?"

Author

Johnny at CCing my EA
February 20, 2025

In case you’re new here, CCing my EA is a bite-sized newsletter dedicated to Executive Assistants like yourself.

Every Thursday, we deliver a quick email with 5 new job listings, 3 fun posts, and 1 helpful tech tip straight to your inbox. 📬

5 new job listings

  1. DoorDash, $79.9k - $117.5k, Remote

  2. Andreessen Horowitz, $149k - $165k, Remote

  3. Vimeo, $77k - $109k, Hybrid (NYC)

  4. CALSTART, $62k - $74.4k, Remote

  5. Figma, $122k - $260k, Remote

We only post jobs under 7 days old, but some may expire before you open this email.

3 posts you might’ve missed

#1

When I started this newsletter, I featured all kinds of EA roles but saw huge demand for remote jobs, so I leaned in.

Since remote roles are limited, many come from lesser-known companies. Should I mix in more big-name brands (which means adding hybrid/onsite roles) or stick with remote-only? 🤔

#2

If you’ve had remote work experience, did you enjoy it? Or do you prefer working onsite?

After working remotely for 10 months, I moved from SF to NYC so I could be physically present with the Vimcal team 3 days a week. There’s something about working alongside my team that’s so invigorating to me, but I might be in the minority here. 🗽

#3

The tagged animal analogy really hits this one home for me! 🦌

Bonus

When you save time by scheduling meetings with Vimcal EA, you’ll have extra time for side projects like this. 😉

1 Tech Tip

Use Perplexity for web searches and answering questions 🔎

Last week, I shared a tech tip on how you can use ChatGPT with your writing, which is kind of its bread and butter.

However, even though it has a Web Search feature, ChatGPT is not necessarily great for web research or answering questions.

That’s where Perplexity.ai comes in!

Perplexity delivers:

  • Up-to-date information. Perplexity provides current information including even for live events

  • Easily digestible information. Perplexity consolidates information from multiple sources and presents it in an easy-to-read format

  • Direct answers with citations. Perplexity responds directly to your search queries (as opposed to giving you a bunch of websites to sort through), complete with source citations for sanity checks

I feel like Perplexity is what search engines were supposed to be, but it’s hard to really convey its benefits without seeing it in action. So, here’s a query I made on both ChatGPT and Perplexity (beginning with ChatGPT) about the recent passage of the Global Executive Assistant Mobility Act of 2024 and its effect on the international career opportunities for EAs.

Pretty good! But here was the same question asked with Perplexity.

Yup, I made that piece of legislation up. There’s no such thing as a “Global EA Mobility Act of 2024”. 😛

While ChatGPT hallucinated an answer that sounded legit, Perplexity correctly identified the legislation as totally fabricated!

I highly recommend trying Perplexity as your go-to search engine for a day to see whether you like it. There’s no need to create an account to use it a few times either.

Please lemme know how you end up liking it!

If you ever need a refresher on past Tech Tips without digging through your emails, they’re all available in a single post right here.

Replies to last week’s question

Last week, Chelsea asked for advice on how to decide which tools are actually worth using, and which ones to ditch?

Here were a couple standout suggestions from our readers!

The best tool is the one that people use.

There isn’t a tool out there that will satisfy everyone. The first question you’ll have to solve is “what does success look like?” And as you already identified, you’ll need buy in. I highly recommend training for all the users on whatever tool you choose.

If it’s your ED is the block on this, try to find a tool that mimics their natural way of working or spend 1:1 time teaching them how to use the tool that’s chosen.

Dominika

For me, it starts with identifying my biggest problems or challenges and then going from there. Go deeper than what “would be nice” and try to think about where the needs are. Which ones get the biggest “bang for your buck” towards achieving the organization’s mission? For me, a brain dump of all the discussed technology that I can then sort into priority piles of “fills a need” “would be nice to have” and “not feasible without major changes” would be the most effective way to get started.

Thank you to everyone who responded with actionable advice!

Thank you for reading!

I always love hearing from you, truly :)

  • How did you discover this newsletter?

  • What did you love or hate about this email?

  • Do you have a tech tip or job post you’d like us to feature in a future issue? Perhaps even a meme?

Reply directly to lemme know, I promise to respond!

And selfishly, please don’t hesitate to share any good Executive Assistant content you come across that you think I should highlight in this newsletter.

See you next Thursday~

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