Following up on part 1, let’s talk about how to address remote work as a manager or employer.
We’ve all seen the viral videos of a “day in the life” of a software engineer. Wake up late. Get coffee from a coffee shop. Sit there with your laptop for an hour. Go to the gym for 2-3 hours. Join a remote standup meeting. Start dinner at 4:30. As an employee, this looks like “the good life”, but as a manager this looks like a productivity nightmare.
Even worse is the viral video of the young woman’s “day in the life” video using her laptop in the pool in a bikini. (I can’t find this one now, tell me in the comments if you have it.) It turns out, she was actually at an on-site or conference instead of a normal day. She was also a recruiter, so the video was really just marketing for that specific job.
There was definitely a tech boom that contracted a few years ago. VC money was flowing freely. Almost everyone had an IPO. In software, we went a little too far into “microservice” architecture where we had a team of 5 working full time in a tiny widget inside a large application. Just as fish grow to fit their tanks, teams were taking on exciting, but frivolous projects into new technology, growing project requirements to fit the resources available. Teams were establishing super strict standards for code test coverage that went beyond any reasonable ROI. This definitely contracted in late 2021 all through 2022. That’s not an indictment of remote work itself. It was across all of tech, which had a large overlap with remote work. Here’s a doc from 2017 describing the importance of spending beyond profitability. Here’s an article from 2023 about how profits are important again. Another from 2024.
Elon Musk has famously gone hard against remote work. He famously fired basically all remote workers from Twitter after the purchase. This was likely a mechanism to reduce over-employment without discrimination rather than actual indictment of remote work. He famously did the same as Tesla. While I’m in no position to question what works for Musk, I believe he is dead wrong about the generalities of remote work and the characterization of “pretending to work”.
If chair-warmth is your Key Performance Indicator, you’re already doing it wrong. If “looking busy” is your base metric, you have a bigger problem.
Frankly, everyone - in-office or remote - is spending a percentage of their day on YouTube or X (ironically?). Mental breaks are good. And also, it’s just as easy to “pretend” in a cubicle as it is to “pretend” from home. As often as I’ve been praised for performance and excelled over the years, my dirty secret is that I have definitely had days where I do basically nothing before 1pm. I’m not proud of those days necessarily, but it’s a fact of life that doesn’t affect overall performance. Of course, I’ve had days where I work quite late on some project I’m 3 layers deep into and don’t want to come up for air. I’ve put in hours on Saturday or Sunday when I’m passionate about a project or have a strict deadline.
As a salaried (i.e. “exempt”) employee, I’ve fine with this. It’s part of what I signed up for.
How remote work benefits you as the boss
The hiring pool is broader. I live in a town of <100k in Northeast Arkansas. As a software engineer, I have a few options, but not a lot. There are lots of people like me. If you can hire nationwide, then you can be open to lots of talent that you would never have access to.
Potentially lower salary demands. I also live in a LCOL area. I’m very happy to work for a little bit less than my competition might demand in San Francisco or New York City.
Lower office costs. You don’t have to provide me a desk or internet connection. You can either go without an office entirely or your office can be a few thousand square feet smaller when you don’t have to provide that space for your employees.
Diversity of thought. By hiring nationwide, you bring in the ideas and experiences of people you might not find purely locally. At my job, I work with folks in all 4 continental time zones (plus Arizona), and I have worked with contractors in Europe and Asia.
Happier team members. There are a lot of benefits to the employee as well that I won’t list here that hopefully lead to better job satisfaction and balance.
Easier to call someone in. There is a danger that “remote” can mean an employee is reachable 24/7, and this should not be abused. But in a pinch, your team members are usually a couple minutes away from their workstation rather than 1 hour commute.
You’re already using the tools. If you have optimized work in the office as I mentioned in part one, then it’s a short leap to send the team home.
How to manage effective remote culture
Core hours
First, establish core hours. That may be 9a-5p in your time zone, or it may be an intersection across time zones, such as 9a PT to 5p ET. Communicate that your team members are expected to be reachable or “online” during those hours.
Personally, I recommend a shorter day. A shorter day will condense time blocks when meetings can be scheduled, giving team members flexibility to have heads-down time outside of those hours. Do you care that I’m in 9-5, or is it ok for me to work 7a-3p or 11a-7p as long as that covers your core hours? Maybe it’s better for me to schedule doctor appointments in the early morning and make up time in the evening.
Communicate expectations for equipment
Do you provide a laptop? Do you expect members to bring their own computer? Maybe you offer a stipend for an office chair.
I have purchased my own computers and monitors. I own a two-display DisplayPort KVM switch. I have a standing desk and a gaming chair. This is all on my own dime, and I have claimed a lot of it on my taxes.
But don’t leave people guessing. Make it clear what they are expected to go buy. Make it clear what they are allowed to use.
Also, if your systems are going to require special considerations, like a VPN, for remote access, work that out before sending team members home.
Communication tools
Use communication tools for:
Instant communication - Slack, Teams
Conferencing - Zoom, Meet
Documentation - Confluence, Sharepoint, Google Drive
Use Slack to determine whether someone is online, and use that for any instant communication. This should also replace email for internal communication. It’s better, open record of conversations. It’s instant.
Slack allows you to disable notifications outside of core hours, but since it’s on my phone, it’s always on me and I rarely disable notifications. This is the primary method to reach me after hours as well.
Slack is good for meetings also but others prefer Zoom or Meet. Expect everyone to enable cameras. Non-verbal communication is important and seeing facial expressions is a lot better than audio-only calls. Being able to gesture “thumbs-up” during a call can keep the conversation flowing without interrupting someone.
Keep project documentation online where it’s easily accessible and searchable. Use Confluence or SharePoint or something to help organize project documentation. Nothing should be private to the individual team unless really necessary. Build a knowledge base that all employees can share.
I do not take calls on my personal phone. If you want to issue a phone to your employees and establish that as part of your culture, go ahead. But I recommend against it. In my opinion, if you are calling someone’s phone number, you’re doing it wrong. I don’t even communicate with vendors by phone - it’s all Zoom. If you are using Slack effectively, you don’t need phone numbers.
Project management
Like communication tools, it’s important to use a good tool to manage day-to-day tasks. Whether you work Kanban or in Sprints or some other variation of task assignment, it’s important to track day-to-day work, know who is assigned to what, and know the current status.
Jira is very popular in this space, even though I have a lot of complaints about Jira.
A good project management tool will also help give context. Jira does this through hierarchies. I need to finish task X because it’s a part of story Y which is a pre-requisite for epic Z, part of the company’s ABC initiative due this quarter.
Calendar management
You should use Slack for instant communication, but you should respect members’ need to stay focused. If you need more than a single question-answer, schedule a call during core hours.
Additionally, regular meetings should be scheduled on the calendar. Every meeting should have an agenda, a start time, and an end time. I should know what a meeting is about before I join because it’s on the agenda. Meetings have an end time, and any minutes over that time is time stolen.
Regular meetings
I find it laughable sometimes that the perception is that remote work = you can just disappear for hours at a time. I have so many regular meetings, it’s quickly noticed if I’m not around. Of course too many meetings is a bad thing, but there’s a certain cadence that is an important part of your team’s communication and accountability.
Daily standups - these should be so short you shouldn’t have time to sit down. 15 minutes or less. Every day, each member gives an update on the last work day and the next work day. This is the chance for members to raise any issues that are blocking progress. Often, an update is simple as “Yesterday, did TASK-123, today doing TASK-124, no blockers.”
1-on-1s - Managers should meet with direct reports every week or two to get a sense that everyone is on task and on the same page. It’s also a time to assess general performance, health, satisfaction, and any other needs a team member has.
All-hands - Everyone 1 to 4 weeks, give an update to the team members what other teams are doing and what the broader company goals are. This is also a chance for individuals to raise questions to leadership.
Committees - Some team leads or higher level contributors may want to meet regularly. This is an chance to exchange ideas. “Hey, should we consider using Java instead of C# for this project?” In my current role, we also use recurring times to give peer review on design documents for upcoming projects. We also do postmortems to share knowledge after resolving an incident where something went wrong. These facilitate communication across teams and share knowledge. This is more effective than just simply overhearing things around the water cooler because you happen to be in the same room.
Accountability
Accountability is the biggest fear with remote work. If you can’t see someone’s butt in their chair, how can you hold them accountable?
So, why didn’t I put this first?
In the office, visibility is often what raises an individual’s stock more than anything else. The person who goes around and says good morning or answers the most shoulder-tapping questions is seen as the most productive. In reality, most productivity happens when you don’t look busy - you’re quietly typing away into a dark-mode screen (and googling things frequently).
If you are doing most of the above, then you’re already on your way to good accountability. You’re meeting daily. You know when someone is online and responsive. You’re talking enough to build a relationship of trust. Regular meetings will show when someone doesn’t attend.
As I mentioned a few times, chair-warmth or “butts in seats” is a poor metric for accountability. Someone can show up in the office on time every day, sit in their chair, keep it warm, and Reddit for 8 hours without you knowing. Again, I will sheepishly admit I’ve had those days.
Measuring the performance of software engineers is a controversial topic. Really, any metric you choose will cease to become effective. If you use lines-of-code as a metric, devs will write longer inefficient code. If you count the number of git commits, we’ll just make smaller commits more often. If you use bug fixes, we’ll make bugs to fix.
I can’t tell you here how to do it perfectly. It’s your responsibility to establish team goals and determine which team members are meeting those goals. Maybe that’s through individual OKRs and KPIs. Maybe that’s through some other frequent scorecard based on tickets and story points. Find what works for you, and consider how your metric can be gamed.
And the truth is that you’ll have some team members who require 50 hours a week to keep up while some other team member can do it in 25. And you may never know outside of meeting attendance because you use a more effective measurement than chair warmth.
Team building
The other big pitfall of remote work is that you lose casual social interaction, and team building is good for overall productivity as well as individual health. There are a few ways to address this.
Schedule team building exercises. Have someone host trivia or some other group-based game once per week. If you can, offer gift cards as prizes. $5 or $10 gift cards shouldn’t affect your bottom line, but little things make people happy.
Provide a forum for praise, like a Slack channel or some other tool. Give team members a chance to say nice things about each other. Again, use gift cards as an incentive to participate or earn praise.
Schedule a happy hour. Have small groups that just chat socially. Put that on the calendar regularly.
On-Site Meetings
And finally, a team building exercise that is its own topic: get the team together in person regularly.
Fly the remote team to a location where you can spend a few days together socially and working on projects. I feel much closer to the team members that I’ve met personally. I got to hang out with people I don’t work with often.
This isn’t strictly necessary and it can be cost prohibitive. But it is effective.
But if on-site work is so effective, why not do it all the time instead of remote work?
In my experience, on-site meetings are a great experience but they aren’t the most productive weeks. They may appear to be productive for the same reasons that “butts in seats” can appear to be productive. You may have a wonderful meeting over 2 or 3 days where you map out a great initiative that gets everyone excited. Leadership will see your presentation and all the charts you produced in those days, and they will be impressed with your productivity. It’s hard not to! You produced a tangible artifact that’s way more visually appealing, way easier to understand than your weekly git commits. But really, I always expect that I won’t be doing much real work during that week. The planning is great and the collaboration is meaningful, but executing on that plan, building a functional product won’t happen until everyone goes back to normal work.
Conclusion
Most of the above will help in-office. Using Slack and a document store and managing your calendar helps just as much in the office as it does remote workers. Once you have tools in place, you’re 80% of the way to remote work! It’s a short leap to round out the culture to make remote workers equally as effective as the office or better.
What about hybrid work? If you have some team members in the office and some remote, you still need all the same tools and processes as if 100% of the team is remote. You can do your remote members a disservice - and harm their contribution - if you treat them as second-class. For example, if you have a meeting, have the in-office members join the same Zoom meeting as the remote members. A potential bad situation is when the remote team is on a screen in the corner of a conference room with poor audio. Q/A sessions should prioritize the remote team the same as in-office. If you have the tools in place, and some members work better in the office, that’s great! But if you compromise the culture and call it “hybrid”, you’ll fail and blame remote work in general.
Up next
It’s important for you to build a good remote culture as a manager, but there are expectations for employees as well. We’ll talk about those next.