Remote Work

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In March 2020, the world shut down from Covid-19. In May 2020, I started a new job as a remote manager at FB. Here are my thoughts.

The Good

  • We get better at flexibility
  • We get better at communicating

Meetings

One head per box(screen)

Video calls are optimized for one her per box. E.g. every person has their own camera. This breaks down when you have one camera for 10 people in a conference room. When there are many people in a room, but someone is remote, it’s really hard for them to undersatnd what is happneing in the room, especially when they’re talking.

Ideally you setup one head per box, whever everyone joins on their laptop (camera on, microphone off), at least then you can see who is talking, even if they’re not looking directly into their screen.

Whiteboards

You need a collaborative whiteboard app. My favorite is Excalidraw. Open source, keyboard shortcuts, and multiple users. Strongly, strongly recommend.

OK, I don’t use this often, enough I need to

Shared Realtime Editing

While not as good as a whiteboard, opening a collaborative document ala google docs or some such, works surpringly well. You can all follow along and contribute at the same time

Sync vs Async, Real Time vs Delayed

Sync is convenient as it’s real time and has maximum bandwith, and attention.

Real time async usually has more time slicing which is bad. It also ruins a lot of the value of async

Building Culture/Rapport

Donut/Coffee Roulette

Meeting folks 1:1 is awkward, force it to happen with a coffee roulette (Meta) or Donut for Slack.

Periodic 1 hour 1:1s

If your group has a 30-minute meeting culture, it’s hard to get into the personal stuff, make the meeting an hour and you’ll have space for it.

Make periodic IRL time getting to know each other

When you get together IRL, focus on connecting, not on working, that’ll pay dividends later.

Group quirks

We bond by having unique shared experiences. Perhaps a team wave, or a funny clap. These also work in person but are probably more important remotely.

The hard to replicate micro moments

The 5 minute events

Knowing people are disruptable

The water cooler

Social

Big events

Technical talks

Challenges when the team is well gelled

The team I joined was very well gelled, as a result you didn’t see much of people’s engagement, except they had to use it.

Sync vs Async Communication

Collaborative Documents

Remote workers vs Flexible Time In Office

Social Things

The environment controls actions and emotions

  • Work at work, home at home.
  • But when work at home, need a way to change work and home
  • A great movie on environment controls action disguised as a movie on covid shutdown.

Remote Work and Camera Setup

Cute and awkward moments

  • Co-worker’s 6-year-old coming in dancing naked with just a cape
  • Camera left on, and being naked
  • Daughter coming in and giving a backward hug while I’m giving an important presentation

A Post E-mail world

Many younger organizations (like Facebook) have dropped e-mail and instead use Slack/Teams/Workplace Messenger/Chime as their dominant form of information exchange. This has been challenging for me as I’ve spent 20 years optimizing for e-mail use.

In this section I’ll use Quip as a reference to collaborative document systems (E.g. Google Docs, shared OneNote), and Slack as a chat platform (E.g. Teams, Chime, Workplace Messenger)

Long term information storage

A top use case for e-mail, but e-mail is terrible at this because it’s private, hard to comment on, and doesn’t store history. Chat shares the e-mail downsides in this use case, and makes them even worse as it’s rare to take the time to craft a good chat message, and there’s many tangents in the chats.

A shared doc system like Quip is far superior for this use case. History, collaborative editing, rich inline comments, etc.

Keeping track of non-immediate follow ups

In an e-mail world, I’d have folders for followup_today, followup_this_week, follow_up_next_week, follow_up_next_month. I don’t have a great solution for this - In theory a task system, but that kind of sucks as it loses too much context.

We have a reminder bot, which is surpringly good, as it forces stuff too top.

Grouping everything at self controlled granularity with rules and folders

I have sophisticated e-mail rules grouping low priority e-mail to the same folder, different groups to merged, folders I look at frequently, and folders infrequently, bumping mails from people and projects I care about. You get almost none of that in chat (and collaborative documents).

Don’t have a great solution.

Discrete “units of action” and follow ups for non-public tasks

In a public setting, a task system is better than storing todos in e-mail. However, for private and small group tasks e-mail is great, especially when organized into folders with rules.

Focused Threads

Other Use Cases

  • Read a thread at a time.
  • See only “Un-Read” post comments
  • Sending a mail to yourself for followup
  • Seeing your sent mail to people
  • Sending mails to a random group of people, adding someone to a thread.
  • Chat: Async but ephemeral, not durable.
  • E-mail: Async but durable.

Quip vs Wiki

Many companies have both Quip and Wiki, and it often comes up which should be used for what. For this post, I assume your wiki system does not have collaborative real-time editing, @mentions or a very powerful comment system. I prefer Quip for everything, though I appreciate Wiki is good once your document is complete.

Quip vs Word (and Word Processors)

Word, is great, but it has many irrelevant features optimized for an era where you’d print your document. Assuming you’re not at Amazon, you won’t be printing a document so there’s a lot of cruft in these tools that you just don’t need, and can waste time.

The good and bad of public communication

Good: You are generally nicer and more careful when talking in public. Less likely to gossip or bash someone.

Bad: It’s more expensive, more sterile, needs more context.

Other Resources