Beyond the Coronavirus: How to Make Remote “Work” For You

The ‘rona in all its terrible world-changing glory. Also, the harbinger of a new remote renaissance.

February, 2013. A massive shock reverberated around the telecommuting world when Marissa Mayer, former CEO of Yahoo, released a memo effectively banning remote work for its thousands of employees across the country in the name of productivity and innovation. Mayer deemed the shift necessary for the revival of the company, stating that “speed and quality are sacrificed” when working remotely.

In the wake of this news, other tech firms (and firms with strong technical leanings) both inside and outside of Silicon Valley immediately took notice and joined in the chorus of voices eulogizing remote work in the industry. From IBM to Best Buy and many more, other organizations began to follow in Yahoo’s footsteps — either immediately in the wake of the memo or in the years since. A top-down cultural transformation across the industry began demanding a return to an in-office collaborative environment at all costs, and employees that did not or could not submit to these new policies were often let go. Like the forced transition to open office spaces (crowded, noisy pens of developers which have increased email communication and isolation as well as the potential for illnesses to spread in workplaces), it was well-intentioned but misguided.

Unfortunately for firms across the world, 2020 brought with it the Coronavirus pandemic, and with it a safety-driven mandatory shift to the way we work. Regardless of previous policies and preferences of executives, remote work is now the norm — particularly across the United States, where due to a combination of politically-driven misinformation and pure ignorance, the illness continues to run rampant. Still, for many workers as well as organizations across the tech sector, this “new normal” brought with it several benefits:

1. ) No More Long Commutes: Trips to work have transformed from hours in a car or bus to minutes walking to a home office working space, leaving more time in the day to take care of issues both inside and outside of work. On average, this means employees spend more hours working during the pandemic than they did before the transition.
2. ) Greater Control, Flow, and Focus: For individual contributors, it’s easier to focus when interruptions are kept to a minimum. For programmers in particular, being interrupted during a state of flow can cause a loss of 30 to 45 minutes of work. It is certainly a lot easier to recover from addressing a Slack message than shifting gears to respond to an in-person tap on the shoulder.
3. ) Access to a Wider Pool of Talent: To be perfectly frank, the tech industry exists outside of California too…and many extremely talented folks who would certainly be interested in working for the companies based in Silicon Valley simply cannot pick up and relocate there for any number of reasons. The new remote reality grants firms access to a much wider pool of talent than those still requiring an in-office presence. You are no longer limited to hiring the best person for the job within 60 miles of corporate headquarters.

I totally understand that this transition hasn’t been easy for everyone, though. And for organizations who continue to work in much the same way as before the transition to remote occurred, it can certainly be an incredible hit to both productivity and employee morale.

Long-term remote work requires a paradigm shift; you have to change your approach to work across the board. For employees who spend a great deal of time acting as managers, connectors, or enablers (e.g. those that need context of all of the work going on around them at all times in order to successfully do their jobs), it’s not only important that this new way of working be understood, but it is in fact integral to their own productivity. Here are some tips on where to start:

1. ) Design Meetings Differently: Conducting meetings the same way as you would in the office simply does not work. Listeners on a remote meeting or training can only stay completely engaged and focused for between 7 and 10 minutes of lecture without being actively involved — this practically ensures many folks will “check out” if not actively participating. Because of this, coming to the meeting with a predetermined agenda and active roles for each participant to play — or at least liberal use of breakouts/polls/annotations to keep everyone interacting with one another — will make remote gatherings much more productive and pleasurable. They’ll also be less draining, which leads to my second point…
2. ) Beware the Burnout: Zoom fatigue is a real thing. Early on, many organizations discovered this accidentally as many employees began overcompensating for the lack of office communication by scheduling too many 30-minute check-ins with one another, leading to packed schedules. Do not do this — use asynchronous communication (such as instant messaging or e-mail) for basic “water cooler” checkins, and reserve meetings for extremely important announcements or important decision-making discussions.
3. ) Mind the Camera: Requiring use of the camera can easily add to fatigue and burnout as well. Mandatory camera use requires not only each participant to be “switched on” from an outward image perspective, but also for those unable to use virtual backgrounds, also provides a peek for coworkers into their living spaces. While this may not seem like a big deal for some, it could certainly be a major inconvenience for those with particularly small or shared living spaces, and could even be interpreted as an invasion of privacy to others. Therefore, it’s very important to keep camera use optional when you can.
4. ) Stay Human: All business all the time makes for exhausted workers. Reserve a few minutes at the start of each meeting to check in with everyone and make space for casual conversation. Anything is fair game here, as long as it doesn’t have to deal with the work itself. Additionally, virtual happy hours can be a fun and entertaining way to stay connected with team members. Just make sure they aren’t scheduled as mandatory meetings (attendance will be significantly lowered as a result…trust me). Finally, for every hour of remote meetings, please try to schedule at least a 5-minute break for yourself. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and your coworkers will understand.

Not everyone sees this “new normal” as a new reality. While several major organizations have gone on record in support of acceptance of a more remote-based culture, including Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter, others have been far less supportive, such as Netflix. Particular subsections of the tech industry, like startups and gaming, are also seemingly much more hesitant to embrace the long-term shift to a remote culture based on public comments and hiring practices (forced relocations to CA are still embarrassingly common).

Personally, it’s always been a challenge for me and many that I know. As a tech professional based in the Midwest, it’s easy to feel isolated from where all of the action is happening. My personal hope in understanding how to work better in a fully remote environment and sharing that knowledge and stories of success with people around the industry will lead to a stronger, more knowledgeable, and more innovative tech sector brimming with opportunity for anyone skilled enough to seize it — regardless of their current location.