/remote-work

Remote Work Learnings & Best Practices (from companies who have done it)

Remote Work Learnings & Best Practices

Gather best practices from companies that have been doing 100% remote for a long time

Reading

Learnings & Best Practices

Communication

  • Have ONE of each communication tool: synchronous, asynchronous, and long term storage, be explicit about what method to use when (S) (T) (C)
  • Be explicit about tone, ex: “I’m kidding”, if there is any tone confusion, up level to higher mode (video) (S) (T) (C) (H)
  • Communicate with repetition (I)
  • Ensure visibility of work (newsletters, boards, exec reports, demos) (I)
  • Conscious shift to async communication (C)

Meetings

  • Start and end rituals
  • Most meetings need to be recorded, and have transcripts
  • Meetings can be asynchronous, long form threaded conversations (B)
  • Don’t mix in-person and remote attendees (T)
  • High fidelity and async → make screen share recordings with voiceover easy (C)
  • Making meetings less abundant / more scarce, people make better use of the meeting time that does happen (C)
  • Reducing meeting time comes with increased time spent on written communication (H)

Brainstorming

  • Use an online whiteboard
  • Dedicated time for folks to show off/share one thing they are working on (I)

Timezones

  • Ask questions publicly, not privately (B)
  • Recommend 4 hours overlap (C)
  • People need to be able to find anything they need w/o asking or waiting for someone else, i.e. most work needs to be possible async (C)

Culture

  • There should be hundreds of Slack channels devoted to socializing/off-topic
  • Standing team interaction time (games, meditation, cooking) (I)
  • Remote can amplify existing cultural problems (I)
  • Foster 1:1 peer connections to combat loneliness (B)
  • Live video “work side by side” sessions (S)
  • Consider company sponsorship for interest groups (C)
  • Trust inside a team tied to 75% less stress, 50% higher productivity (H)
  • Transparency by default can aid in building trust with remote teams (H)

Hiring

  • Ideal traits: bias to action, can prioritize, good written communication, trustworthy
  • Written (not just verbal) communication is so critical that you should evaluate it in hiring — insist on and evaluate a cover letter (C) (H)
  • Retaining existing folks with org knowledge is even more important in remote first (C)
  • If you pay top-band rates to every hiring market, you get an unfair hiring and retention advantage (C)
  • Engineers: ask the candidate to do real work, and pay for it, versus a coding interview, see also contract to perm (C)
  • Fully remote companies hire people %33 faster, and have 25% lower attrition (H)
  • Best selling points for candidates: flexible schedule, work from anywhere, no commute (H)

Onboarding

  • Buddy system, check-in via Slack multiple times a week

Focus / Time Management / Productivity

  • People need long stretches of uninterrupted time to get work done (C)
  • Real risk that people work too much, long hours (C) (H)
  • Best review of available research is not conclusive re: remote productivity (H)

Technology

  • Separate work/home devices (laptop and phone) for better separation (C)

Cost savings

  • Remote saves about $13k/year per employee in tech hubs vs having a dedicated office (H)