12 ms·

Lessons Learned from the Book “Effective Remote Work”

154 points by 0x54MUR41 4y ago

tapanjk 4y ago
This is indeed a beautiful book and especially useful for those who are new to the industry. I have a nit to pick about one of the points listed in the article... > Every meeting should create an artifact (ideally, a shared document or at least a record). I have come across this sentiment often but there is no point in creating new artifacts just to record a meeting. What if the meeting was useless and nothing came out of it? Please do not create a document for this meeting. Such records only create an illusion that you are not leaving out those who could not attend the meeting, but creates mountains of documents or records which would be impossible to navigate in order to draw any conclusion later on.
- leksak 4y ago
  Sounds like labeling, tags, or some token in the filename could be used to distinguish this. The purpose of always creating an artefact is that it'll become habitual and then it is less likely that the meeting that halfway through becomes interesting has meeting notes.
- Sakos 4y ago
  Why are you having meetings that are useless? I can't imagine not having a meeting without some resulting document. Even the poorest meetings I've had have resulted in documents changing to reflect the shitshow. edit: I don't think every meeting needs its own document though. If there's a meeting, it needs to be associated with some document(s) in some way which will change as a result. If it isn't, it should be cancelled, imo.
- neilv 4y ago
  You can do it in a lightweight way. When you schedule a meeting, you create a wiki page named like "2023-01-02 Fooproj UX Meeting with Marketing", and include the URL in the calendar invite. If there's a written agenda, it goes into the wiki page, in whatever state it's in. If someone is typing notes during the meeting, it goes into the wiki page, in whatever state it's in. Someone might screenshare the wiki page during all or part of the meeting. If there's a meeting video recording or videoconf/calendar SaaS page, the URL gets put in the wiki page. Anything bout that meeting that does get captured somewhere, can be gotten to from that one wiki page, so info not lost. If no info at all ends up being captured around the meeting, then the wiki page might only ever be a title. But even then, it's still something to wikilink to (like `[2023-01-02 Fooproj UX Meeting with Marketing]`), when referring to the meeting, such as citations in design documents and project plans. (Note: This works if you have a policy of "everything goes into the code repo or the wiki". But if you're thinking of the wiki as yet another of countless SaaSes where people are dumping write-only stuff that no one will ever find, then adding to that mess won't seem useful.)
  - pydry 4y ago
    >When you schedule a meeting, you create a wiki page named like "2023-01-02 Fooproj UX Meeting with Marketing" These are the kinds of wiki pages I come across when I'm searching for docs that are actually useful. I dont think anybody reads them.
    - neilv 4y ago
      Where does the docs/info you need end up being?
      - pydry 4y ago
        Usually in someone's head.
        neilv 4y ago
        Yeah, ideally all that information would be captured, but it never can be. So there's also a role for a wiki to capture information about who to talk to about a particular topic.
        tremon 4y ago
        It's one of the first things that I put up on our wiki: a referral list indicating who to ask for questions about which domain. Actually, there's two columns: the first is the operational lead(s), or "who should I ask questions about X"; the second column is the tactical/architecture lead, or "if we disagree on a solution for X, who has the deciding vote?" The latter has avoided countless hours of bikeshedding, or so I'd like to believe.
    - 12345hn6789 4y ago
      Nobody reads them, is it because they aren't useful? Maintaining wikis is a culture thing. If most of your employees don't use the wiki it's basically useless since it'll be falling out of date.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  "Mountains of documents" is not a new problem, you just need to organise them properly. But if you have a meeting and nothing about it was written down, who knows what was decided if it's not written down? 1) Every meeting must have an agenda and any material linked must be read before attending. You're wasting everyone's time by reading the material during the meeting. 2) Every meeting must create an artefact, otherwise you're just chatting with coworkers.
- ThePadawan 4y ago
  > I have come across this sentiment often but there is no point in creating new artifacts just to record a meeting. What if the meeting was useless and nothing came out of it? I might be a huge cynic, but that seems to me to be the #1 reason to create a post-mortem document to explore how to avoid another meeting that was a waste of time like that. If the meeting was useless because the participants weren't prepared, make a note to hand out preparatory notes beforehand. If the meeting was useless because everybody shouted over each other, make a note for more moderation. If the meeting was useless because no one had political power to follow up on any decisions, cancel the meeting altogether. Having a meeting that goes nowhere and then taking no time to publicly settle on actions as a consequence seems incredibly neglectful to me.
- sys_64738 4y ago
  Every meeting should have an agenda. No agenda = cancel meeting.
- marniewebb 4y ago
  The artifact we often use is “zoom recording of the meeting.” Which is less than useful. For non-sensitive meetings, we record to otter and then edit the transcript using highlights, marking to dos, etc. We’ve got an otter folder structure that mimics our other folder structures. We most commonly do this for document review meetings (I work for an NGO. We write a lot of grants.) This takes time but it creates good notes, allows everyone to be a participant in the meeting. We have other meetings — like weekly target review meetings — that use Asana as the basis for capturing notes. This works well for things that are really tactical.
gregwebs 4y ago
My preferred mode of work is to spread information asynchronously but to discuss it synchronously. Remote work has finally made it possible for me to be better at synchronous collaboration with others (edit: changed from "pair program"). Rather than being forced to work in a distracting open office, I finally have a private office. In the past, conversations about code tended to only happen asynchronously during code review, but now we are having them while work is in progress and for code review and it is a lot more productive for us than asynchronous. When you do a synchronous code review, you still need to put in review comments so that others can understand what is going on asynchronously. These comments won't be the full conversation- instead they will be a summary- sometimes you will end up omitting useful details, but it reduces the text overload of asynchronous. In the past being in an open office environment meant that collaborating with someone always risked being rude- disrupting others with our conversation. This would sometimes be handled by using a meeting room, but this still isn’t as good as just both of us communicating from our offices. For synchronous remote work It’s crucial to still work with people in similar time zones.
- pydry 4y ago
  I find that pair programming requires a high degree of psychological safety for people to try it and an even higher level for people to actually enjoy it. I'm pretty sure that by default remote work with a low level of face time leads to lower levels of psychological safety.
  - theshrike79 4y ago
    I have seen pair programming in actual use exactly once. And it was a pair of dudes who had known each other since kindergarten and were roommates. They basically shared a brain. I've tried it a few times and it's like trying to read the same physical book at the same time with someone who's a lot slower or faster reader.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
eschneider 4y ago
Not something mentioned in the article, but something I've found super useful at my current (fully remote) job is the concept of "office hours". Where I am, each team has a hour or two each week where folks are "available". For some teams, like mine, most folks show up for the video meeting and we go over whatever short topics we've accumulated over the last few days with whomever, or just work muted if it's not something relevant to us. Very casual. Other teams are generally offline, but if you tag them in their team's slack channel, they'll pop on their video meeting link and you can go over whatever you need to. Nice. It's not a solution to all problems, but ends up being a nice 'hallway conversation' substitute where you don't _quite_ know who you need, or just need to ask some questions and don't want to go to the trouble of scheduling a meeting just for that. And since the whole thing is informal, it doesn't feel like a time waste, even if you're not 'involved' in what's going on. YMMV, of course, but it seems to work for us.
- Rayhem 4y ago
  I propose office hours in every single retrospective we do and it never gets any traction. I've tried proposing "office hours". I've tried proposing them with a bit of an explanation as to why I think they're a good idea. I've tried proposing them with a lengthy explanation as to why I think they're a good idea. My conclusion is that people don't want to engage with retrospective items that aren't first-order helpful. "Doing X solves problem Y for person ME right now" type things. Office hours smooth communication, but that in and of itself doesn't fix a problem -- it paves the road to fix other problems.
loveparade 4y ago
> have face-time, and make room for socializing. > And a little ‘How are you feeling?' goes a long way. > “When leaders make time for fun, it gives permission for others too” Is it just me, or are others also annoyed when work is mixed with forced socialization? I don't need to have fun or get personal therapy at work. It's just work. I would rather get it done quickly and efficiently and then have more time to have fun with my family or non-work friends.
- dherikb 4y ago
  I'm kind like you, but the people are different and many of them really like this interactions. I just think the manager needs to understand those differences and not force the socialization for everyone. Sometimes the manager even embarrasses the people on the team that not are really into participate of some of this socializations.
  - loveparade 4y ago
    I wonder if it's an age or stage of life thing. When I was younger and single I enjoyed these interactions more than I do now that I have a family and kid. I think the need for extra socializing isn't quite there anymore.
- atomicnumber3 4y ago
  Unfortunately, "work is other people". At least I think that's the quote. Definitely something along those lines. Less glib: I've always found the technical part of work to be by far the easiest part of my job. The computers do what they're told and when they argue with me, it's deterministic, unambiguous and consistent (at least from its perspective anyway). People are a lot more complicated, and they seldom know what they want, what to build, whether they know enough to recognize what to build, whether they know they know enough to recognize what to build, etc. they have feelings that can be hurt, friends who they want to defend, opponents they want to see suppressed. I could go on. Maybe I've somehow only worked in dreadful, dramatic hellscapes, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree with you? But also I think politics is what happens when more than 3 people want to work together, and so it's an inherent aspect of work. Sorry, this has been a bit rambling. My point is that, while sure you don't need to do bowling night every week, I do find that a zoom call with your teammates every other week with no agenda other than to chat is ridiculously effective. And sometimes your best work can happen after you both accidentally give and receive therapy while at work. Everyone is the main character of their own story and knowing how even the work part of all those individual main stories connect can be really useful insight.
walnutclosefarm 4y ago
I haven't read the book, but I think that if he added one sentence to point 1 in his summary, the first three points are really everything you need to know to make remote work effective. Point 1 (treat everyone as remote) is the most critical, but his elaboration on "tools, meeting setup, information exchange, communication, documentation, and opportunities" should be extended further with "Provide all employees with guidance and training on how to work remotely. In particular, people need to understand that working meetings held remotely often bring out the worst in people on opposite ends of the communication spectrum (those who monopolize the floor, and those who are reluctant to participate). A meeting facilitator should explicitly facilitate participation, so that everyone who has something to contribute, does, and no one prevails simply with volume. On point 2, about use of asynchronous communications - it probably is implied, but one key part of this is making sure that everyone in the team understands and observes the rule that you are expected to be asynchronously available most of the time, and should go dark only when it's absolutely necessary for your work. One thing I found helpful with distributed teams is making a status available on asynchronous channels called "Ping me on the hour" which is a way of saying, "I'm heads down, don't interrupt unless the world is ending, but I surface if necessary every top of hour."
- kbutler 4y ago
  > expected to be asynchronously available most of the time "during core working hours". See other point about establishing boundaries between work and personal life. It is helpful to establish expected contact/response timings, such as: - email - async. checked a few times/day. turn off notifications - slack/chat - async. notify of direct messages & high priority channels, other items checked periodically - phone/voice/video calls - synchronous. only for things that justify immediate interruption. Will respond with at least a "What's up?/In a meeting/etc." unless completely unavailable.
- blueboo 4y ago
  A phenomenon that unites these points is the result of extended COVID WFH: in the aggregate, to some significant degree, remote work habits seem to be persisting in in-person work environments. It’s a double-edged sword: You’re pinging the guru down the aisle for advice rather than walking over to her. So no one gets to overhear the guidance, but then again, she can triage your request with her Slack usage. As a result, our in-person work situations have never been so quiet (outside of lockdowns). The value of in-person is thereby seemingly perceptibly lessened. Are we losing or recouping the value of that serendipitous spark of collaboration that executives wax poetic over? (Was it ever a thing?)
baby 4y ago
I read it and it was a really bad book. I didn’t learn much. I felt like I learned more about remote working reading the 4 hours work week.
ta3411 4y ago
regarding social interaction, I am running a hybrid US (3 people) - China (4 people) team. My teammates in China just don't usually in meetings / "coffee hours" (mostly due to language and cultural barriers). So any type of cross border team building and social bantering just fall flat. Does anyone have any similar experience and how they address this?
wistlo 4y ago
COVID allowed my company to put everyone on the same level. It was wonderful while it lasted. Unfortunately, the drive to "collaboration" has sprung up again in our senior ranks, who I think felt uncomfortable not being able to lay eyes on heads. Once again the remote folks are peripheral, literally. A lot of time and bandwidth is now wasted on arguing why it's necessary to arbitrarily be in the office one or three days per week, especially for people working independently on projects. Almost every leadership town hall has employees questioning why they agian have t sit in traffic and hunt for workspace while the closest colleague—the one they do real collaboration with—is actually a thousand miles away.

154 points by 0x54MUR41 4y ago

This is indeed a beautiful book and especially useful for those who are new to the industry. I have a nit to pick about one of the points listed in the article... > Every meeting should create an artifact (ideally, a shared document or at least a record). I have come across this sentiment often but there is no point in creating new artifacts just to record a meeting. What if the meeting was useless and nothing came out of it? Please do not create a document for this meeting. Such records only create an illusion that you are not leaving out those who could not attend the meeting, but creates mountains of documents or records which would be impossible to navigate in order to draw any conclusion later on.

leksak 4y ago
Sounds like labeling, tags, or some token in the filename could be used to distinguish this. The purpose of always creating an artefact is that it'll become habitual and then it is less likely that the meeting that halfway through becomes interesting has meeting notes.
Sakos 4y ago
Why are you having meetings that are useless? I can't imagine not having a meeting without some resulting document. Even the poorest meetings I've had have resulted in documents changing to reflect the shitshow. edit: I don't think every meeting needs its own document though. If there's a meeting, it needs to be associated with some document(s) in some way which will change as a result. If it isn't, it should be cancelled, imo.
neilv 4y ago
You can do it in a lightweight way. When you schedule a meeting, you create a wiki page named like "2023-01-02 Fooproj UX Meeting with Marketing", and include the URL in the calendar invite. If there's a written agenda, it goes into the wiki page, in whatever state it's in. If someone is typing notes during the meeting, it goes into the wiki page, in whatever state it's in. Someone might screenshare the wiki page during all or part of the meeting. If there's a meeting video recording or videoconf/calendar SaaS page, the URL gets put in the wiki page. Anything bout that meeting that does get captured somewhere, can be gotten to from that one wiki page, so info not lost. If no info at all ends up being captured around the meeting, then the wiki page might only ever be a title. But even then, it's still something to wikilink to (like `[2023-01-02 Fooproj UX Meeting with Marketing]`), when referring to the meeting, such as citations in design documents and project plans. (Note: This works if you have a policy of "everything goes into the code repo or the wiki". But if you're thinking of the wiki as yet another of countless SaaSes where people are dumping write-only stuff that no one will ever find, then adding to that mess won't seem useful.)
- pydry 4y ago
  >When you schedule a meeting, you create a wiki page named like "2023-01-02 Fooproj UX Meeting with Marketing" These are the kinds of wiki pages I come across when I'm searching for docs that are actually useful. I dont think anybody reads them.
  - neilv 4y ago
    Where does the docs/info you need end up being?
    - pydry 4y ago
      Usually in someone's head.
      - neilv 4y ago
        Yeah, ideally all that information would be captured, but it never can be. So there's also a role for a wiki to capture information about who to talk to about a particular topic.
        tremon 4y ago
        It's one of the first things that I put up on our wiki: a referral list indicating who to ask for questions about which domain. Actually, there's two columns: the first is the operational lead(s), or "who should I ask questions about X"; the second column is the tactical/architecture lead, or "if we disagree on a solution for X, who has the deciding vote?" The latter has avoided countless hours of bikeshedding, or so I'd like to believe.
  - 12345hn6789 4y ago
    Nobody reads them, is it because they aren't useful? Maintaining wikis is a culture thing. If most of your employees don't use the wiki it's basically useless since it'll be falling out of date.
theshrike79 4y ago
"Mountains of documents" is not a new problem, you just need to organise them properly. But if you have a meeting and nothing about it was written down, who knows what was decided if it's not written down? 1) Every meeting must have an agenda and any material linked must be read before attending. You're wasting everyone's time by reading the material during the meeting. 2) Every meeting must create an artefact, otherwise you're just chatting with coworkers.
ThePadawan 4y ago
> I have come across this sentiment often but there is no point in creating new artifacts just to record a meeting. What if the meeting was useless and nothing came out of it? I might be a huge cynic, but that seems to me to be the #1 reason to create a post-mortem document to explore how to avoid another meeting that was a waste of time like that. If the meeting was useless because the participants weren't prepared, make a note to hand out preparatory notes beforehand. If the meeting was useless because everybody shouted over each other, make a note for more moderation. If the meeting was useless because no one had political power to follow up on any decisions, cancel the meeting altogether. Having a meeting that goes nowhere and then taking no time to publicly settle on actions as a consequence seems incredibly neglectful to me.
sys_64738 4y ago
Every meeting should have an agenda. No agenda = cancel meeting.
marniewebb 4y ago
The artifact we often use is “zoom recording of the meeting.” Which is less than useful. For non-sensitive meetings, we record to otter and then edit the transcript using highlights, marking to dos, etc. We’ve got an otter folder structure that mimics our other folder structures. We most commonly do this for document review meetings (I work for an NGO. We write a lot of grants.) This takes time but it creates good notes, allows everyone to be a participant in the meeting. We have other meetings — like weekly target review meetings — that use Asana as the basis for capturing notes. This works well for things that are really tactical.

gregwebs 4y ago

My preferred mode of work is to spread information asynchronously but to discuss it synchronously. Remote work has finally made it possible for me to be better at synchronous collaboration with others (edit: changed from "pair program"). Rather than being forced to work in a distracting open office, I finally have a private office. In the past, conversations about code tended to only happen asynchronously during code review, but now we are having them while work is in progress and for code review and it is a lot more productive for us than asynchronous. When you do a synchronous code review, you still need to put in review comments so that others can understand what is going on asynchronously. These comments won't be the full conversation- instead they will be a summary- sometimes you will end up omitting useful details, but it reduces the text overload of asynchronous. In the past being in an open office environment meant that collaborating with someone always risked being rude- disrupting others with our conversation. This would sometimes be handled by using a meeting room, but this still isn’t as good as just both of us communicating from our offices. For synchronous remote work It’s crucial to still work with people in similar time zones.

pydry 4y ago
I find that pair programming requires a high degree of psychological safety for people to try it and an even higher level for people to actually enjoy it. I'm pretty sure that by default remote work with a low level of face time leads to lower levels of psychological safety.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  I have seen pair programming in actual use exactly once. And it was a pair of dudes who had known each other since kindergarten and were roommates. They basically shared a brain. I've tried it a few times and it's like trying to read the same physical book at the same time with someone who's a lot slower or faster reader.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

eschneider 4y ago

Not something mentioned in the article, but something I've found super useful at my current (fully remote) job is the concept of "office hours". Where I am, each team has a hour or two each week where folks are "available". For some teams, like mine, most folks show up for the video meeting and we go over whatever short topics we've accumulated over the last few days with whomever, or just work muted if it's not something relevant to us. Very casual. Other teams are generally offline, but if you tag them in their team's slack channel, they'll pop on their video meeting link and you can go over whatever you need to. Nice. It's not a solution to all problems, but ends up being a nice 'hallway conversation' substitute where you don't _quite_ know who you need, or just need to ask some questions and don't want to go to the trouble of scheduling a meeting just for that. And since the whole thing is informal, it doesn't feel like a time waste, even if you're not 'involved' in what's going on. YMMV, of course, but it seems to work for us.

Rayhem 4y ago
I propose office hours in every single retrospective we do and it never gets any traction. I've tried proposing "office hours". I've tried proposing them with a bit of an explanation as to why I think they're a good idea. I've tried proposing them with a lengthy explanation as to why I think they're a good idea. My conclusion is that people don't want to engage with retrospective items that aren't first-order helpful. "Doing X solves problem Y for person ME right now" type things. Office hours smooth communication, but that in and of itself doesn't fix a problem -- it paves the road to fix other problems.

loveparade 4y ago

> have face-time, and make room for socializing. > And a little ‘How are you feeling?' goes a long way. > “When leaders make time for fun, it gives permission for others too” Is it just me, or are others also annoyed when work is mixed with forced socialization? I don't need to have fun or get personal therapy at work. It's just work. I would rather get it done quickly and efficiently and then have more time to have fun with my family or non-work friends.

dherikb 4y ago
I'm kind like you, but the people are different and many of them really like this interactions. I just think the manager needs to understand those differences and not force the socialization for everyone. Sometimes the manager even embarrasses the people on the team that not are really into participate of some of this socializations.
- loveparade 4y ago
  I wonder if it's an age or stage of life thing. When I was younger and single I enjoyed these interactions more than I do now that I have a family and kid. I think the need for extra socializing isn't quite there anymore.
atomicnumber3 4y ago
Unfortunately, "work is other people". At least I think that's the quote. Definitely something along those lines. Less glib: I've always found the technical part of work to be by far the easiest part of my job. The computers do what they're told and when they argue with me, it's deterministic, unambiguous and consistent (at least from its perspective anyway). People are a lot more complicated, and they seldom know what they want, what to build, whether they know enough to recognize what to build, whether they know they know enough to recognize what to build, etc. they have feelings that can be hurt, friends who they want to defend, opponents they want to see suppressed. I could go on. Maybe I've somehow only worked in dreadful, dramatic hellscapes, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree with you? But also I think politics is what happens when more than 3 people want to work together, and so it's an inherent aspect of work. Sorry, this has been a bit rambling. My point is that, while sure you don't need to do bowling night every week, I do find that a zoom call with your teammates every other week with no agenda other than to chat is ridiculously effective. And sometimes your best work can happen after you both accidentally give and receive therapy while at work. Everyone is the main character of their own story and knowing how even the work part of all those individual main stories connect can be really useful insight.

walnutclosefarm 4y ago

I haven't read the book, but I think that if he added one sentence to point 1 in his summary, the first three points are really everything you need to know to make remote work effective. Point 1 (treat everyone as remote) is the most critical, but his elaboration on "tools, meeting setup, information exchange, communication, documentation, and opportunities" should be extended further with "Provide all employees with guidance and training on how to work remotely. In particular, people need to understand that working meetings held remotely often bring out the worst in people on opposite ends of the communication spectrum (those who monopolize the floor, and those who are reluctant to participate). A meeting facilitator should explicitly facilitate participation, so that everyone who has something to contribute, does, and no one prevails simply with volume. On point 2, about use of asynchronous communications - it probably is implied, but one key part of this is making sure that everyone in the team understands and observes the rule that you are expected to be asynchronously available most of the time, and should go dark only when it's absolutely necessary for your work. One thing I found helpful with distributed teams is making a status available on asynchronous channels called "Ping me on the hour" which is a way of saying, "I'm heads down, don't interrupt unless the world is ending, but I surface if necessary every top of hour."

kbutler 4y ago
> expected to be asynchronously available most of the time "during core working hours". See other point about establishing boundaries between work and personal life. It is helpful to establish expected contact/response timings, such as: - email - async. checked a few times/day. turn off notifications - slack/chat - async. notify of direct messages & high priority channels, other items checked periodically - phone/voice/video calls - synchronous. only for things that justify immediate interruption. Will respond with at least a "What's up?/In a meeting/etc." unless completely unavailable.
blueboo 4y ago
A phenomenon that unites these points is the result of extended COVID WFH: in the aggregate, to some significant degree, remote work habits seem to be persisting in in-person work environments. It’s a double-edged sword: You’re pinging the guru down the aisle for advice rather than walking over to her. So no one gets to overhear the guidance, but then again, she can triage your request with her Slack usage. As a result, our in-person work situations have never been so quiet (outside of lockdowns). The value of in-person is thereby seemingly perceptibly lessened. Are we losing or recouping the value of that serendipitous spark of collaboration that executives wax poetic over? (Was it ever a thing?)

baby 4y ago

I read it and it was a really bad book. I didn’t learn much. I felt like I learned more about remote working reading the 4 hours work week.

ta3411 4y ago

regarding social interaction, I am running a hybrid US (3 people) - China (4 people) team. My teammates in China just don't usually in meetings / "coffee hours" (mostly due to language and cultural barriers). So any type of cross border team building and social bantering just fall flat. Does anyone have any similar experience and how they address this?

wistlo 4y ago

COVID allowed my company to put everyone on the same level. It was wonderful while it lasted. Unfortunately, the drive to "collaboration" has sprung up again in our senior ranks, who I think felt uncomfortable not being able to lay eyes on heads. Once again the remote folks are peripheral, literally. A lot of time and bandwidth is now wasted on arguing why it's necessary to arbitrarily be in the office one or three days per week, especially for people working independently on projects. Almost every leadership town hall has employees questioning why they agian have t sit in traffic and hunt for workspace while the closest colleague—the one they do real collaboration with—is actually a thousand miles away.