Things I wish I knew before going remote

[00:00] (upbeat music)
[00:21] - Cool, so I expect that we'll have some more people
[00:24] trickle in, which is fine,
[00:26] but we'll go ahead and get started.
[00:29] DHH is certainly a tough act to follow,
[00:33] but I'm going to do my best here.
[00:37] This is Things I Wish I Knew Before Going Remote.
[00:41] I know there are a lot of other awesome sessions
[00:43] going on right now so I do appreciate you
[00:45] choosing to join me here today.
[00:50] So just want to introduce myself.
[00:52] My name is Marla Zeschin.
[00:54] I use she pronouns,
[00:57] and some of you may know me as Marla Brizel.
[01:01] I recently changed my last name,
[01:03] and in the words of one of the many government officials
[01:07] that I had to interact with as part of this,
[01:10] going from Brizel to Zeschin was really a lateral move,
[01:15] (audience laughs)
[01:16] and I don't expect you to be able to pronounce
[01:19] either of those, so you're off the hook.
[01:21] Just don't call me Maria, please.
[01:25] I live in Colorado, so my idea of fun
[01:29] may not be your idea of fun.
[01:32] I like to back country ski in the wintertime
[01:35] and run in the summer,
[01:38] and when I'm not doing these things,
[01:40] I work for a company called Test Double.
[01:44] For those of you who aren't familiar,
[01:46] Test Double is a remote distributed consultancy
[01:50] dedicated to improving the way the world writes software.
[01:54] If this is something that you think,
[01:56] "Hm, my company could use some help with this,"
[01:58] come chat with me afterwards.
[02:01] And likewise, if you're thinking,
[02:02] "Hm, I would like to do this all day
[02:05] "instead of work for my company,"
[02:06] also come talk to me afterwards because we are hiring, too.
[02:11] So being fully remote and distributed,
[02:14] we actually have folks in 23 U.S. states
[02:17] and Canadian provinces, which is pretty cool.
[02:20] We are all across North America.
[02:22] And much to Justin's disappointment,
[02:25] even though I'm not here today to plug Test Double,
[02:28] I am here to talk to you today about remote work.
[02:32] We'll talk about the good, the bad, the ugly,
[02:35] and kind of all of the feelings that go along with that.
[02:39] And specifically, I'm going to tell you
[02:41] my story of going remote.
[02:43] It is you classic hero's journey, if you will.
[02:47] It has a buildup and then of course, it has a let down,
[02:51] and then finally there is this redemption at the end.
[02:55] And it has a heroine.
[02:57] That is me in this story.
[02:59] And given that it is a talk about remote work,
[03:02] we will start off by exploring how that arrangement
[03:06] actually came to be.
[03:09] And we'll talk about how at first, things were really great.
[03:13] I loved remote and I was just thrilled
[03:16] that I could pull on a pair of leggings in the morning
[03:19] and not have to worry about whether
[03:21] I was dressed appropriately.
[03:24] And everything was awesome, but as they say,
[03:27] all good things must eventually
[03:29] come to an end at some point.
[03:31] And it's no different in this story either.
[03:34] So next, we will talk about how eventually
[03:38] I began to struggle with things
[03:40] like not having left my house in a week,
[03:43] or not seeing many other people on a daily basis,
[03:47] and communication problems, and all of the challenges
[03:51] that can kind of accompany that.
[03:54] So for me, this eventually ended with a breaking point,
[03:57] and it forced me to get it together.
[03:59] And so the redemption arc in this story
[04:02] comes with finding balance and figuring out
[04:05] how to make the less glamorous parts of remote work
[04:08] into an opportunity to discover a little bit more
[04:12] about myself and my own needs.
[04:15] So without further ado, let's take it from the beginning.
[04:20] Our story today starts in 2016, where I took a job
[04:24] at an election tech company based out of Brooklyn, New York,
[04:28] and that company had a partial development team in Denver.
[04:32] That team shrunk over time.
[04:35] A few people moved on to the next opportunity.
[04:37] A couple more people decided to leave Denver
[04:39] for reasons that honestly escape me.
[04:42] (audience laughing)
[04:42] But at the end, it was just me and one other person
[04:46] sharing a tiny WeWork office in downtown Denver,
[04:49] and I was also starting to work out of my home
[04:52] one to two days per week.
[04:54] Eventually, it was time for me to move on
[04:56] to my next opportunity, and so at the end of 2017,
[05:00] I joined Test Double fully remote
[05:03] and also the only person in the state of Colorado.
[05:07] So we've had a few others join us
[05:09] in the Denver area since then, but we all still work
[05:12] out of our respective homes, and occasionally,
[05:14] we'll try to get together to catch up.
[05:17] And because I made that transition gradually,
[05:20] from part time remote to full time,
[05:22] my attitude upon going full time was basically,
[05:26] whoops, how hard can this be?
[05:29] I've already done this remote thing.
[05:31] It's not going to be that hard, and you know,
[05:33] now I don't have to worry about all the things
[05:35] I hated about WeWork.
[05:36] (audience laughing)
[05:38] And at first, it really wasn't actually that bad.
[05:41] I was in honeymoon period of sorts.
[05:43] And I was loving that I was no longer bound
[05:46] by a lot of the constraints that I had
[05:48] working from an office.
[05:50] Like for example, I no longer had to wait
[05:53] for the bus in the morning.
[05:55] And the bus in Denver is super unreliable,
[05:57] so this was really great.
[05:59] And I also got back all of the time
[06:02] that I had previously devoted to my commute.
[06:05] I no longer had to worry about packing a lunch
[06:08] in the morning and then leaving it on the counter
[06:10] as I ran for said bus,
[06:11] (audience laughing)
[06:12] and I got to eat instead every day
[06:14] at the cheapest restaurant in the world, my own kitchen.
[06:19] I could even privately and comfortably some health issues
[06:23] without my coworkers being any the wiser.
[06:26] And for anyone else in here who also manages
[06:28] a chronic health condition, you know this by itself
[06:31] is really the Holy Grail, to not have to talk about it
[06:35] with anybody else and just deal with it yourself.
[06:39] I had this amazing flexibility to get life things done
[06:43] with little to no impact on my day.
[06:46] Before, if I had a contractor coming over to the house,
[06:49] I'd have to take off half a day of work to deal with them,
[06:53] and now I could let them in and be back at my desk
[06:56] in the time that it would take me
[06:57] just for a normal bathroom break.
[07:00] I won't lie, there is a lot of upside to working remotely,
[07:04] and that's part of why we're all here, right?
[07:08] I was finding that in many ways, a flexible work schedule
[07:11] really is all that it's cracked up to be.
[07:14] But of course, eventually, I started to get used
[07:17] to the shininess, it's not quite as shiny as it once was,
[07:22] and the lure of leggings wears off.
[07:25] And so I found myself at this point a little bit
[07:28] caught off guard as reality actually started to take hold.
[07:33] So I'm curious here, show of hands,
[07:36] how many of you have some kind of morning routine?
[07:41] Right, okay.
[07:42] Just about everybody.
[07:43] Well, chances are, it probably goes something like this:
[07:47] you wake up, maybe you get a little exercise,
[07:50] or you hop straight in the shower,
[07:52] then you make some breakfast,
[07:53] or you get kids ready for their day,
[07:56] and then you're out the door as well shortly thereafter.
[08:00] Mine's pretty similar, except instead of putting shoes on
[08:04] at the end of the day, I throw on a pair of slippers
[08:07] and I head back upstairs to my office.
[08:10] And this is where I tend to stay once I get settled in.
[08:14] I'm guessing I might be a lot like a lot of you here,
[08:17] where once I get into the groove,
[08:19] I start coding and solving a problem,
[08:21] time goes by and I've stayed there for most of the day.
[08:26] And because now I was now just going down the hall
[08:29] instead of out the door for a commute,
[08:32] I found that it was really easy for this
[08:34] to turn into being home for days on end.
[08:37] And because I no longer had to go outside to get
[08:40] from the place that I slept to the place that I worked,
[08:45] some interesting things were starting to happen.
[08:49] First, I found that work and home were beginning
[08:52] to blend together to the point where the distinction
[08:55] was no longer as clear as it should have been.
[09:00] And similarly, because there was no physical separation
[09:04] between work and the rest of my life, I was also finding
[09:08] that there wasn't really as much conceptual separation
[09:10] as there should be either.
[09:13] The temptation to grab my phone and check my email
[09:16] before I'd even sat up in bed or said good morning
[09:19] to my husband or get sucked into something
[09:22] shortly after waking was really high
[09:24] and something that I was not really able to resist.
[09:29] Likewise, because I didn't have an office
[09:32] to leave behind at the end of the day,
[09:34] I also was having trouble knowing when to cut it off.
[09:38] If you're a high achiever like me,
[09:40] or dare I say maybe an overachiever,
[09:43] you might even feel a little bit of guilt
[09:46] with leaving some work unfinished for the next day.
[09:50] After all, how hard is it really to refactor one more method
[09:54] or write one more test?
[09:58] And because there was no difference
[10:00] between my work environments and my not work
[10:03] or my life environments,
[10:05] time was really starting to really slip by.
[10:08] And then one day I realized that I had no idea
[10:11] where my house keys were.
[10:13] And I was able to figure out that I had last seen them
[10:17] somewhere between Monday and Thursday.
[10:19] (audience laughing)
[10:21] But I wasn't really sure, more specifically than that
[10:24] because, much as I was loathe to admit it,
[10:28] I also wasn't sure when I last left the house
[10:31] in a way that required me to actually lock the door.
[10:34] This development here was extra surprising to me
[10:38] because one touted benefit of remote work
[10:41] is that you should be able to work from anywhere.
[10:44] If you need a change of scenery, just pick up your stuff
[10:47] and hit the local coffee shop.
[10:48] No big deal.
[10:50] But sometimes my local coffee shop had sketchy wifi,
[10:55] and it also had that regular who liked to shout loudly
[10:58] about politics in the corner,
[11:00] and I needed to be on an important client call
[11:03] where I couldn't have that going on in the background.
[11:06] I was finding that even though I expected this,
[11:09] you know, from time to time, these kinds of situations
[11:12] were actually cropping up a lot more frequently
[11:15] than I expected.
[11:17] And while work from anywhere is certainly a nice trope,
[11:21] in reality, I was finding that there were far fewer places
[11:24] that I could work that were conducive to the type of things
[11:28] that I needed to get done during the day.
[11:32] And because I felt limited in the places
[11:35] where I could effectively work,
[11:37] I also found that my interactions with other people
[11:40] were also becoming more limited.
[11:43] When I worked in an office or a coworking space,
[11:46] this wasn't an issue.
[11:47] I bumped into people all the time.
[11:49] I saw coworkers and friends in the hallway,
[11:53] and since my office was typically downtown
[11:56] and near my friends' offices,
[11:58] it was really easy to get together with people for lunch
[12:01] or make last minute plans to catch up after work.
[12:06] But because my office was now my home,
[12:09] I was finding that the friend and the coworker
[12:12] that I saw far and away the most often was Pearl the dog.
[12:16] (audience sighing)
[12:18] She's great.
[12:19] (audience laughing)
[12:19] There was no getting around it.
[12:21] The social interaction that comes from working from home
[12:25] was starting to get really intense for me,
[12:28] or the social isolation I should say.
[12:31] And that was getting extra intense,
[12:33] especially on the days where I wasn't pairing much
[12:36] or I didn't have a lot of other opportunity
[12:38] for collaboration with other people.
[12:42] And even though I was finding myself a little starved
[12:44] for social interaction, I was also feeling a lot of guilt
[12:49] over making some time for it.
[12:52] I found myself wondering if it was okay to get up
[12:55] from my desk and take time away from work for a few
[12:59] because this meant leaving my house.
[13:03] If you're like me, sometimes you can feel like
[13:06] you need to ask permission to do these kinds of things
[13:10] and that is also nerve wracking
[13:12] because if you have to ask for something,
[13:14] it feels like there is a chance
[13:16] that maybe you're not supposed to have it.
[13:19] Theoretically, remote work is supposed to liberate people
[13:22] from needing to ask permission to go about the minutiae
[13:26] of their day in a way that they choose.
[13:29] Because it does away with this idea of butts in seats
[13:33] as a measure of output or productivity.
[13:36] And now, perhaps that's true, but I think in reality,
[13:39] it's a little bit more nuanced than that.
[13:43] We've all had days where we're not 100% on our game.
[13:46] Maybe you're fighting all day with Docker
[13:49] and you don't get to writing any meaningful code
[13:51] until the last 90 minutes of your day,
[13:54] or maybe you just had a terrible night's sleep
[13:56] and you're not able to get into it for whatever reason.
[14:01] Well, when I worked in an office and I had days like these,
[14:04] like we all do, I still felt okay about the day
[14:08] because after all, I was still at work all day
[14:11] and people could see that my butt
[14:12] was in a chair doing something.
[14:15] But at home, I felt this immense guilt and anxiety
[14:19] on days like this, when I didn't necessarily
[14:21] have the world to show for my efforts.
[14:24] I didn't know how to make it known either
[14:27] that I was still doing things of value
[14:29] and still being productive.
[14:31] And so, that leads me to the last thing
[14:34] that I struggled with when I went remote
[14:37] and that's communication.
[14:39] Good communication is obviously important in every job.
[14:43] I think that's something that we actually talk about a lot
[14:46] at Developers is how communication can aid us in our work.
[14:50] But it becomes extra critical
[14:52] when nobody can see you or your person.
[14:56] In fact, it's sometimes even easy to wonder,
[14:59] if you can't see me, do I even work here at all?
[15:03] Or do I even exist in the world?
[15:07] And furthermore, because face to face interaction
[15:10] is often lacking in remote jobs,
[15:12] this means that good written communication
[15:14] suddenly becomes a lot more critical.
[15:18] The constant high volume, high quality communication
[15:21] that's required by a remote job,
[15:24] is mentally taxing, even for those of us
[15:27] who don't have to practice at it a lot.
[15:29] And tired people eventually start to make mistakes.
[15:34] If you've ever had anything that you've written into Slack
[15:37] or an email be misinterpreted because maybe your wording
[15:40] was off and you didn't have the accompanying nonverbal
[15:44] communication to either clear the air or correct things,
[15:48] then you know how high the stakes can be
[15:50] in this sort of situation.
[15:53] So needless to say, I was starting
[15:55] to feel the pressure a bit,
[15:57] and between the lack of work life balance,
[16:00] the social isolation and the communication challenges,
[16:04] that honeymoon period that we talked about earlier,
[16:06] that had worn off.
[16:09] I hit a spot where I was really unhappy with my day to day,
[16:14] to the point where others were starting
[16:15] to actually comment on my demeanor,
[16:18] and I was being asked far more often than felt appropriate
[16:22] if everything was actually okay.
[16:25] And you see, I knew in my gut that remote work
[16:29] had a lot to do with my growing unhappiness,
[16:32] but I wasn't really sure how I was supposed
[16:35] to feel about this.
[16:37] After all, remote work had been sold as this magic elixir,
[16:41] and that's something that I had bought into
[16:43] that I was really nervous to admit
[16:46] that instead it was starting to turn into
[16:48] a poison pill.
[16:51] And that left me wondering what was wrong with me
[16:55] given that my feelings didn't seem to match up
[16:57] at all with what I thought remote work
[17:00] was supposed to be like.
[17:02] I couldn't figure out at all how I was supposed
[17:05] to reconcile these feelings of loneliness
[17:08] and guilt and anxiety,
[17:11] because whenever I would tell people that I worked remotely,
[17:15] it seemed like the responses were always ones
[17:18] of jealousy or longing.
[17:20] People would say things like,
[17:22] "Oh, I would love to be able to have that some day.
[17:25] "You must be so happy."
[17:27] Or, "I'm really jealous, you're living my dream."
[17:31] And so I started to wonder
[17:33] if I was living somebody else's dream,
[17:36] and yet I was feeling this other way instead.
[17:40] Well, maybe I just wasn't cut out for remote work.
[17:46] And so this spiraled for a little bit,
[17:49] and at a certain point, I finally got over myself
[17:52] a little bit and remembered that I'm fortunate enough
[17:56] to have some really empathetic, wonderful,
[17:59] understanding coworkers, and so I decided to confide
[18:03] in a few that I trusted the most.
[18:05] I told them about how I was feeling,
[18:07] and I was actually kind of surprised to hear their responses
[18:12] that a lot of them struggled with some of the same things.
[18:16] Okay, not what I expected and also kind of interesting.
[18:21] So this got my wheels turning a little bit more.
[18:24] How was it that for most of us we could agree
[18:27] that this was actually the best job we'd ever had,
[18:31] we work on, you know, difficult technical problems,
[18:34] we work with wonderful people, we're growing a lot,
[18:37] and yet at the same time, we're still struggling
[18:41] with varying degrees of anxiety over being by ourselves.
[18:47] And so at this point,
[18:48] I had the light bulb moment, if you will.
[18:51] What I realized at that point
[18:53] is that in all of my other jobs,
[18:55] there was a structure that was provided to me
[18:58] by the physical environment that gave me cues
[19:02] on how I was supposed to work.
[19:05] And while I'm the kind of person that's always known
[19:07] some superficial things about their work style,
[19:10] like how I like to take notes in meetings
[19:13] or how I prefer for my desk to be set up,
[19:17] I had never evaluated work
[19:19] on a more deeper, fundamental level.
[19:23] And that's exactly what I needed to do.
[19:25] What I needed to do was examine the things
[19:28] that had previously been provided to me
[19:30] in a physical environment
[19:32] and assess what worked well from there, what I liked,
[19:36] and figure out how to bring that into my life
[19:39] now that I was in charge of setting up my own environment.
[19:43] This was a big epiphany,
[19:45] but as usually follows with epiphanies,
[19:47] the next, more immediate question is
[19:50] "Okay, well, what do I do now?"
[19:54] So let's revisit some of the things that I struggled with
[19:56] and see if we can answer that question.
[20:00] So if you recall, that first challenge of working remotely
[20:05] was when work and non-work life
[20:06] take place in the same space,
[20:09] how do you separate the two?
[20:11] For me, figuring out how to create
[20:13] strong, deliberate barriers between those was the key.
[20:18] So I actually created a dedicated physical workspace,
[20:22] enforced strong boundaries around it.
[20:25] For me, I live in a house,
[20:26] so this was a room in my house that is now the office,
[20:30] and I work exclusively from there during the day.
[20:33] And when the work day is over, I shut the door
[20:35] and I don't go in.
[20:37] Now obviously, not everybody lives in a house.
[20:40] So maybe this is a corner of your apartment,
[20:43] or it could even be a symbolic walk around the block
[20:46] at the beginning and end of your day
[20:48] just to symbolize the transition
[20:50] between work and everything else.
[20:54] The second challenge was similar,
[20:56] setting appropriate temporal boundaries around work,
[20:59] not starting too early and not ending too late.
[21:03] In other words, I needed to figure out how I create
[21:05] the nonphysical barriers that were also required
[21:08] to create that work life separation.
[21:12] For me, this means that every morning before work,
[21:15] I get dressed and I put on a little bit of make up
[21:19] because this is what I would do
[21:20] if I was going out the door to a physical office.
[21:24] Now obviously, I'm not saying that everyone
[21:26] should start wearing lipstick,
[21:27] though I think that would be fun,
[21:29] (audience laughing)
[21:30] But chances are, you may hold yourself to some
[21:32] sort of expectation of presentation.
[21:35] I don't think anyone here would show up
[21:37] to their office in their underpants,
[21:39] so maybe that's not the way to dress for your job at home.
[21:45] I also know that if I worked in an office,
[21:48] I wouldn't roll in without brushing my teeth
[21:50] or having breakfast in the morning.
[21:52] I am a hangry person as my pair can attest.
[21:56] So I need to take care of these things at home, too,
[21:59] before I can get started on my work tasks.
[22:02] So for me, just having a habit or routine
[22:06] that I can rely on, that's just as strong
[22:09] as a physical barrier.
[22:12] Now, temporal challenges can be extra difficult
[22:15] when you're working across time zones.
[22:18] This is the distributed part of remote and distributed.
[22:22] And I realized that I needed to,
[22:24] instead of stretching the day
[22:26] to match coworkers' availability,
[22:29] I needed to instead accept that part of the day
[22:32] was going to overlap with folks on either coast
[22:34] and part of it just wasn't.
[22:37] So I communicated my availability pretty strongly
[22:40] to clients and coworkers and also set a very aggressive
[22:44] Do Not Disturb schedule on Slack
[22:46] so that I wouldn't be tempted to respond to things
[22:49] at inappropriate times.
[22:51] You might need to be as assertive
[22:53] in setting your own boundaries at home
[22:56] as you might in a physical office.
[22:59] If your boss asked you to be in the office every day
[23:02] from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., you'd probably say "Sayonara"
[23:06] and start looking for a new job.
[23:09] So this isn't an appropriate expectation
[23:12] to hold yourself to at home
[23:14] just because your kitchen happens to be 20 feet away.
[23:20] Now the third challenge was around social isolation.
[23:24] Working from home meant that there were far fewer
[23:26] serendipitous encounters with other people.
[23:29] And while Pearl does give wonderful dog hugs,
[23:33] she's also not much of a conversationalist.
[23:36] And she's certainly not a replacement
[23:39] for other human beings.
[23:42] So I set a goal to have at least one event
[23:45] scheduled per week where I would get to interact
[23:48] with other human beings.
[23:50] Sometimes this was a meet up,
[23:52] other times it was scheduling happy hour with friends,
[23:56] and yet, other times is was just getting a manicure
[23:59] during lunch so that I could get out of the house
[24:01] and have some interaction.
[24:03] I also set this as a goal with my manager
[24:06] for a little bit of extra accountability.
[24:09] And to make sure I actually followed through,
[24:13] I did schedule these things.
[24:14] I would put my credit card down at the nail salon
[24:17] or I would make the reservation in my name
[24:19] so that I would actually have to show up.
[24:22] I would also be intentional about scheduling.
[24:25] I would try to schedule happy hour near the coffee shop
[24:28] that actually did have the good wifi
[24:30] so that I could make it an afternoon
[24:32] out of the house, interacting with more people.
[24:37] Now, to talk about the guilt side of this,
[24:41] I also had to tell myself that these are things
[24:44] that I would do on a lunch break or after work
[24:47] if I was working in an office.
[24:49] And so the only difference was that my office
[24:53] was now my house,
[24:54] it was still okay to go outside and do these things.
[24:58] I'm guessing that nobody here feels any guilt
[25:01] when a coworker grabs you and says, you know,
[25:03] "Hey, let's go run to Starbucks for ten minutes."
[25:06] I know I certainly didn't.
[25:08] And there's also no requirement,
[25:11] despite our efforts to convince ourselves to the contrary,
[25:14] that we be chained to our desks all day
[25:17] when we're working from home.
[25:19] You're likely not going to be
[25:21] at your most productive anyways
[25:23] if that is the strategy you choose to approach,
[25:26] so taking breaks is not only acceptable,
[25:29] it's also healthy.
[25:33] So let's talk about that last challenge, communication.
[25:37] Without face to face interaction,
[25:39] communication with other people can be really difficult.
[25:43] I needed to find a way to get really good
[25:46] at both casual and formal communication
[25:49] with coworkers and my clients.
[25:53] On the casual side, one thing that helped a lot
[25:56] was setting up times for water cooler chat
[25:59] with other coworkers.
[26:01] This is something that Test Double actually endorses.
[26:03] We have something called Coffee Time
[26:05] where every week, you're randomly matched up
[26:08] through the computer with another person
[26:11] and you schedule about 30 minutes
[26:13] to talk about whatever you'd like.
[26:15] I've talked about gardening, pets, programming,
[26:18] anything, it doesn't matter.
[26:20] But you can also do this yourself
[26:22] if your company doesn't have a formal structure.
[26:25] Just reach out to someone and see if you can chitchat
[26:28] at the beginning or the end of the day, maybe.
[26:30] This helps a lot.
[26:32] It helps not only with getting to know people,
[26:35] which is certainly nice,
[26:37] but you come to understand your coworkers' styles
[26:40] and how they communicate,
[26:41] and that in turn is super helpful when it comes time
[26:44] for more formal professional communication.
[26:50] There's this concept in communication
[26:52] of high bandwidth and low bandwidth communication.
[26:56] High bandwidth is maybe what you expect.
[26:58] It's when there are a lot of senses involved
[27:01] in communicating with somebody.
[27:03] Low bandwidth, on the other hand,
[27:05] is much more unidimensional.
[27:08] I realize that colocated environments have a lot
[27:11] of high bandwidth communication.
[27:13] That's kind of the default.
[27:14] We have a conversation with somebody,
[27:17] but we also get to see at the same time
[27:19] their gestures and their body language.
[27:22] We hear their intonation, maybe we hear them sigh,
[27:25] and we can figure out how they're feeling that day
[27:28] and maybe what it is that they're actually
[27:29] trying to tell us.
[27:32] Remote bandwidth, on the other hand,
[27:34] we don't have any of that.
[27:36] We see what somebody else types into Slack,
[27:39] and for the most part, you know, that's it.
[27:41] Maybe we get an emoji if we're lucky.
[27:44] So, you have to transmit a lot more
[27:47] on low bandwidth communication
[27:50] because it's a lower frequency
[27:52] just to achieve the same means
[27:54] as if you were on a high bandwidth frequency instead.
[27:59] And so what this meant for me was that I had to change
[28:02] my habits to be more explicit and overcommunicate things
[28:06] that might simply be observable or taken for granted
[28:10] if I was in the same physical proximity as somebody else.
[28:14] This was everything from project status
[28:16] to what I was up to, to even how I was feeling that day
[28:21] so that people could understand that I wasn't angry at them,
[28:24] you know, my stomach just hurt.
[28:27] More generally, I had to be a lot more thoughtful
[28:30] about my communication patterns
[28:33] so that everything I said had value
[28:35] and I was demonstrating the output
[28:38] and what I had to show for my day
[28:40] versus just relying on somebody to see me typing
[28:43] at my computer and assume
[28:44] that I was doing something worthwhile.
[28:49] Part of this renewed focus on communication
[28:51] also involved communicating issues to my employer.
[28:55] So, I would be remiss if I didn't stop here at this point
[28:58] and mention that a lot of this has been possible
[29:01] because I have been lucky enough to collaborate
[29:03] with a wonderful manager and be at a company
[29:06] that does put remote first and puts due emphasis
[29:10] on making sure that folks are well supported.
[29:14] But what if you don't work in that kind of place?
[29:17] What if your work place doesn't have
[29:19] a strong remote culture?
[29:21] Remote work is exploding in popularity recently.
[29:24] And that's, obviously part of the hook of this talk,
[29:28] and I'm guessing a good number of you are here today
[29:31] because you're pioneers in your company's remote journey.
[29:35] If your company is still finding the way
[29:37] and finding the way across the river,
[29:39] there are still some things you can do
[29:41] to make sure that you don't drown in the process.
[29:44] First of all, you may make sense to evaluate
[29:48] what kind of culture it is that you're actually working in.
[29:52] One thing that remote work does tend to expose
[29:55] is whether a culture prizes busyness or outcomes.
[29:59] Now, ideally, we should all prize outcomes.
[30:02] We get paid to produce things, not just hack away
[30:05] at our computers all day.
[30:07] But that's obviously not always the case.
[30:10] So if your work place's culture maybe
[30:11] isn't that enlightened yet, you might have to work
[30:14] a little bit harder now to bridge that gap.
[30:18] Overcommunicate where you are
[30:20] and what you have to show for it.
[30:23] Now, I know that feels a little bit weird
[30:25] or uncomfortable sometimes
[30:26] to trumpet your own accomplishments,
[30:29] but relative isolation does require some degree
[30:32] of self advocacy.
[30:34] And though it ought not to be the case,
[30:37] out of sight, out of mind is a real thing,
[30:40] especially if you don't yet have that strong remote culture,
[30:43] or maybe you're just one of a few remote employees.
[30:48] Secondly, you may want to make establishing your new
[30:52] remote work habits a part of whatever broader
[30:55] goal setting process you do have in place at work.
[30:58] You are setting goals, right?
[31:00] This allows you to hold yourself accountable
[31:03] and also allows you to build up a support structure
[31:06] around yourself if that happens to be
[31:08] a little bit lacking at work.
[31:11] It also allows you to demonstrate that remote work itself
[31:15] is also work and worthy of time and attention.
[31:20] Finally, don't be afraid to confide in other people.
[31:24] Remote work can often feel isolating,
[31:27] and these feelings can spiral out of control
[31:30] pretty quickly if we do manage to convince ourselves
[31:33] that we are truly alone.
[31:36] This is something that I regret not doing sooner.
[31:39] I do really regret holding my feelings in for so long
[31:41] because I think if I said something sooner,
[31:45] maybe things wouldn't have gone down
[31:47] quite as far as they did.
[31:49] Talking about it to a couple people really helped.
[31:53] Sharing with a trusted coworker or maybe a friend
[31:56] if you don't trust any of your coworkers,
[31:59] can make you feel less alone,
[32:02] and other people are always great sources
[32:04] of advice and tips.
[32:08] So to recap, we've talked about several challenges
[32:11] of working from home.
[32:13] The lack of work life balance in both
[32:15] the physical and conceptual senses,
[32:18] the social isolation, and communication challenges.
[32:22] And we've also discussed some solutions to these things.
[32:27] Now, I'll interject here,
[32:29] these are just the main problems
[32:31] that I struggled with working remotely.
[32:33] Maybe you're experiencing some different things,
[32:36] or you hate that solution,
[32:39] or you have another one that's awesome to you.
[32:42] That's great.
[32:43] And throughout this talk, you may have noticed
[32:46] that none of these things really do exist in a vacuum.
[32:50] Remote work is a puzzle, and you can really rearrange
[32:53] these pieces to your liking until you find the solution
[32:56] that fits you.
[32:59] But all of these things do have something in common.
[33:02] They all entail a mindset shift pertaining
[33:05] to how we consider work.
[33:08] For me, this mindset shift entailed going from relying
[33:12] on a structure that was implicitly provided to me
[33:15] by a work environment that somebody else set up
[33:18] to defining myself, the things that I needed and valued,
[33:23] and finding out how to provide them to myself
[33:26] now that I was in charge of my work environment.
[33:29] (audience applauding)
[33:30] This, to me, is what's truly liberating about remote work,
[33:34] because once you start to figure this part out,
[33:37] remote gives you the freedom to work on your own terms
[33:41] in a way that makes the most sense for you
[33:43] and whatever life circumstances you have.
[33:47] But we need to stop treating remote work
[33:50] like it's some kind of privilege to be earned by people
[33:53] or a gift that should be reserved
[33:55] for an organization's most senior developers.
[33:59] Doing so only focuses on the upsides of remote work
[34:03] and doesn't give any credence to the difficulties
[34:06] that people face in getting acclimated.
[34:09] It doesn't create a necessary culture of support
[34:11] around something that is inherently difficult,
[34:14] and that leads to inevitable negative feelings
[34:17] when people do hit those stumbling blocks.
[34:21] Instead, we need to acknowledge that remote work is a skill
[34:25] in and of itself, just like anything else at work.
[34:29] Nobody is born knowing how to do rails, for example,
[34:34] and nobody is born knowing how to work remotely.
[34:37] It's a skill that has to be learned over time
[34:40] and then practiced more and more to be refined.
[34:44] Because after all, there's no one right way
[34:47] to work remotely.
[34:48] And I think that's what draws a lot of us to remote anyways,
[34:52] however, because it's something that is deeply individual,
[34:56] it also requires work to figure out what your personal
[35:00] remote working toolset is.
[35:03] I don't think that this is something that I quite realized
[35:05] when I was getting started was that figuring out
[35:08] how to work remotely is also work in and of itself.
[35:14] And while there's no getting around the fact
[35:16] that figuring out how to work remotely can be difficult,
[35:20] just because you're struggling with it doesn't mean
[35:23] that there's something wrong with you,
[35:25] or you're a failure, or that it's a foregone conclusion
[35:29] that remote work is never going to be for you.
[35:33] So if you take only one thing away from this talk
[35:36] and nothing else, I hope it's that if you're
[35:39] currently struggling with remote work, you're not alone.
[35:43] You can do it, and there is a path forward.
[35:46] Thanks.
[35:47] (audience applauding)
[35:50] (Lighthearted music)