One Year of Remote Work

It has been a little over a year since I started working fully remotely. Several months ago I posted my initial impressions about remote work and I figured it was about time to share how my remote work journey has come along. This blog post is combination of some of the things I have seen done well at InVisionApp, combined with some of my personal learnings.

If I think about the major parts of my work life, I can break down the time I spend into the following categories:

• time I spend collaborating with others via video meetings, async chat, etc
• time I spend heads down working or thinking about a problem
• time I spend understanding the business/other parts of company/culture via company/department meetings, reading Slack messages
• time I spend in social interactions at work

The ratio of time spent on each might differ from individual to individual depending on your role, part of the organization, etc.

Below are a few ways I have learnt to optimize on each category of remote work.

Time I spend working with others via video meetings, async chat, etc

A lot of rules for effective meetings are the same whether you are colocated or work remotely — have an agenda, make sure expectations are set and clear, and have clearly defined next steps coming out of the meeting. But below are some of the remote specific pointers for meetings:

• Architecture or system design discussions without a white board can be hard! At InVision internally we heavily use Freehand as a collaborative whiteboard to have architecture sparring or brainstorming sessions. Apart from the fact that multiple users can use it at the same time, you don’t have to take a photo and email it to someone- you have a digital copy for your records now permanently available. And yes it works on iPad too if you like to use the iPencil (yes I have tried it!).
• As a part of my role, I attend weekly meetings which have a large (10–15) number of attendees. In such large meetings, sometimes it can be hard to keep track who was ready to speak next, or unintentionally talk over someone without the presence of physical cues. Especially during heated discussions, it can be especially hard for introverts to feel comfortable sharing their opinion if there is no gap in the conversation. For the past year, in some of our meetings we have been following the hand gesture system — where if you want to speak, put up your fingers to indicate your position in queue. This has been a great mechanism to ensure everyone has a chance to share their input!
• The Silent meeting format has worked great in a remote format as well. For meetings where you want to deep dive on a tech spec or technical topic, you have the facilitator give a brief overview of the topic to set the intent of the meeting. All the participants turn their video off, read and comment on the document, and turn on their video when they are done. When everyone’s video is back on, the facilitator knows that folks are ready to discuss the comments.
• Be present! When you are in a remote environment and have dual monitor, its easy to have a Zoom call going on one monitor, Slack open on your other monitor and be mentally absent during the meeting. Unlike in a physical conference room, it’s hard to implement the no laptop rule in a remote meeting. But trust me, concurrency has a high context switch cost in humans :) If you are attending a meeting, snooze your Slack notifications, or at least try to resist the urge to respond to them immediately. It is pretty easy to figure out in a Zoom call whether someone is mentally absent or distracted, and you owe it to your teammates to be present in the meeting. If you think you do not have value to add to the meeting, it is okay to decline to attend and catch up by reading meeting notes.
• Slack is a great mechanism for asynchronous communication and exchange of ideas. But sometimes, it’s easier to jump on a quick Zoom call instead of writing up long messages and the constant back and forth of chat. The Zoom Slack integration makes it really easy to spin up meetings in Slack channels. But if you are in the storming phase of a team or projects, have a dedicated time slot in day for open discussions instead of ad-hoc Zoom calls to help streamline everyone’s time on the team.

Time I spend heads down working or thinking about a problem

As engineers, we love our heads down, uninterrupted time of thinking about a problem or coding. Remote work is pretty amazing for this category of work. With minimal external interruptions, it allows us to have this dedicated time. But this benefit comes with its own traps.

• It is easy to fall into a cycle of spending too much time solo thinking about a problem. Use the Pomodoro technique! Instead of using this technique to help you focus (like in a traditional work environment), use it to help take breaks as checkpoints to see if you should ask for help, or seek feedback.
• Mental burnout is real! What happens often while working remote is you start your day, spend your time doing deep work, or in back-to-back meetings, eat lunch at your desk, and boom, suddenly it’s the end of your work day. And you feel mentally exhausted! Without coworkers around you, walks to the break room, etc., sometimes it’s easy to forget to take short mental breaks. I have been guilty of this many times, and I am still trying to get better at it. I have scheduled lunches on my calendar, and mostly folks tend to respect it and avoid scheduling meetings over that time. Some of my coworkers have private calendars so that all the scheduled time on their calendar is treated equally and not scheduled over.
• The whole “work from a coffee shop” aspect of remote work has not really worked for me. One, I really like having my two monitor setup. Two, a lot of coffee shops have loud music, and if I would like the flexibility of hopping into a quick Zoom call if needed. I do still try to go to a coffee shop every couple of weeks to get out of the house and get in a couple hours of creative thinking or reading. This is a major difference I have personally experienced from needing to get out of the house at least once a week (mentioned in my previous post), to feeling very effective working from home now.

Time I spend understanding the company (via company/department meetings, reading Slack messages)

• Without hallway conversations or lunches with people in different teams, it becomes even more important in a remote company to make sure you attend your company and department meetings. It keeps you in touch with how your leaders are thinking, what they worry about, what your customers want, etc. I sometimes grab my lunch or coffee, sit in a different room, and watch the all-hands meeting just like I would do in a regular office. This helps my brain switch into a different mode.
• Communication, communication, communication. When you work remotely, Slack is basically your office. A lot of messages go through several channels everyday and sometimes folks might miss important ones. Anytime a message is important at InVisionApp, it is posted in multiple channels, to ensure it captures all the intended audience. Some of the teams use the reacji channeler app in Slack, where adding a reaction to a message automatically reposts in multiple channels.

Time I spend in social interactions at work

The time I spend on non-work related interactions in a remote environment is far less than I used to spend in a colocated office. Though the interactions are much fewer, they are more purposeful.

• Find your support or passion guilds — At InVisionApp, two of my favorite non-work Slack channels are wedoboth and invision-cooks. The former is a channel for InVision moms, and, being a new mother, this group has been an amazing support group and resource for me. I have never met any of these wonderful InVisioners in person but they have been a great source of tips and advise.
• We also have the donut app in Slack which randomly connects two people in the company and asks them to schedule a meeting to get to know each other. To be candid, a lot of times, with my packed calendar, I am not always the one to take the initiative to schedule a get-to-know-you meeting. But every time someone has done it, I have thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. I recently got to talk to a customer support representative and we exchanged ideas about how to solve some of the common problems we both faced in completely different parts of the company. This would have never happened without donut.

There is so much I wanted to cover in this post that I didn’t get to like building culture in remote work, diversity in remote work, etc. Hopefully it won’t be another nine months before my next post on remote work :) Meanwhile, if y’all have any thoughts or questions about remote work, do let me know!