Things I wish I knew before going remote

The video above was recorded at RailsConf 2019 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Remote work is just like working in an office—minus the soul-crushing commute. How hard could it be?

Spoiler: it’s actually pretty hard.

When I went remote, I was so excited to not pack a lunch that I didn’t consider the implications of a quasi-reliable Internet connection or the psychological impact of spending so much time at home.

As it turns out, going remote isn’t just trading a highway commute for a hallway one. It requires new skills and a mindset shift. In this talk, you’ll learn how to assess your needs as a remote worker and gain a set of tools to help you succeed for the long term.

If you liked this talk, please share it! And if you know an organization that could benefit from additional developers who can help make the whole team better, we’d love to hear from you.

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)