When the primary means of collaboration is asynchronous (as is the case of remote work), the rules and norms of a remote team need to be more deliberate. Social time for the team to bond and have impromptu conversations need to be scheduled since they don’t happen spontaneously with people in the same office (e.g. tea time). Chance encounters need to be intentional (e.g. random coffee chat pairing). Even working hours and setting norms for when people work can be necessary.
See also:
- Remote work creates less weak ties which is important to counteract for product teams.
- Organizational support of remote work correlates with reported productivity—another reason to be deliberate and thoughtful.
Links to this note
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An AOR list (areas of responsibility) prevents a tragedy of the commons at your company. It’s a list of responsibilities—grouped by function—where each responsibility is assigned to one (and only one) person. This makes it clear what the responsibilities are, who owns them at the company, and how to route questions.
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How to Ramp up a Software Engineer
To get a new software engineer up to speed quickly, several things must already be in place. An assigned buddy who can be the first point of contact for questions or issues that arise. A manager with a written ramp up plan for the new employee with clear guidance on performance expectations. A self-serve development environment with clear documentation for getting your code base running locally.
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Managing a Remote Team Is All About the Outputs
With remote teams, it’s not like you can look over someone’s shoulder or visibly see if they are struggling—the only observable information is the outputs. That’s why remote team management needs to be centered around saying what you’re going to do and then comparing that to the output.
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It’s becoming clear that remote work isn’t going anywhere. A large portion of the workforce continues to work from home. Return to office stagnated. Office real estate value is plummetting.
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How to Start and Run a Remote-First Startup
This guide is for founders starting a fully remote company in the United States.
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A Team Charter Is a Mission Plus Metrics
A mission should be boiled down to a single aspirational statement that encompasses what the team actually does that’s valuable (not necessarily what leadership says they do), metrics describe the observable effects as the team succeeds in the mission.
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Some of the biggest criticism of the remote work movement is that people aren’t actually doing work. There are several flavors of this: working in your pajamas, not doing real work, or, the most sinister, that the company culture will suffer. This fails closer inspection immediately.
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Remote Work and the Principal-Agent Problem
Does remote work make the principal-agent problem worse? If so, why?
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Accrued Vacation Policies Are Better Than Unlimited PTO
The problem with unlimited vacation days is that it creates a bimodal distribution of usage—some employees take too little time off and some employees take way too much time off. At worst this creates resentment between employees and unwritten rules about when one should take time off.