Minimise the downside of remote; Twitter's end; Black Mirror and the death of the social web

Hi team

Greetings from the train from Glasgow to York.

This week:

1. How to manage remote
2. Will Threads kill Twitter?
3. In case you missed these great reads: Black Mirror's Charlie Brooker; the death of the social web

Thanks for reading. Please do share.

How to minimise the downside of remote

We are a fully remote company at The Content Engine. And, at the same time, face-to-face engagement with people is so important. Most of our 40 staff are based in the UK, many of them not in London. So instead of making everyone travel somewhere inconvenient, I am travelling to see people on their home turf. Today Glasgow, tomorrow York.

We get a shared workspace and staff who are usually working from their home offices can come and parrallel play for the day. We do lunch and a drink after work, and it helps to get to know people and lubricate relationships.

We are a fully remote company because most of our growth happened during the pandemic, when in-office work was against the law. We embraced it and found we could recruit people from anywhere in the world (we have staff in the United Arab Emirates, India and Australia), and forge our culture as a remote first one.

Now many companies are desperate to see their workers back in the office. Many are offering positive incentives and threatening negative consequences for those who don't come. Google, Meta, Amazon, all these big companies are keen to have their staff back for at least part of the week because being in the same place helps with ad hoc meetings, cross-team idea fertilisation and... manager psychology.

There are advantages and disadvantages to being remote.

Advantages:

1. Talent. You can recruit talent from anywhere, instead of being limited to commuting distance from your office.
2. Loyalty. People like the flexibility of home working and it can be difficult to find jobs that are 100% remote.
3. Extra time = extra life. No commuting means more time for family, leisure or discretionary work.
4. Quiet time. People can organise their schedules to take advantage of those hours when they are most productive. And do their laundry when they are not.

Disadvantages:

1. Lower work *intensity*. If people are physically together there is a greater sense of shared mission. Psychologically it can be easier for many people to lever into full productivity if they are sitting in close proximity to colleagues. Impromptu meetings for problem solving or project generation take a bit more effort to organise remotely than if you can tap people on the shoulder and pull them into a meeting room.
2. Less informal information exchange. Corridor conversations, grapevine rumours, over the shoulder contemporaneous coaching, there are things that happen less when people are not in the same physical location. This is negative in particular for younger less experienced workers whose understanding of the workplace and how to work has yet to be shaped.
3. Weaker social ties. Without office banter, people have less in common, and when work accelerates and discretionary effort is required, staffers have weaker psychological impetus to go the extra mile for their colleagues or the company.

So the challenge for a remote company like ours is to minimise the downsides and maximise the upsides. Many upsides look after themselves as they are benefits to staff in the form of greater flexibility and time. The downsides can be minimised through careful organisational structures. We use:

• Regular team standups. Short and sweet, minimise people's time in meetings yet keep people fully up to date with what is going on.
• Randomised encounters. Often in our regular meetings we break into random, cross team workshop groups, so that people from across the organisation have plenty of opportunity to meet random others.
• Managed social encounters. We encourage everyone to have at least 2 virtual coffees a week with their colleagues from across the company with no work agenda. Instead we encourage people to get to know each other as people, and build social ties.

We are not going to have an office in a central location for everyone anytime soon. That would necessitate a wrenching reinvention and restructure of the company, for what is a limited upside. So we have to continuously health check the culture and come up with innovative ways to manage the downsides and maximise the upsides of what is, really, a super extraordinarily amazing way to be able to work. Thus, I ride the train.

What does your organisation do to minimise the downside of remote working?

Will threads kill Twitter?

Twitter, once the public figure and journalist's social tool of choice, has been degrading for many years with horrendous misinformation, bullying, and bots. This has only accelerated with Elon Musk's takeover and mercurial management, the latest this week: limiting the number of tweets users can view in a day. That's a curious decision for a platform that relies on users being both addicted to the feed and advertisers who want lots of users to see their messaging.

Now, on Thursday July 6, Meta will launch its Twitter competitor.

I have written before about the proliferation of Twitter alternatives. This time, I think, Is different. Firstly, most Twitter users hate Twitter. They perhaps don't love Meta. What they do love is being on a network where all the other public figures, journalists, and their audience is. These people are already on Instagram, and Instagram has their social graph, so it won't take long to build an audience.

Other Twitter alternatives such as Bluesky, T2, Mastodon, Spill - these networks have all had to start from scratch. And that is hard.

Brands and organisations that have been investing in Twitter for many years - fear not. The skill and effort you have put into telling your stories in multiple digitally optimised formats will serve you well.

Will you join Threads?

In case you missed it: some good reads

• Charlie Brooker always seems to be able to articulate the neurosis de jour. In Joan is Awful, the first episode of the latest series of Netflix's Black Mirror, the writer looks at real time, real life AI-created content. Joan, who is not so awful really, has her life stolen and broadcast with Salma Hayek in the starring role. It turns out we have all signed up for this treatment when we clicked "accept" on our streaming service's terms and conditions. Here's a great interview with Mr Brooker in which he reveals his current biggest fear: misinformation and "what people do when they are frightened and misinformed."

• The "social web" - the places where we go to engage with friends, brands and new ideas - is fragmenting and falling apart. From Twitter (see above) to Reddit, our favourite platforms are being impacted by 3 trends, writes the Verge's David Pierce:

1. It is going from public to private;
2. It’s shifting from growth and engagement to increasing revenue; and,
3. It’s turning into an entertainment business.?

These trends are killing the easy interaction the social media generation has been used to.

That's it from me this week. Next week I will be on leave and on retreat - digital detoxing for 7 days. I'm curious as to how it will feel.

Have a great one.

Mike