So, you want to work from home

You want to continue working remote!

Of course you do!

If your job lends itself well to that kind of work, there are many great benefits for everyone involved. However, if you want to keep this working arrangement, you must consciously make remote work run smoothly.

I have had a remote team since 2008. Some people came into the office occasionally, some where across the ocean. The best tools for remote communication like Skype were not even close to what they are now, but we did make it work. I would like to share lessons learned, both from the position of the employer and employee.

My advice is for engineer and other members of the software development team. It is not a guide for managers who spend 90% of their time in meetings. That dynamic is different. I will have another guide for managers.

If you follow the advice in this guide, you will be able to significantly increase the chances that you will be allowed to continue working remotely. Otherwise, the call back to the office is inevitable.

Do your freaking work!

I start with this obvious point - This guide is NOT designed for slackers to get away with doing nothing. If you are slacking off, you will be caught. My guide for managers on this topic will help them catch slackers. Remember, work from home (WFH) is not a ticket to slack-off. Do your work efficiently and put in a full day of work!

Make sure people know you are working!

At the office, you can rely on just being there in front of the computer to at least cast an illusion of working. Working remotely does not have this benefit. You have to consciously demonstrate that you are actually working. In fact, remote work requires you to show results more than in-office work. While at the office, even if what you produce is little, everyone at least believes you tried your best. Doubts of your efforts arises quickly when your output is poor while WFH. The next few points are meant to address this problem.

Be active on teams/slack

Whatever communication tool your team employs, use it to demonstrate that you are working.

Respond immediately.

When asked a question, do not take long to respond. Try to respond within a minute. This is important to show that you are at least at the computer – that is the illusion part. This is not enough, but it is certainly a start. If you are not responding, and have not indicated why, what will others think? What would you think?

There are of course situations where immediate response is not possible. Perhaps you are in a meeting or away from the desk or focusing on something. That takes me to the next point, read on.

Use the tools “status” to indicate when you are away from the keyboard

When remote, it is important to clearly indicate when you are not at the computer and working. I suggest you update your status with a simple BRB message whenever you expect to be away from the computer for more than 5/10 minutes. In the office, if you are at your desk, someone just needs to ask your neighbors to get a good idea of the likely duration of your absence. While at home, I find that too many people are away for 30 minutes without a word of when they will be back. It creates suspicion.

Announce any longer-term absence like doctor’s appointments in a group chat ahead and also update your status with detailed message. This includes lunch if you do not take it consistently at the same time of day.

Remote work is not a ticket for constant errands.

Lastly, remember that work from home does not give you a license to book personal errands during office hours. Schedule those at lunchtime or outside of the hours as much as possible. It is not always possible or convenient, but this should be rare. If you do schedule something during office hours, remember to announce it, and if it happens often or is for an extended time, indicate how you will make up the time.

Justify your work. Show output.

Because it is so easy to slack off while working from home, because it is so easy to appear to be slacking off, and because it is so easy to only-appear to be working while actually watching Netflix, I encourage you to find a way to show your work.

You must be more efficient at home than at the office. This is not negotiable.

Note that very often, showing actual output is not easy. Especially in agile environments, when you want to do things right, from a technical perspective, your actual good work may not be easily visible. Managers will not review your pull request or follow technical meetings where you hammer out the best possible solution that, while more costly today, will yield dividends in the future.

You must demonstrate your output.

There are so many ways of accomplishing that and details will greatly depend on the dynamic of your team. Some teams track time, some points, some both, some none. You will have to clearly show what you were working on and why, using your team’s way of doing so.

One common thing I suggest is to create a work item / ticket for everything you do. You are refactoring code? create a task; track your time. Working on many things? Getting asked help others in significant ways? Create ticket(s) for that; track your time. It will, at the very least, allow you to remember what you do as part of your work. Very useful at performance reviews.

Many people resist this, and I find that the people who resist this most, are either brilliant engineers or slackers. I typically allow the brilliant kind to do their thing - as I can already see their output clearly - but scrutinize the slackers with a fine-tooth comb.

Pay attention in meetings

PLEASE pay attention in meetings!

No one should ever witness this:

“Bob, what do you think?

….. ( silence ) ….

Bob, are you there?”

Bob: “Sorry, what was the question again”?

Some people have valid reasons for multitasking, most do not. If you are invited, especially as a required attendee, you should pay attention. If you are invited to too many meetings, discuss with your manager but how to do that, is out of the scope of this article(1). In the meantime, pay attention.

Sadly, hardly anyone pays attention these days. In the office, this was unheard of. Everyone at least appeared to pay attention. I know it is harder to pay attention in a virtual meeting and the temptation to check your phone is overwhelming. My next points will help a little with this, but more importantly, optimize your meetings with your manager.

Side note - since the end of the pandemic, for the first time in my life, I have seen people browsing their phones while at an in-person meetings! I don’t get how this could be considered appropriate, I guess we are damaged a little bit. Since such behavior occurs in an in-person meeting, virtual meetings are increasingly a disaster.

Put the camera on during the meeting.

Since it is SO tempting to browse the phone and be caught not paying attention, I strongly encourage everyone to turn on their camera at meetings.

I know this is not always possible especially when it is not the team culture - you do not want to be the only person on camera! I encourage managers to create that kind of “camera on” culture but I had little success in this area. Nonetheless, when it does work out, I find meetings where everyone is on camera are much better.

Update. Since publishing this article, a number of people expressed their dissatisfaction with this suggestion, pointing mostly that keeping a camera on at useless meeting is just too painful and that this time can be used to do useful things - like exercise! This is very true and I struggle my self with this point. However, I keep coming back to the same line of reasoning - if useless meetings were painful, we would fight to minimize them. If cameras are on, more people would pay attention in useful meetings. Either way, as painful as this is, it is a long term win-win, with some short term pain.

But note that suddenly smiles, give you away!

If you are doing something else at a camera-on meeting – and many people still do – you will suddenly show emotions that are not inline with the current discussion. Sudden smiles are the most common. It shows very clearly, you are browsing something silly, and you have an involuntary reaction. Stop it.

Indicate clearly when you are not paying attention at a meeting.

If you know you will not be paying full attention in the meeting – there are valid reasons for this – say so at the start of the meeting. A simple “please just note, that I will be passively paying attention at this meeting because of <BLAH>” at the start of the meeting will suffice.

The <BLAH> could be that you are being pulled into another critical conversation, you are working on a critical issue, or you believe that you are not a critical resource on this meeting.

If you suddenly are forced to pay attention to something else, send a simple “BRB” message in chat.

Join ad hoc meetings, pickup ad hoc calls

While primarily this message is for management to set up this expectation, I strongly believe that we have to be prepared and expected to just answer a call without prior warning.

In most teams, it is considered inappropriate to just call someone. Typically, an unnecessary “Hi, are you available for a quick call?” conversation proceeds it. Why is it necessary? At the office, it is customary to just drop by someone’s desk to ask a question.

Yes, this is sometimes annoying and abused, but it is very useful when employed correctly. We must be able to replicate that while working remotely.

I think we should be prepared for someone to just “drop by” our desk by just calling. It is very easy to reject a call and re-schedule if you are unable to respond. Easier than sending someone back to their desk at the office!

Be prepared and pickup calls as they come.

Come in on the office when required and mingle with the team

If you do have some regular in-office days, do come in regularly.

It is important, but not just to be a “warm body” in the room.

Use this time to get to know your team, to socialize with others. While encouragement for this should originate from management, take things into your own hands if you must. Organize informal group lunch outings. Make sure meetings are held in person – do not hold meetings remote from your desk. If a meeting is partly remote, book a room, get everyone who is in the meeting and in the office in that room.

Why? Because it is well documented that we tend to do more favors for friends, than strangers. We tend to minimize (or put up with) the faults of friends more than we do of strangers. We help friends, we encourage friends, we are more likely to celebrate their successes too. Getting to know others will allow you to understand and be more willing to put up with their faults, and they with yours! This creates a better team!

Organize and demonstrate a good working environment at home

Let’s face it. The better your working environment is at home, the more efficient you will be, and the more confidence others will have in your ability to do your work as efficiently as at the office, or more.

Let us not delude ourselves, that working from the kitchen table, on a laptop, perhaps with kids running around, is an efficient setup. It is a setup for slacking off.

Find a quiet place in your house, set up a nice desk, set up extra monitors (they are so cheap now!) and create a comfortable working environment. Ensure your manager knows.

I happen to have a fully separate home office, adopted from an old basement apartment. Not everyone can have that, but an extra room for an office would be a great start. If that is not possible, a desk in a bedroom is good too – just remember to change from PJs in the morning!

Use your extra time well.

Working from home allows you to save significant time commuting. Do not waste it browsing the web. Use it well. Exercise, go for a walk, take on some continuing education. I am not suggesting this purely for your own well-being, but it is actually very valuable to the employer. The healthier, more alert and better educated you are, the better of an employee you can be. Even hypocrites like me know this is a good suggestion!