Had some thoughts on remote work + RTO based off of Amazon’s latest mandate and I have a bit of a contrarian take - I think you can build a higher performing team in-office but like all things there are trade offs.
When we first started
Pragma
we were leaning towards being in-office. 3 months later the pandemic started and those hopes were quickly dashed as we didn’t know if there would ever be in-person again. As we expanded our staff into various cities (we’re now in 15+ cities) we committed 100% to remote.?
Here are my biggest challenges with remote work:?
- Spontaneity: Many of the best ideas and moments of execution happen outside of planned time but are more spontaneous in nature. There are way more opportunities for this when you are in office.?
- Socialization: Humans are social creatures and a big part of the motivations of working harder than you otherwise would, or staying at a company long term are based on the relationships that are built at your office. In office cultures foster better relationships because people do things like eat lunch together.?
- Restraint: It’s really hard to replace cross disciplinary and collaborative work in front of a whiteboard in a digital setting. Many of the social norms and behaviors that you might observe that would indicate whether you should speak or wait are impossible in a digital world.?
- Vibe: As an executive, it’s almost impossible to get a pulse on how people are doing. Are people excited? Happy? Sad? Energized? Bored? In-office environments would allow me to get a much better feel for this.?
- Focus: Most people are multitasking and doing 8 things at once while on a call. It’s hard to focus.
There are a lot of things about remote work that are advantages to in-office, for example:?
- Well-being: Work from home is better for the individual. People have better work-life balance in most cases. They spend less time on the road. More time with their loved ones. They have more of a life outside of work. That’s all good for the mental health of the individual and in some cases can lead to better employee retention.?
- Hiring: The talent pool is much larger. We can hire from anywhere and great people can come from anywhere.
As a full remote company here’s what’s been effective:
- Offsites: We do annual off-sites each January where we spend a ton of time together both working and doing fun stuff like playing tabletop games, hiking, touristy stuff, etc. People come away from these feeling more connected and aware of each other. We’ve got a ton of great folks at Pragma and I’m thankful for this time together.
- Team Offsites: We also do annual smaller team offsites where it’s mostly work (like a hackathon). I find that some of our biggest innovations are born out of these events, often around the dinner table, because we put aside all of life’s distractions for a few days.
- Discord: I’m not a big fan of Zoom calls because they are temporary. We use persistent audio rooms internally and at any given time at least half our company are working together in their team rooms with cameras on. It sounds basic, but this can almost feel like a real office at times.?
- Fun Stuff: We also use Discord for fun stuff like our Friday afternoon ‘Game of the Week’ play sessions where we play our customer’s games. Many of my life-long friends I met through gaming, so I’m glad we could do the same within the company.
- Pairing Culture: We do a lot of pair programming (and business execution) because it cuts down on mistakes and rework while increasing knowledge and is generally more efficient for us than async work. It’s also more fun and feels more socially connected.
- Doughnuts: Our team can opt into the ‘Donut’ slackbot that automatically sets up monthly 1x1’s for folks to casually get to know each other
- 1:1’s: Although they are time consuming and apparently somewhat controversial these days, we do a lot of them as a forcing function for folks to both stay sync’d on the nuances of the work, but also personally.
What are some remote practices that have worked at your company?
Thanks for sharing your perspective on the remote work vs. in-office debate. It's interesting to see how organizations have adapted their strategies over time. Your approach to maintaining connections and collaboration through offsites and shared activities is a great way to counterbalance remote work challenges. What other strategies have you found to enhance team engagement?
CSM, Enterprise Software Development and Delivery, Global Team Leader, Transformational Technologist, Software Engineering
2 个月As a director, the biggest change for me was the sheer number of 1x1 meetings I had to add on top of the 1x1's I already had. During the pandemic, my weekly/bi-weekly touchbase meetings easily doubled in time. And my team was large enough that it was common for additional ones to 'pop-up' because people were feeling left out or disconnected. You know what? I took them. all of them. if my 30 minute meeting took 70 minutes. I let it. in 2020 my average 50 hour week turned into an average of 70-80 hours (with the logged time sheets to prove it.) because I needed to make up the time that was spent with my people. But my retention was amazing, moral was good, and we successfully transitioned from a hybrid company into a fully remote company. EVENTUALLY, my hours per week started to get back into a sustainable zone. mostly. But even with that toll, I would pay that cost all over again. These were people I asked to be professional during hard times and they delivered. That kind of ask demands to be repaid, and the best way I could (try) to do that was to listen, to run interference so they had the space to get good work done, to protect them the best I could, and to hear their concerns so they still had a voice in the conversation.
Only hire in the same time zone so everyone's hours are aligned Hire for WFH-centric personality traits and lean into senior talent Quarterly in-person meetups focused on team-building Playtests every day to kick things off and keep people aligned Persistent Discord rooms for impromptu meetings Focused and guided brainstorming meetings using tools like Miro Good WFH etiquette (ex. cameras on for all meetings, raise hands to speak, etc.) Company covers home office setup and yearly stipend for upgrades Which all stems from the #1 thing: founding the company as remote first and leaning into the challenges directly instead of the typical behavior of waiting for in-person meetups to overcome them that is so common in companies that transitioned to WFH from IO originally.
We leaned hard into "Real time remote" and isntead of your constant discord rooms we fell in love with a "virtual office" via Gather Town https://www.gamebreaking.com/posts/real-time-remote
Cofounder/CTO @ Elio.earth | The End of Sustainability
2 个月Timely post for us as we are discussing and trying ways for us to stay connected as we are a remote team as well. Thanks for sharing! We are still small so doing in-person meetups more frequently is easier and starting to test the audio rooms.