Work From Home Attributes

When asked why they want to be a software engineer, many students reply, "to work from home". As someone who has worked from home for more than 14 years, as both a manager and individual contributor (IC), here are some thoughts on working from home (WFH).

Both the manager and IC must have certain attributes for WFH to be successful. ?

Manager

1) You need to be willing to give up some responsibility (opposite of micromanaging).

• A good manager learns to be a coach as opposed to a player.
• Your job is to build the team.?
• Your goal is to match the skillset, experience, and learning goals of your team members with the tasks that need to be done. At least in engineering, good ideas are valuable. It is critical to the success of your team that they feel comfortable coming to you with ideas.

2) You need to be proactive.

• A leader is always a step ahead of the team. Anticipating the teams' needs and striving to meet the needs before the team realizes the need and definitely before they ask.?
• For a software engineering manager, this means you will be spending a lot of time architecting systems, and documenting requirements/constraints. You will not have all the answers, but you should know the questions.?

3) You need to think ahead to communicate direction and constraints.

• Communicating direction and constraints is a balancing act between micromanaging and being a leader. Your goal is to lead your team in the right direction as opposed to pushing them.?
• Communicating constraints is critical. Don't be the manager that does not provide due dates and then complains that a task is not done on time. Provide a due date?and ask for feedback after you have given the IC time to "ramp up".?

4) You need to communicate the big picture.

• Micromanagers will spoon-feed information to their IC's. If you are spoon-feeding your team information, you are not giving up responsibility, and your WFH team will suffer.?
• As a manager, your job is to open doors for your team. This is done by finding opportunities and sharing that information with them.?
• If you picked your team correctly, they probably know things that you do not. If they understand the big picture and the intent of goals, they may be able to provide a perspective or information you did not consider.

5) You need to be your teams' cheerleader.

• The biggest downside of WFH is human nature, out of sight, out of mind. This is why the manager must promote their WFH team via public recognition.?
• Out of sight out of mind, the manager must always be looking out for opportunities for the team.

Individual Contributor

1) You must be willing and able to accept the responsibility of getting tasks done based on the direction and constraints provided.

• At this point in time, working from home should be considered a privilege. I know this is a?provocative statement for some and I believe long-term working at home will become a better deal for companies; at this point in time companies have not had a chance to organize themselves in a way to take full advantage of WFH.?
• This may mean working nights and weekends if you did not estimate the time required correctly.

2) You must communicate much more than you would if you are in the office.

• Anyone who has been in engineering for more than a few weeks knows that nothing ever goes exactly as planned. Take a lesson from Agile methods (Agile methods place a strong emphasis on customer?feedback and interaction) and treat your manager as your customer.
• I like to over-communicate using shared documents (Google docs or Confluence). It's a double benefit, you document why and what you are doing while also keeping your manager in the loop.

3) You need to be proactive (self-starter) and a problem solver.

• I have found this to be the most difficult part of working at home because it requires an excellent manager.
• It helps if you have a natural curiosity and passion for problem-solving.
• Doing what you are told to do is the bare minimum, it is what you get paid for. If you want to get more interesting projects, more responsibilities, more money, you have to go above the bare minimum and make yourself more valuable. I have found (by being in many manager meetings where this?is discussed) that in engineering an IC's value is directly proportional to their ability to solve problems both before they are found (proactive) and after.?

4) You need to understand human nature. Out of sight, out of mind. You will not get as many opportunities as you would if you were in the office every day.

• This is based on my experience in engineering departments and may not be applicable in other departments.
• If you work 12 hours a day at home, no one notices. if you are in the office when management comes in and you are still there when they leave, that gets noticed.?

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