Tell me your biggest pain in working remotely
Hey IH,
Many companies had decided to stay remote, but as always there is a good side and a "bad" one.
What do you dislike more about remote work?
I start:
- Disconnection from the team ...
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I think due to having to schedule almost every interaction, it diminishes spontaneous collaboration, which can be magical. Ideas that spark from dropping by someone's desk or a casual chat can have surprising results.
Yep this is really huge.
In engineering, some of our best realizations and product defining moments came from impromptu whiteboard work while we'd just be chatting and spitballing at our desks.
I work entirely remote now with a remote team and I definitely miss the in person collaboration.
Also there's usually a handful of individuals on any given team who really drive the team culture. In remote environments, if they get disconnected from the overall team for any length of time (e.g. transferring to a different project temporarily) it can have a real detrimental impact on team direction and morale. Definitely something I've noticed.
Oh yes, maybe that spontaneous talk unblock that detail that was missing.
I do see the difference with being totally apart for long. I will stick to my hybrid decision for a long period so we don't risk that!
I understand your point, just the human touch that not even metaverse could replace! I'm with you. We are doing a hybrid way. I feel gives you a great balance. The good from both sides. Don't know if you have that choice, maybe?
Yes, also think hybrid is the way to go! We're working on it ;)
Good luck with the transition!
Culture definitely suffers. There's a sort of impassion that develops when teams are only meeting for work purposes. Granted, there are probably ways to circumvent this, but nothing truly replaces natural, spontaneous human conversations.
True, it looks like we all miss that smalltalk at any point of the day.
No zoom, no metaverse, nothing could replace it!
We have been a remote company from the very beginning, but for the first several years, we were less than 10 people and all from the same city. It was easy to organize a meetup in a bar and have a real-life communication. Also, we sometimes had design sessions in the same room as it's easier to discuss design details in person.
As my company was growing, I realized some people really need that office space, and opened an office where we could host events and colleagues who prefer to work side by side with others could come to the office every day. So based on my experience, the most significant drawback of working remotely is lack of real communication with your colleagues.
Personally, I enjoy working remotely, but hanging out with your team every now and then is important. Basically we have come to the conclusion that the most effective approach is the hybrid working model. My team and me have written an article about how it works in our company: https://blog.alconost.com/en/6-solutions-to-your-biggest-remote-working-challenges-part-2
Totally agree with your point. We came to the exact same conclusion. I personally think hybrid has the best from both worlds, your home, and your office with no time to hate either. Every company needs to find their own way and make sure that lack of communication is somewhere solved! I liked that you solved it as simple as letthing them choose. One of our main reasons to build uphint.com was this, to fill this gap, to make remote work easier, to boost knowledge exchange from either place, home or office. Tks for sharing your experience!
Thanks for your comment! Exactly, every company will need to find their own balance. I think working remotely is inevitable for quite many industries (and it has obvious advantages), but it's important to make sure your team doesn't suffer from the lack of communication. I know that in some companies, even when people work from different countries, they get together a couple of times per year and have a big party :) that helps feeling you are all working together towards the same goal.
Checked out Uphint, I share the same view - working remotely and doing most the the work online, one should be able to scale and automate ;) We also pursue this approach with our products: human translations through API with Nitro, and scaling banner generation of all sizes with Pikaban.
So we are on the same page! Best for your projects, they both sound powerful. Human translations, there is a long way to go. Let's make the remote work better!
Let's keep in touch with our journey.
Thank you for your kind words, Grisel! :)
Yes, let's do it! Hope to see more posts from you and updates on your product. Best of luck and yes, let's be in touch!
🙌🙌
We found to actually work more productively from home as there is less interruption. Plus, we save a lot of time from not commuting.
However, as many of you have pointed out, it's easy to lose on social interaction. Because when you no longer meet people accidentally in the hallway or at the coffee machine, you miss out on the small-talk and social bonding, which is in fact important for establishing team spirit.
We wanted to keep up those accidental encounters and casual interactions. So we created our own Slack app to have regular random chat roulettes.
That means, once per week, the app pairs random team members to have a video call over a virtual coffee and have a deliberately casual chat (preferably not work-related).
Our app is called Macarons and it is publicly available in the Slack App Directory.
Give it a try. We found chat roulettes an effective and fun way to stay connected personally.
🧁 Macarons — Chat roulette for Slack
That sounds fun! We will take a look, but I'm not sure if everyone will be in to try it out. I guess you could choose the day for this to happen? I just wonder because most people just hate regular interruptions when they are very focus lol
I'm glad you asked 😉
Yes, for each channel / team you can of course set the day of week, time of day, and the frequency of the chat roulettes. Also, on the roulette day, the matched people will simply be notified that they have been matched. But it is up to them to agree on when and where to meet.
Also, it can happen that you are on vacation or simply in a very tight schedule for your project, so you feel like you don't have time for chat roulettes. And that is, why in Macarons each participant can individually pause their participation or set it up to only participate every other time.
We deliberately added these individual settings to also get those team members on board who easily feel stressed out by such activities. In Macarons they keep full control on their participation.
That's great! It looks like you have many options covered! Congrats, we will take a look, then! 🙌
And miscommunication could even happen in person, but I totally get your point. It gets more complicated. It's a big challenge and quite risky for founders. That's the main goal to solve with uphint.com we want to build a bridge for better communication no matter if you are at the office or at home.
But wait, also, getting to share some time in person a least a few times a month makes a great connection. I feel there is no comparison for that!
Missin out on all the F2F socializing that goes on in the office and mixing personal and work life.
I don't think this should be the case if you leave a good legacy at the company. If you are still interested in the relationship, then you can nurture it and keep in touch with your ex-team members. For instance, social media will do the magic.
I feel is just that is a bit more complicated, but I see your point, you mean that if people really want, they could make it possible.
People that keep communicating/operating like we would be in person.
You have to revisit your processes and ensure that you have effective communications.
I couldn't agree more on this and that's what makes us excited about building Uphint, we truly need more accurate communication. As you said, it's not the same as in person, so we need to adapt to new ways and facilitate teamwork.
The biggest challenge that you will face is with senior leadership.
Even with tools like Confluence and Jira, they are refusing to use it.
Please take in consideration that point.
I mostly miss the human interaction and having social moments where you can discuss a work topic with your colleagues in an informal env.
Another fact I notice is that I can't be entirely focused at home for many days and luckily my company has a hybrid policy regarding where to work.
It might be worth taking a look at the services that allow employees to work near home.
One more thing I launched an app to find places (workation) to work in the region or south EU, unfortunately, I closed it as, yes more people in winter do workation but couldn't nail it properly vs Airbnb or Booking. Let me know if some products are working on that domain :)
Hybrid is the new thing! I got used to it and it actually made me more productive.
That was a great idea, but actual fact, big players there, I hope you are working on something else now and let us know about it!
I joined a small company as PM, for the moment he gives me a bit of headspace. Mostly market research and validation for an OKRs tool, which for the moment pricing and better communication seem the way to go. How is going your market research :)?
We are gathering as much feedback as possible. Looking into different communities. Yours?
Product and People Ops Slack communities, call for user research and survey. Still find it hard to convince people even though we give away Amazon gift cards. Do you have some tactics to share?
Kind of like what @ekacelnik mentioned but on a more fundamental level.
Over working. That is why, it is important for a team to invest more on their employees, to give them credit and to let them adjust to the workflow, by guiding them and communicating with them most of the time because working remotely is challenging for teams to be closer and more united.
100% agree with this! It's a big challenge. You need to find other ways to build closer relationships.
To create a comfortable place at home for work. Im a digital nomad and I always travel. So its really hard to create a good working place in a new house.
Oh but deciding to be a nomad is such a nice choice, as always they are downsides, I hope you find great places with more nomads to share great experiences together, what are you working on?
I miss:
But, I gain so much more:
In the end, we gain balance!
The secret is trying hard to don't lose the main connection with your teammates
Booking quick same-day meetings that might have happened naturally in office
At least you mentioned "quick", lol, the over meetings we are facing are crazy! I heard about a startup (I don't remember the name of) - but was focused on fixing your calendar so you have "time blocked" for focusing. That smalltalk at the office sometimes were enough instead of another meeting.
I enjoy working remotely! I still feel pretty connected with the team, but I miss the additional walking around time / getting moving time. Feels like at home, I don't get that and end up in my desk for the majority of the day.
Definitely feeling lonely. But I have been able to make it better with the WBE Space
Many saying the same! I feel we need to keep track of our emotions and our team members, I heard about Nailted.com and WBE looks nice, we will take a look for us! I wonder how many are inside now? Are you gathering more attention from any sector in particular?
Hi Grisel,
Reading through indihackers I found this interesting post. I was surprised to see that you mentioned nailted.com. Nailted can definitely help you to know how all your team members feel when working remotely. You can detect your company's blind spots, find out what worries them the most and act in time to avoid employee dissatisfaction and eventually turnover. it's a great tool!
Yes, saw the page, and got my attention! I'll suggest it for sure and even for us when we keep growing remotely :) tks!
We are 60 members now and more devs
Congrats Tiago! Let's make those 60 into 61 and more to come!
are you thinking on joining us?
I have 3 VPN's for 1 company
1 VPN to access the internal Network
1 VPN that has to be in a VM to access a machine remotely
1 VPN that is used to access the companies AWS accounts
The VPN's do not play well together anymore, so I am able to access at most 2 resources simultaneously
You went very techy here! I hope you could solve this soon! I'm sure if you ask around here, maybe somebody has been in that situation before.
This idea is very impressive and unique I am also working on a very similar project you can see here.https://apkbeer.com/
Tks, but I don't see similarities?
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So true, we are not designed to be insolated. We truly need human interactions and work is a huge part of our day. I hope you ended up with a great validation to solve this! Best with your project! I
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About tools is just important to have the right one at the right time, that's our goal with uphint.com to make sure if you need something you don't depend 100% on somebody else that could be even in another time zone. Asynchronous communication isn't a random choice any more (of course not for every sector, but for this tech side).
I agree meetups are a crucial part to maintain good culture and make sure there are no big frictions that many times could be solved just by drinking a cup of coffee together.