Remote Tools

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There are a plethora of products in the market for the remote community. But each of them solve a different use-case which is mostly not communicated correctly. With Remote Tools we aim to fix this.

June 4, 2020 To remote or not to remote: Not a choice anymore!

The reality of remote work has been fast forwarded by 10-15 years given the COVID crisis. We were all pushed into remote work suddenly and now, even large companies like FB, Twitter etc. are taking a full-time leap into remote.

Remote working is close to our heart and we've been working on a host of initiatives over the past couple of years - Products, Guides, Podcasts, Stories!

However, we still felt there was something missing. Existing communities around remote work only focus on jobs giving us a gazillion job boards!

They miss the basic human need - to interact. And for us as remote workers, we need to belong, relate and learn from others who understand the journey we are on.

Hence, we set out to build an exclusive remote-focussed community.

Today, I am super excited to share that we are officially live - The Remote Clan 馃殌 馃敟

The community website you see right now is the culmination of all our efforts over the past year and half. I would really love if you spend some time on the website and share your thoughts 馃榾

January 15, 2020 Launched Remote Work 2020 馃殌

Our most ambitious project to date, Remote Work 2020, is now live 馃帀 You can view the project at Remote Work 2020. We are also live and trending on Product Hunt (you can find us on the homepage) - so, do give us a shoutout if you like our efforts 馃檶

What is Remote Work 2020?

Remote Work 2020 is the culmination of all our efforts and learnings thus far basis our personal experiences, insights from our conversations with leaders of top remote companies & remote-first makers, and stories of successful remote workers.

It is a combination of 3 sections -

  1. State of Remote Work 2020: Stats, figures & insights based on our survey of 331 remote workers from Invision, Gitlab, Doist and many more distributed teams!

  2. Remote work guide: Our commentary (totaling 7,122 words) on pressing topics around remote work based on learnings from interactions with leaders of distributed teams and successful remote workers.

  3. 5 Podcasts & 13 stories: The actual source of truth for us 馃榾. The collection of podcasts with leaders from Gitlab, Invision, Doist, Scrapinghub, FlexJobs, etc. and chronicles of remote workers - the people we have learnt the intricacies of remote work from!

In what order should you read the Remote Work 2020?

We created Remote Work 2020 to be your go-to resource whenever you want to refer a particular topic around remote working, borrow inspiration from others who have been working remotely/ leading remote teams or to simply fulfil your curiosity around what's what in the world of remote work! Just FYI, each section is independent of any other.

I know all of us are busy and it is going to be tough to read through the entire content, even in multiple sittings. So here's my recommendation on what you should definitely read:

  1. Managing a remote team - This is by far the most relevant section. Even if you are not leading a team, the topics we cover here (and the solutions thereafter) are things you will find useful and immediately executable for your team.

  2. Battling loneliness - As an individual remote worker, you will find this section very intriguing. We have also covered best practices as a team, that you can implement, to first acknowledge and then tackle, loneliness.

  3. Culture in a remote team and Being remote-first - I would recommend you read this after you have covered 'managing a remote team' since these sections delve into finer details on how best to build and function as a remote team.

  4. Podcasts and Chronicles - We have summarised each podcast and story, pick and choose any that interest you.

  5. State of remote work 2020 and Is remote the future? - These sections should primarily give you a benchmark on where remote work is headed and what other remote workers are thinking. You can browse through them whenever you have some spare time, while travelling or when you are taking a short break from work.

Eager to hear your thoughts/ feedback!

October 29, 2019 First episode of remote-first makers podcast live!

We have 200+ makers on remote.tools now who are making products for the remote working community. I am always amazed and curious to know about their journey, products and such other things.

So, started talking to each maker, ideally having a half hour long conversation. The first in the series is with Vivek Nair from Pragli, a virtual office for distributed teams.

Full episode here - https://content.remote.tools/i-built-a-virtual-office-for-distributed-teams-vivek-nair-pragli.

A few interesting points from our conversations -

  1. Vivek built his first company while in College and raised $2mn in his final year. While this was amazing to start with, the founders eventually realised that this comes along with an expectation of a typical VC-level growth which they weren't seeing. Had to then sell it off after a couple of years.

  2. Pragli was inspired from his personal experience of working remotely for over 2 years, wherein he realised communication is the biggest problem when it comes to remote working. And asynchronous solves only a part of it. Social isolation problems, which are in fact the biggest, aren't resolved. In consequence, Pragli came into being.

  3. Vivek is relying a lot on content and channels like HN, PH, IH to market Pragli. His approach here is to cover all possible types of content/ channels and see what sticks best.

  4. Interestingly, for the next hire, Vivek is looking to have a QA onboard since Doug and he are both engineers and feel the QA bit (or the lack of it) slows down their ability to ship faster.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this :)

August 30, 2019 750 signups this month

This month we have had 750 new users signing up on remote.tools and I'd like to share some insights on how we achieved them.

  1. ~80% of the user signups are the colleagues of the remote-first product makers whose products were posted this month.

  2. ~15% engaged with other remote-first products posted on the platform with the majority going to Twist - the Slack alternative built by Todoist.

Targets for next month:

Rather than focus on the metrics since it is just a month since we launched. We intend to focus more on the inputs.

Thus, we aim to work on content to improve on SEO and distribution on social media to get more organic users to the platform.

Question to the community:

As a remote worker, what blocks you from working as productively as you can on a daily basis?

About

There are a plethora of products in the market for the remote community. But each of them solve a different use-case which is mostly not communicated correctly. With Remote Tools we aim to fix this.