I’ve been full-time remote for a few years now. A conversation I’ve had in a handful of different forums over the past several weeks has been along the lines of “So this must just be pretty much life-as-usual for you, right?” Well…sort of.
In terms of how and where I do my work day-to-day? Sure. I’ve had 3+ years to adjust to working out of my home office. I’ve already got a decent chair, I’ve spent some time getting my A/V kit set up, I already grok that every meeting will be over VC and I’m not going to be having lunch with colleagues tomorrow (for any given tomorrow). In these ways, it’s all been “normal”.
…but in terms of having to adjust to everyone else adjusting to being remote, all at once? That’s where things have gotten interesting. That’s where things have become not-the-same.
There are some really cool things that have come out of this - some unique opportunities for me and my fellow remotes to provide guidance and advice in time of need (see: go/wfh). I’ll also admit to a certain amount of smugness here - a sort of “welcome to My World”, in spite of myself. Ah, well…I’m no Jesus.
Anyhow. One of the things I’ve noticed in particular is the ways in which folks are trying to fill the gaps left by the lack of day-to-day in-person interactions. The most common way I see this playing out: more meetings. In some places, this is actually super-beneficial. A 15-minute thrice-weekly stand-up (that should’ve probably been happening before everyone was remote), VC happy hours and lunches, online games, etc. All of these are awesome and should keep happening.
…and in some places, it ends up looking more like “we have to have more meetings, and everyone has to be in every meeting.” This is less beneficial and doesn’t scale particularly well. I suspect over time this pendulum will swing back to some more sustainable steady state as folks continue to wrap arms around how to more-effectively leverage asynchronous communication mechanisms, learn to “let go” and embrace a little bit of lag and (temporary) information asymmetry.