Remote working the good, bad and ugly

I’ve been working remotely now for over 10 years, initially as a choice but more recently virtually enforced owing to ill health. Over the years remote working has enabled me to move to a remote part of Scotland and still enjoy the day-to-day integrations of working with a bunch of skilled engineers spread all around the globe. I think without the ability to work remotely I would now be unable to work, the likelihood of me getting into an office every day nowadays is virtually zero.

Over the years I’ve seen examples of good environments and mediocre ones, most recently I’ve experienced probably the worst set-up I have ever come across which has led me to write about it. It made me appreciate how important the right setup is to ensure successful remote working. Everyone’s ideal environment is different, some may completely disagree with what I think is right or wrong, but this is my take on it.

Video: Ten years ago, video was a bit of a luxury, poor internet and immature technology meant video was often not switched on in calls. At the time for me, it wasn’t an issue as I had met most of my colleagues face to face so I could visualize who I was talking to and knew some of their mannerisms. As the years went past video has improved to the point where it can be comfortably enabled most of the time, which has enabled, especially during Covid, to cut down on face-to-face meetings.

In the past year I’ve worked in an environment where switching the camera on was very rare, combined with no face-to-face meetings has led to a strained working environment where I no longer know the people I’m working with, I have imagined pictures in my head but I don’t “know” the people like I would with video. I miss the feedback gained from face and body language. There have been many excuses for not enabling cameras, ranging from obscure security concerns to just ignoring requests to switch them on. But the inability to know who you are talking to is to me a key part of remotes working. There will be times when switching the camera on is not possible or not adding value but these should be the exceptions rather than the rule.

Face to Face meetings: Yes, remote is great but some occasional time together is still a good idea, I’m not advocating hybrid working but a few days together to bond as a team is always good. It probably only needs to be every 3 to 6 months but I believe it helps in building a great team. I’ve just come to the end of a year’s project where I never met anyone I was working with, costs and delivery pressures were always mentioned but knowing the people you are working with also has value.

Slack (or any other good chat tool): For me, something like Slack has become a game changer for remote working. It allows for group and personal conversations in an asynchronous way which is ideally suited to remote working. Used right it is a game changer, used badly it can become another annoyance. Recently I’ve experienced an environment where @now, @channel and @name where used most of the time where people wanted instant responses to questions. This to me is an anti-pattern and I found it to be amazingly disruptive. Also, the was a trend to DM someone and not ask a question, too often I had a DM with a Hi or Good morning with no context making it hard to prioritise important messages.

Good channel management is also a requirement when using Slack, teams should have an area where they can share and brainstorm ideas without worrying about who is also seeing the message. Recently I have had team channels with 50+ users in them which included senior managers, this did nothing to help the psychological safety within the team. Frequently chats were spun out into smaller private groups meaning important decisions were missed or not as fully informed as they should have been.

Meetings: Meetings are a disruption to the working day; they should have a purpose rather than be the default option to solve a problem. Before scheduling a meeting, other options should be considered e.g. email or Slack to make the process less intrusive.

The same should be applied to agile ceremonies, there should be no set rule on their number or duration. Retrospectives might make sense at the end of each sprint at the formation of a new team but six months down the line, monthly or bi-monthly ones might add more value. But they should still be done otherwise learnings will get lost.

In summary, I believe a good remote environment needs work to get right, companies spend large amounts of money and effort setting up cool office environments and completely fail to spend the same on their remote setups. Having the right mix allows the best engineers to do the job rather than the engineers who can get into the office.