Ten lessons learned after one year of remote work

08 Aug 2020 #career

It’s been a year since I started to work remotely. These are the lessons I learned.

For employers, leaders, or managers

1. Give clear instructions

State what you expect and when you expect it. Make sure to say the day, time, and timezone, if needed. “Tomorrow morning” is at a different time in different parts of the world. Have in mind that probably not everyone in your team is a native speaker of your language.

2. Don’t expect new team members to follow unclear coding conventions

A new developer will pick coding conventions from existing code instead of an old document. Have a perfectly formatted and crafted sample code.

3. Make new developers pair with another team member

On the onboarding process, a new member will feel more comfortable talking to another developer. Assign an onboarding buddy. Make new developers free to ask questions about the new team, company product, or anything else.

4. Have your developers up and running as quickly as possible

You don’t want your developers to scratch their heads trying to install the right version of your tools and projects. Create README files, installation scripts, or anything else that helps to set up the working environment. Anyone should start using your projects by pressing a button or running a single script.

For employees or workers

5. Control noise and light in your environment

Have a high-quality headset. Reduce the background noise as much as you can. Make sure to mute and unmute your microphone when appropriate. You’re muted, John! Position yourself in a way people don’t appear walking in the back. Light up your environment to clear your face.

6. Strive to have the best level you can in the language spoken at work

Have good pronunciation. This would make things easier for everyone. You don’t want to be the guy nobody wants to work with because of his poor speaking skills.

7. Separate work and personal spaces

At the end of your day, do something that signals the end of the day. Sit on the couch, meditate, go for a walk or change your clothes.

8. Schedule regular pauses

When working in an office, you can grab a coffee or tap into a colleague’s shoulder. But, while at home, you could be sitting for hours without even realizing it. Set an alarm, stand, and walk! Your body will thank you later.

9. Connect with others

You could be working from home for weeks without getting outside. Don’t be home alone! Interact with others! Call your friends, go out with your family, work from a coworking space.

At the time of writing, we are at home due to COVID-19. But, this last piece of advice is still applicable, staying at home and keeping social distancing.

10. Before presentations, turn off auto-updates and notifications

You don’t want your computer to restart updating the operating system in the middle of a presentation or an important meeting. This is a true story that happened to a friend of a friend of mine.

Voilà! Ten lessons I learned after my first year of remote work. For more career lessons, check the lessons I learned after five years as a software engineer and the things I wished I knew before becoming a software engineer. Don’t miss my takeaways from The Clean Coder. That’s a good one on career advice.

Happy remote work!