How remote work can actually work
Despite criticism of the remote work model, effective collaboration has more to do with a team’s communication style than where workers are located, according to Northeastern’s Christoph Riedl and Carnegie Mellon’s Anita Williams Woolley. Teams that embrace “bursty” communication — concentrated exchanges with little lag time between responses — perform better than those that let conversations drag. The bursts allow group members to quickly agree on goals and focus on working rather than talking.
By designing systems that facilitate bursts of communication and collaboration among team members, employers can achieve higher quality collaboration in their teams, all while balancing employees’ desire to work remotely.
OKR unites the performance
We are an objectives driven organization so daily performance will be reflected in their ability to meet and exceed their ticket and service metrics. Their objectives force them to grow personally and with technology so their performance will be reflected in their ability to mange and meet their objectives. If you have a high performing team you should be able to manage them this way and note worry about X hours a week, or X number of tasks, but there are also teams and areas that this will not work in.
Money × Remote working
Experience from a remote-developer
First off, make sure your internet connection is rock-solid, and you have some sort of plan in case it goes down. Can your phone be a hotspot?
As for what have you gotten yourself into? Well, it depends on your work routine and lifestyle. Some of remote work is the same as it would be in person. You might have set hours you need to be available for. You might have to maintain constant communication with your team. On the other hand, your employer might trust you to report your hours and expect regular progress updates. I personally had both experiences, and, while the trust-based methodology is ideal, the schedule-based remote work has the benefits of feeling more together with your team, having easier opportunity for collaboration, and helping you switch between work and personal time with a clearer focus.
You won’t have a commute, except for the occasional in-person meeting, perhaps. You’ll have the comforts of home at your disposal. Food, restroom, peace and quiet or your choice of music. Maybe you’ll have your pet too. You’ll probably have the flexibility to handle matters that need attention at home, or, at the very least, be around when a contractor shows up to do repairs/home improvement. You’ll need to guard against too much distraction, but programming has a way of keeping your head in the game when you’re deep in your work. You might very well work overtime just because it interests you, or you realize it’s all in your head and you’d rather not have to piece together the puzzle again later. Actually, the best benefit I find for me, is, that I find taking 20 minutes in the afternoon for a powernap, which recharges me for the rest of the day. Often, my cat Luna will accompany me throughout this nap.
Web development for a remote worker is ideal. Everything is easily cloud-based and/or accessible via VPN. You might want to have a few prototypes shipped out to you for testing purposes, but emulators may be sufficient, especially if the company has testing resources.
As for travel and work at the same time, there’s obviously a balance to be struck. If you plan to work from a hotel in Europe for a week, make sure the hours work for your team, taking time off as necessary, and that you’ll have good internet connectivity as well. If you need to interact during your work hours, you’ll need to take timezone differences into account. You’ll also need contingency plans. Maybe you can work on your laptop on something on an airplane, especially if you get stuck on the tarmac for a delay. You have to plan ahead, making sure your copy of the git repo is up to date and that you have your phone charged and audible when you’re supposed to be working. Working remote is generally viewed as a privilege, and any non-remote workers you’re working with will probably have heightened awareness of any slip-ups. While power going out in your home is generally unavoidable and always a possibility, an employer should not be burdened with worries of flaky connectivity from the internet bungalow in Costa Rica.
Lastly, you might feel you’re missing out on local employee activities/social events, and people won’t be as familiar with you, not being able to joke with you at the water tower, but there are technological and logistical ways to alleviate this issue. And when it comes down to it, do good work, and be dependable, then everyone will like you! The benefits definitely far outweigh such concerns and challenges.