Thread by @SeanBlanda

I realized that today I start year 3 of working remote! So I present, a hurried real-talk guide to the subtleties of working remote:

1 - Working remote is good for heads-down work where you know process and goals. It's bad for open-ended ideation and creative work.

👨‍💻 In remote: you work hard for lateral thinking / collaboration.
🗣 In IRL: you work hard for focused time.

2- The WORST outcome for a remote worker isn’t doing bad work. It’s doing the WRONG work. You have less feedback when working remote and you can really go astray if you’re not proactive.

🗺 Know where you're going! That means lots of check-ins that can feel like a "waste."

3- 🗣 In IRL: it’s discouraged to waste time in meeting with small talk.

👨‍💻 In remote: you 👏HAVE👏 to. Otherwise you have no way of knowing the ppl you work with. There is no hallway or lunch room. All you have are the meetings. Take 10 and catch up on kids, weekend etc

4 - ✊You’ll need a lot of quiet self confidence. You won’t get the positive reenforcement you'd normally rely on from body language and the “vibe” from being in an office.

5 -
🌎 Remote allows people to live in places where they wouldn’t be able to find a similar job. This is good!

🙇‍♂️But I’ve seen otherwise aggressive young people at remote jobs act much more conservatively because local options are limited.

6 - 🌑Speaking of vibes, if you don’t ask, you’ll have no idea what other people are working on. NO. IDEA.

There’s no walking by and seeing someone’s screen. Or seeing that a particular department looks stressed out today.

✋ASK! And lurk in Slack channels.

7 - Speaking of Slack. Controversial opinion: I don't have a lot of sympathy for people that say they are overwhelmed by email and slack.

It's like complaining about "office politics." It's a signal you don't know how to prioritize. (Open to critical pushback here!)

8 -

🗺 Some people sell remote work as an opportunity to travel. That’s def possible!

🔎But most times I find I’m ~20% less productive when I’m in another city for a short-term visit and I don't know where to work/wifi etc. I feel like no one admits this. Or I'm bad at it.

9 -
📬 Because work is always continuing in other time zones it’s easy to feel a low level of stress when you’re not looking at Slack/email etc. Like you’re missing something. You aren’t. I’m still working on this.

10/10 - Lastly, I get why people are bullish on remote. But 2 years in, it feels like it has equal pros and cons with working in an office. I like the pros and can deal with the cons but I understand why some people don’t/can’t. You do you, man. ❤