{"id":33919,"date":"2013-11-05T20:00:59","date_gmt":"2013-11-05T20:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/tenets-for-working-remotely\/"},"modified":"2013-11-05T20:00:59","modified_gmt":"2013-11-05T20:00:59","slug":"tenets-for-working-remotely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/tenets-for-working-remotely\/","title":{"rendered":"Tenets for Working Remotely"},"content":{"rendered":"

bitly<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

This was written by one of our system architects, Michael Richman<\/a>, and originally posted on the Bitly engineering blog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

For the past 15 years, I\u2019ve worked as a remote employee. I currently live in Denver and work for Manhattan-based Bitly. Before that, I was on a Virginia-based team at AOL for 11 years, working from Philly, Dallas, Philly again, New York and then Denver. During that time, I built up some personal tenets for working remotely which have served me well. They are in some ways simple, but when applied consistently, I have found them to foster quite a positive experience for those working with me as a remote individual.<\/p>\n

Here they are, captured for others who might benefit from them:<\/p>\n

1) Make sure your online presence is accurate.<\/strong>\u00a0If you\u2019re online on IM, you should really be there. If you\u2019re away from your desk, put up your away message or sign off. You should be almost as easy to reach as people in the office.<\/p>\n

2) Call in 5 minutes early to every meeting.<\/strong>\u00a0When people join a conference call, you should always already be there, on the call, ready to go. You want people to react this way about you, \u201cOf course Michael\u2019s there. He\u2019s always there.\u201d With Skype, this translates simply to, \u201cAnswer the moment they call.\u201d With Google Hangouts, it applies directly \u2014 be the first one to join.<\/p>\n

3) Speak up on calls.<\/strong>\u00a0Make your presence known and heard. If you never have anything to say, why are you there?<\/p>\n

4) If you can\u2019t hear, tell them you can\u2019t hear.<\/strong>\u00a0If what people are saying has any importance, you should be able to hear it. Same goes for seeing on video calls. If you can\u2019t see what\u2019s being discussed, try to get it remedied.<\/p>\n

5) Be productive.<\/strong>\u00a0If there\u2019s ever a question that you\u2019re not getting your work done as expected, you\u2019ll be the low-hanging fruit precisely because you\u2019re remote. I survived layoff rounds at AOL practically every 6 months for years. I was never concerned, because I knew I always delivered.<\/p>\n

6) Make regular trips to the mothership.<\/strong>\u00a0In-person contact is still needed periodically. I have found about every 6 to 8 weeks to be a pretty good interval.<\/p>\n

7) Make your core hours match the company\u2019s core hours.<\/strong>\u00a0This isn\u2019t always possible, depending on the time difference, but you should strive to achieve at least 3 or 4 hours of overlap. When I worked with a QA group in India for a time, where the time difference was 12.5 hours, we all adjusted our work hours so we could achieve a 3-hour overlap. Before we did that, question-and-answer cycles often took literally 2 days. To answer one question!<\/p>\n

8) Figure out what you need\u00a0others<\/em>\u00a0to do differently.<\/strong>\u00a0You may need to make people aware that working with a remote individual may take some work on their part as well. They may need to be reminded to take extra time to think, \u201cDoes Michael need to know about this decision we just made while brewing coffee?\u201d If you are invited to a meeting, is there a call-in number set up? If Skype, who is calling whom?<\/p>\n

I find that it doesn\u2019t much matter\u00a0where<\/em>\u00a0I\u2019m working \u2014 which tends either to be home or Starbucks \u2014 as long as I am able to follow the above tenets. That means if connectivity is important for a given day (which it usually is), it\u2019s my responsibility to make sure I have access to reliable connectivity. If I\u2019m supposed to do a 4-hour planning session, home is the right choice. Solid coding session? Starbucks affords just the right amount of ambient noise, random distraction and caffeine.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth mentioning that being a remote employee is certainly not for everyone. It takes discipline. You also definitely miss out on at least some of the camaraderie of the in-office experience, which at Bitly is saying something. I haven\u2019t once, for instance, partaken in Drink Cart Friday. This is a problem. Perhaps I need to adjust my travel times\u2026.<\/p>\n

Oh, and\u00a0we\u2019re hiring<\/a>. (Are we hiring remotes? I guess that depends on\u00a0your\u00a0<\/em>tenets for working remotely.)<\/p>\n

\u2014\u00a0Michael Richman<\/a>, Denver, CO<\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

bitly: This was written by one of our system architects, Michael Richman, and originally posted on the Bitly engineering blog. For the past 15 years, I\u2019ve worked as a remote employee. I currently live in Denver and work for Manhattan-based Bitly. Before that, I was on a Virginia-based team at AOL for 11 years, working […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[1539],"class_list":["post-33919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-emergent-digital-practices"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-8P5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}