i respect people that can be fully, 100 % a sink. But i still find that one of the really valuable things about work in general is being able to connect with other humans and talk to them fun synchronous interactions. I think that in order to make it work well remotely over the long term, there still needs to be a lot of focus on that connection with other humans. So defintely, like getting together in real life when you can is a really good thing. Now, what we use it for is predominantly all of the sort of fun stuff that we do with our teams. We have time blocked out every other week to play some ball games together, or just to
“Treating everyone as remote is to keep everyone in mind as having the same level, same equality, the same access to information in communication exchanges between people."
James Stanier is the author of “Effective Remote Work” and Director of Engineering at Shopify. In this episode, James shared insights from his latest book and began by sharing why remote work is here to stay and the basic setup for remote work. He then talked about the importance of managing our time and energy and establishing team norms for successful remote work. James then explained about the concept of treating everyone as remote, which led to the discussion about producing more artifacts and balancing between synchronous and asynchronous working style. We also extended the discussion on how one can become a more effective manager in the remote setup, including how to manage up and allocating time for team bonding and fun activities. Towards the end, James shared how we can self-assess our remote working practices by using the 12 questions in his book, and how remote is the path to equality and can become a great leveler for everyone.
Listen out for:
- Writing “Effective Remote Work” - [00:06:53]
- Remote is Here to Stay - [00:08:36]
- Basic Remote Setup - [00:11:45]
- Managing Yourself - [00:14:38]
- Effects of Being Unobserved - [00:17:19]
- Treat Everyone as Remote - [00:19:59]
- Producing More Artifacts - [00:22:13]
- Types of Artifacts - [00:25:18]
- Sync vs Async - [00:30:01]
- Effective Remote Manager - [00:36:55]
- Managing Up - [00:39:43]
- Allocating Fun Time - [00:42:27]
- Remote Work Self-Assessment - [00:44:44]
- Remote: The Great Leveler - [00:47:36]
- 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:53:29]
_____
James Stanier’s Bio
James Stanier is Director of Engineering at Shopify, a fully remote technology company. His latest book, Effective Remote Work, is being published by The Pragmatic Bookshelf in April 2022. His previous book, Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager, was published in 2020.
Follow James:
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For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/83.
