Remote Work is Here to Stay: A Remote Manifesto
When COVID-19 first hit the US in March, 2020, most of us were only sure about one thing: a serious global pandemic was beginning, and we had to adapt in order to survive. I am lucky to work in tech, where an industry-wide pivot to remote work has occurred. While this immediate, unplanned shift was scary at the time for cultures unaccustomed to remote work, we were lucky to have many existing resources as a starting point¹. However, these resources tend to focus on the high-level, cultural shifts for remote work. But when it comes to the tactical execution of such a transition, well, that’s a whole other ballgame.
I wrote a remote manifesto for Zillow internal use back in April, 2020². While I wish I was publishing externally back then, I am surprised to see so many companies and cultures still struggling with remote work in 2022. Don’t get me wrong — we’re all still figuring this out. I do not mean to imply that I have all of the answers! But when chatting with friends at other companies, I hear things that make me cringe in pain for them.
So, if nothing else, I hope this encourages you to write your own Remote Manifesto for your internal work environment. Every company and culture is unique, and there is no “one size fits all.” However, there are a few common tricks to help you get started:
- Start with your tenets (or principles). I’ll be honest: I used to hate tenets. And it’s because, in my experience, there are more examples of bad tenets than there are of good ones. But look at the definition of tenet:
a principle, belief, or doctrine generally held to be true
Put another way, a tenet is an opinion. So, be opinionated! What are some of the most important opinions to agree on as an organization in order to move forward with a remote culture?
I am a believer in tenets being in priority order and it being perfectly normal to be in conflict with one another at times. This is OK as it enables a decision-making framework; is x or y more important? Refer to your tenets and it should be clear!
2. Working backwards from the tenets, how will these be achieved?
OK, many of you are familiar with this approach to encouraging change at broad scale, so let’s get to it. Like a previous article of mine, I’ll start with a summary of the output from this process for those that want to skip the why and just see the results. Some of these tactical changes will feel obvious, but I am a believer in explicit communication to help move organizations together.
Note that this list assumes Outlook, Zoom, Slack, and Google Docs are the tools used for communication at work. While other tools may be used, the same tactical changes and tenets should still apply, irrespective of tool.
Tactical Changes to Enable a More Productive Remote Work Environment Today
- No meetings will start on the hour or 30th minute of the hour so there is a built-in break in between meetings. 30 minute meetings will be replaced with 25 minute meetings, and 60 minute meetings will be replaced with 50–55 minute meetings. You can update your default Outlook settings to adhere to this automatically by following these instructions³.
- We will change our default invite reminders to 5 minutes instead of 15. You can update your default Outlook settings to adhere to this automatically by following these instructions.
- We will all make use of the required vs optional attendee option in Outlook; staying Informed⁴ never means being a required attendee. This means that status update meetings will have mostly optional attendees, and thus asynchronous forms of communication will be considered for all such meetings.
- For recurring meetings, we will send an agenda and relevant documents one full business day in advance of the meeting. Agenda should include the goal of the meeting. Ex. Make a decision on x, working session on y, etc. This means that recurring meetings on Mondays need to send pre-reading documents out on Friday the week before.
- We will respect different attendees’ time zones, and only expect folk to accept meetings between 9am — 5pm in their local time⁵.
- We will disable Slack sounds and pop-up notifications such that neither will occur during meetings⁶. Follow Slack instructions here to do so.
- We will use shared Google Drives as a default location for documents, including meeting notes. Note that a shared Google Drive doesn’t just mean leveraging Google Docs.
- We will use tags to mark a document in different stages, especially if it is not yet finalized⁷. Specifically, we will tag documents Work in Progress (WIP), Request for Comments (RFC), and Archived⁸ as needed.
- We will explicitly label all point people⁹ directly on a document.
- [Optional] We will disable sounds for our Outlook notifications. Notification sounds can be disabled on Mac and Windows instances of Outlook. By starting meetings 5–10 minutes delayed from the current norms of on the hour or the half-hour, and changing our notifications to 5 minutes from 15 minutes, these audible notifications — which are less frequent and more useful than other audible notifications — should only occur at the end of a previous meeting, thereby not disrupting the meeting.
Tenets Driving the Tactical Changes
And now, for the broader approach, which includes the why.
That said, this is an exceptionally high number of tenets. This isn’t the norm for this type of exercise, but given my goal was tangible, tactical changes, the level of specificity helped in this case.
We’re in this for the Long Haul; We’re Constantly Evolving
This is our first tenet by design. Transitioning to a remote culture from an in-person culture is not a one-time, overnight shift. The goal of a remote work culture is not to recreate the office environment, but instead is to create an environment that is equal or more productive. Like any good Agile process, we are going to continue to iterate and improve. All employees of the organization are empowered to give feedback on these tenets.
Back-to-back (b2b) Remote Meetings are Exceptionally Painful
We all complain about b2b meeting days even when in the office. But when a meeting runs over, and we don’t even have to stand up to run to the next conference room? It’s easy to get to the end of the day without even going 1,000 steps. This is bad for both mental and physical health, leading to burn-out.
Personal Note: I cannot stress how significant of a change this has made to my own personal health. Whenever I interact with an external company and they profusely apologize for being 5m late…well, see the meme above. In fact, this specific change was my motivation for this article. To quote a valued peer of mine, Adam Lawless: “Schools have been doing this since before we were born!” If you make one change from this article, make this change!
It’s Better to be Open than Closed
We can no longer tap someone on the shoulder and ask “hey, can you send me that document I overheard you talking about?” Documents should be transparent by default, and to do this we will leverage Shared Google Drives. This doesn’t just mean moving completed documents to a shared drive, but also sharing documents before they are complete; this is OK.
Staying Informed Doesn’t Require a Meeting
Many of our projects involve large working groups and audiences that want to remain informed. However, remaining informed never means being required to attend a meeting. Outlook has required and optional attendees, and all parties wishing to remain informed should always be optional, never required, if invited to the meeting at all. Notes can be taken in a transparent method and shared, which can include a direct recording of a meeting itself (should one occur). Asynchronous video sharing is feasible even without a meeting as well!
Other People’s Notification Noises During Meetings are Distracting
When on VC, we have our computers open while speaking. This means that any notification noise on your computer while talking is heard by the entire audience of the VC. This distracts everyone, causing them to check to see if the notification was theirs. We will disable unnecessary audible work notifications on our computers to minimize this distraction.
Synchronous Time isn’t Bad Time; Brainstorming & Social Time Aren’t Dead
While most publications about remote work focus on asynchronous communication, and our goal isn’t to recreate the office environment in its entirety, we know that being on a conference call or reading a Google doc isn’t the same as standing at a whiteboard. As such, both asynchronous and synchronous brainstorming is still encouraged — just remember for longer sessions to include breaks.
Additionally, social time — i.e. informal conversations about non-work topics — is explicitly valued. Creating virtual spaces for celebrations and socializing strengthens relationships and lays the foundation for future collaboration.
Personal Note: This was an exceptionally challenging tenet given the global pandemic preventing in-person interactions the past two years. I started organizing hybrid-remote onsites to help explicitly in this area.
Assume Positive Intent
While written and virtual communication can be done effectively, aspects of such communication can be lost, such as tone of voice or body language. No matter the situation, we will assume positive intent. If in doubt, we will not hesitate to “pick up the phone” (phone call/Slack call/etc.) and have a real conversation — even if it has to be scheduled due to time zone or scheduling constraints.
Having this mindset while working remotely is so important, Gitlab — a fully remote company — escalated this from just a “communication guideline” to a company value. A specific tactic to help when you are communicating remotely is to always clarify a statement before jumping to conclusions or our own interpretation.
If this is so important, then why is this the last of the tenets in priority order?
Well, I am a sucker for a nice “tenet sandwich.” This is a key tenet; it is. But it helps force everything above it to be “worth it.” This tenet is “checks & balance” tenet to those before it, as it’s an “escape valve;” this tenet should exist even in a non Remote world. We still care to move towards a remote-first culture with the above tenets which drive tactical changes to our working model.
[1] See Appendix A for more details.
[2] Because yes, we needed one; Zillow was not a remote company when I joined. I am not in HR, nor was I writing to forcefully make any changes. My audience was my own organization/line of business (LoB). I did not write this document in a vacuum; peers within the org, such as Adriana Staves, helped contribute. While some of the components of the doc caught on and found their way into formal Zillow policy, others such as Meghan Reibstein deserve credit for that.
[3] There is a series of questions one might ask about implementation of this:
Should I start meetings late, or end them early by default? Having tried both, my opinion is: start them late. We all ignore meeting end times; but we rarely join meetings early without purpose.
But don’t your meetings still run into one another, shifting the problem by 5m instead of solving it? Ah, good old Parkinson’s Law; no. Turns out, we don’t often need 30m. And if you do, you may actually need more time — which is why you went over time in the first place — and you should try a 45–55m meeting.
So you really get 5m in between all meetings? Well, no. But anecdotally, I get 2–3m 90%+ percent of the time, which is still the difference between sane Straker 🧠and insane Straker 🤯.
[4] The use of the word “Informed” is intentional as it leverages the RACI matrix definition.
[5] This has been updated at Zillow with “Core Collaboration Hours,” which you can read/listen to learn more about here.
[6] It is especially important that Slack pop-ups are not visible to others while screen sharing. This is both a distraction and a potential cause of an embarrassing event should something not be private that was sent assuming it would be.
[7] Shout out to Facebook and my old team where I got this tactic from!
[8] I love using the Google docs’ watermark feature with this one to slap a big ARCHIVED stamp on the doc. Shout out to Prashant Verma for teaching me about this!
[9] I use the term “point people” to be intentionally open to interpretation. Sometimes, all you need are authors. But other times, you need reviewers, collaborators, or others. I add an entire Appendix to many Google docs to equitably list out names and roles as needed, and link to this Appendix from the top of the document where the author callout would usually be.
Appendix A: External Resources & Influences
Gitlab’s Guide to All-Remote
Gitlab, one of the world’s largest fully-remote companies, has a detailed and deep free publication called their Guide to All-Remote.
Mural’s Definitive Guide to Remote Facilitation
Insights, tools, and case studies from digital first companies and expert facilitators can be found in this free eBook.
Matt Mullenweg’s Distributed Work’s Five Levels of Autonomy
Matt Mullenweg’s Distributed Work’s Five Levels of Autonomy is a blog post about remote culture. Matt is the founder of Automattic, a fully-remote company.
Remote: Office Not Required
Remote: Office Not Required is a book written about Remote culture by Jason Fried and DHH from Basecamp, a fully-remote company. Some of my favorite quotes of this book are below:
Increased Productivity From Working Remotely
If you ask people where they go when they really need to get work done, very few will respond “the office.” If they do say the office, they’ll include a qualifier such as “super early in the morning before everyone gets in” or “I stay late at night after everyone’s left” or “I sneak in on the weekend.”
What they’re trying to tell you is that they can’t get work done at work. The office during the day has become the last place people want to be when they really want to get work done.
That’s because offices have become interruption factories. A busy office is like a food processor — it chops your day into tiny bits. Fifteen minutes here, ten minutes there, twenty here, five there. Each segment is filled with a conference call, a meeting, another meeting, or some other institutionalized unnecessary interruption.
It’s incredibly hard to get meaningful work done when your workday has been shredded into work moments.
Meaningful work, creative work, thoughtful work, important work — this type of effort takes stretches of uninterrupted time to get into the zone. But in the modern office such long stretches just can’t be found. Instead, it’s just one interruption after another.
The ability to be alone with your thoughts is, in fact, one of the key advantages of working remotely. When you work on your own, far away from the buzzing swarm at headquarters, you can settle into your own productive zone. You can actually get work done — the same work that you couldn’t get done at work!
Yes, working outside the office has its own set of challenges. And interruptions can come from different places, multiple angles. If you’re at home, maybe it’s the TV. If you’re at the local coffee shop, maybe it’s someone talking loudly a few tables away. But here’s the thing: those interruptions are things you can control. They’re passive. They don’t handcuff you. You can find a space that fits your work style. You can toss on some headphones and not be worried about a coworker loitering by your desk and tapping you on the shoulder. Neither do you have to be worried about being called into yet another unnecessary meeting. Your place, your zone, is yours alone.
Don’t believe us? Ask around. Or ask yourself: Where do you go when you really have to get work done? Your answer won’t be “the office in the afternoon.”
Transitioning from Synchronous to Asynchronous Communication
The big transition with a distributed workforce is going from synchronous to asynchronous collaboration.
…
What do I have to do next? Where are the files for the pitch tomorrow? Is Jonas free to work on this with me next week? Do you have the email from Scott with the new mockups? These are all questions that rarely spark a second thought when we sit next to each other and work the same hours. Once you go remote, you’re in for a wild goose chase, though, if the workflow and structure haven’t been set up right.
Here’s the key: you need everything available to everyone at all times.
Addiction to ASAP
Breaking your and others’ addiction to ASAP won’t come without withdrawal. You’ll be frustrated the first couple days as your brain adjusts to matching interactions with others to the appropriate medium. You’ll also have to resist the temptation to just transfer your expectations to a new medium you’ve chosen. Handling 80 percent of your questions with email won’t work out well if you get upset when people don’t answer within ten minutes.
Polly’s Guide to WFH
Polly is a Slack integration app that enables multiple useful remote-work abilities within Slack. They also have this great WFH Guide: How to make Working from Home Work Better for You.
Appendix B: Equipment
No home offices are the same, however, everyone should consider acquiring the equipment they need to be most effective while working from home. Such equipment is an investment in yourself that will pay back in dividends.
Note: there are no referral links here. All recommendations are just that: recommendations.
External Peripherals
While laptops are great for portability, portability is not a high-priority for a home office setup. This means leveraging external peripherals such as a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. These are often open to subjective taste, however some recommendations follow:
- Ergonomic keyboard options:
a. Kinesis RGB Split Mechanical Keyboard
b. Ergodox Split Mechanical Keyboard
c. Kinesis non-RGB Split Mechanical Keyboards - Ergonomic mouse options:
a. Logitech MX Master (horizontal)
b. Logitech MX Master (vertical) - A mouse wrist pad.
- An external webcam.
- High-resolution external monitor(s). No specific recommendation, as my recommendation is to wait for sale-days such as Prime Day, Black Friday, or Cyber Monday. I do recommend 4K resolution though.
- An external microphone (note the external webcam recommendation above already has one, but you may want another for better quality).
- A USB-c hub for Mac laptops.
Desk Organizers & Accessories
It is not just important to stay organized, but also ensure that your home office environment does not cause you pain from bad ergonomics.
- A stand for your monitor if your monitor cannot get to the right height.
- An adjustable stand for your laptop to get it to mirror your monitor height.
- Cable organizers.
- Under-desk headphone holder and/or side-mounted desk headphone/bag holder.
Adjustable & Standing Desk & Accessories
If you’re considering an adjustable or standing desk, you should make the leap. I know many people that recommend the Jarvis desk, but I made one with a twist. I used this live-edge butcher block as the desk top, and ordered a Jarvis frame independently to make a custom standing desk.
If you have an adjustable or standing desk, you should also consider the following accessories:
