Skills for Distributed Remote Work
Insights from Github’s CEO
TL;DR: Communicate Conscientiously
I waltz into the office in the manner of yet another Friday morning. The week has come to an end, and I am looking to close it off as calmly as possible. I setup my operations base in a ritual to the gods of electricity and internet; open Slack. I see a languid “We currently have the CEO of GitHub and members of his team in E.T.” I’m like 🤯🤯🏃🏾♂️ “Where are they?”
After a tour of the Andela Epic Tower, Nat sits with some engineers to figure out how we use Github. There is some light banter about features, others about editors, some about extensions, and others about improvements. One of my favourite highlights of this session remains when Nat pauses the conversation to pick a notepad from Naytri, and insists he takes the notes himself—bless his humble soul! Soon, the time comes for Nat to ask “Does anyone have questions for us?” My hand shot up quicker than Huawei deployed their 5G networks before any other telecoms provider ✋🏾
“Drawing from your experience of contributing to Free Software from 1993, and seeing that the semantics of work in Free Software then is akin to the current fad of remote work and distributed teams—albeit the tools being a tad bit different—what would you say are good tips and skills a distributed remote developer should have in their day-to-day?”
The amount of gold in Nat’s response and the response from his team could only have come from the end of a rainbow when the leprechauns weren’t watching. Most of the responses revolved around conscientious communication. This means speaking with your recipient in mind.
Short-Form Communication
There are different types of communication a remote worker uses through the job. There is the short form communication. This is mostly used in IRC, Slack, and other chat messaging applications. Here, one needs to be as responsive as possible. Think of it as radio. No one likes hearing dead air from a radio station. When you are communicating with your colleagues using short-form communication, make sure to be responsive. There are other forms of communication in a short-form setting which may not necessarily involve messages sent to another. Communication also happens when you set your status appropriately; if the communication tool permits. This helps your colleagues know when you’re away from your keyboard (a.k.a AFK), commuting, sick, vacationing, and other status updates.
Long-Form Communication
Ever had to send an email to your colleagues? Ever had to describe a feature? …which turned into an epic? …which blows up into something else? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you have practiced long-form communication. With long-form communication, clarity and coherence come in handy. We want to make sure our messages are clear. Seeing that these messages tend to be longer, we as authors of the messages should be able to keep our readers’ interest through the message. I have found, through my experience, that a BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) or TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) also helps with long messages.
Empathy
Your colleagues are human beings; not machines, not part of the system, not slaves to the process. When communicating, remember to “think about the person on the other side”, Nat would say. How would they receive the message? Are their nuances your nuances? When we get to know who is on the receiving end of our messages, we are better equipped to write the message in the best way it could be accepted. Empathy is broad. Empathy is difficult. This is true. But when empathy is properly employed in crafting messages for human beings, the message would have better reception and would have more impact. Some say empathy also works on computers, but that is a conversation for a different moonlight.
Ownership
Building a distributed team is hard. Building a project on a distributed team is even harder. Paraphrasing Conway, “Distributed teams build distributed products.”—we can either choose to be fragmented or coordinated. A distributed product demands that every member of the team is a leader in some way. This way is Ownership. The product should be able to entrust you with a piece of itself and know that it would be built properly, and measure up to specification. Teammates should not have to look over their shoulders when working with you. Here, speaking the truth goes a long way, meeting the expectations you set for yourself within the team goes an even longer way. Taking ownership of your little bit in the distributed team makes your teammates, and inadvertently the product, trust you more.
Emojis and GIFs
Sometimes, it may get a little boring when working on distributed teams. You’re all alone in your little corner of the world, coffee on the table, cat …on the table (hopefully not at the same time with coffee), same old redundant sounds, same old views out the window. It could get boring real quick. This kind of life could use some colour. This kind of life could use some 😄😸👨💻✨🎉🎉🎉. Slack always has TONS of emojis and gifs. Make sure to use this once in a while when communicating with your distributed teammates. Seeing emojis and gifs once in a while in a conversation thread is a stress reliever.
Thank You!!! Omoju re-reminded us with her comment that programmers are humans. That some simple things like saying “thank you” goes a long way. She emphasized how much you could connect with someone over a pull-request by thanking them for the time they used in reviewing your pull request. Appreciations like these are overlooked most times.
A programmer is like a therapist. Most of a programmer’s life is spent listening to other people’s issues, and fixing them. ~ Yāsky (inspired by Nat)
Wrapping this up… 🎁💝
When working in a remote team, the one major barrier I share with some fellow software creatives I have spoken with is the lack of community. This results in low oxytocin levels, creating a less homogenous team, translating into an even less cohesive product. The one fix—I can’t help but think in terms of refactors—for this is communication. Not just communication, but conscientious communication. When your reader, audience, or recipient can see themselves through your words, they feel a lot more connected to the message, and by extension, the team. Cohesive teams build good products. Communication builds cohesive teams. So, in a distributed team, communicate; communicate conscientiously.
Many thanks to Jeremiah Olufayo, Oluebube Princess Egbuna, Samuel ADENIRAN, and Kelechi, Iheanyichukwu Paradise for helping out in editing this. Thank you. Thank you.
