WFH @ Bumble đ
A Product Managerâs experience of working remotely during lockdown
The expected email came on a Monday afternoon, the one that said we would be WFH (Work From Home) indefinitely due to the current circumstances.
Personally, as a Product Manager, Iâve always wondered what the âdigital nomadâ life was like, so I was interested to see how the company would transition to a 100% remote-work model â overnight.
I knew our team thrived with in-person interactions to deliver projects, but three weeks later, with established processes and good vibes, we have created an effective working environment. In many ways, I wouldnât mind making the remoteness permanent!
Here are some examples of what WFH at Bumble (and parent company MagicLab) is like, and how you might be able to make the most of your own work from home situation during these times. Of course, these tips donât apply to every scenario and industry â and I fully appreciate how fortunate we are at Bumble to continue being employed and doing work we love.
For us tech workers, as we shift toward an indefinite stay-at-home period where the only things keeping us sane are the memes that find the humor in our apocalyptic predicament, we might as well embrace the benefits of WFH.
Here are 5 things about remote life you can use to your advantage.
1. No location restrictions
Letâs start with the obvious benefits. Being remote means you can work anywhere that you have wifi. While my job at Bumble for the past year has been based in London, Iâve come back to California for the quarantine, and remoteness means being able to work effectively even from here. Of course, the time difference of eight hours takes self-discipline to manage sleep and be online at the same hours as my colleagues in London, but the family time and Californian views make the scheduling worthwhile. If travel were to be open, there are significant benefits in being 100% remote, as you can realistically balance both an intense career and traveling for leisure.
Iâve seen the pros of remoteness truly scale past the individual level though. When everyone is remote, then everyone is at their laptop (pretty much) all the time. You donât need to wonder what meeting someone is in and jot down a note to talk to them face to face later when you see them at their desk â you have no choice; you message them about the issue or message them to schedule a call straight away. You can use the fact that you donât have a choice of meeting in-person to your advantage to not procrastinate.
Of course, you do need to establish a work-life balance for yourself, as the line between work and home is likely the distance from your desk to your bed.
Using classical conditioning can be a way to combat mental stress, i.e. wearing different pairs of sweats (but still sweats) when youâre working vs. sleeping, sitting in different areas of the room when youâre working vs. relaxing, etc. Such distinctions help the brain associate certain stimuli with work and others with relaxing, keeping the two separate in the mind.
Additionally, taking âscreen-breaksâ really helps the eyes. Whereas before, even though I was on my screen quite a bit, there were many âscreen-breaksâ with in-person meetings, lunches, and walks in the office. Now, even meetings happen via a screen, lunches happen at my desk, and walks donât happen during the workday. So intentionally taking breaks and carving out time for my eyes to not be looking at pixels is critical to long-term remote success (and to me not throwing my laptop across the room).
2. No setup requirements
I donât know about your company, but at Bumble, there have been many times where a room of 10 people couldnât get Apple TV to work for a screen share presentation. The setup often wasted 5â10 minutes of a 30 minutes meeting, 16%-33% of the meeting time!
I was a bit hesitant to do our usual Bumble weekly sync of 30+ people in a video call, but the results were smooth! We started the meeting, for a change, exactly on time via Google Hangouts.
Reducing setup costs and the fluff around meetings is a huge advantage of working remotely â embrace the efficiency!
3. No nonverbal communication
Itâs common to hear self-help gurus and business experts comment that â80% of communication is nonverbal.â But in remote work, there is much less of that. Unless youâre over video/voice call, you canât hear someoneâs inflections and you canât use a kind tone to ask why something hasnât been delivered on time â and even on video calls, nonverbal cues are limited to above the shoulders.
Not having nonverbal cues can be a significant disadvantage unless flipped on its head and embraced for its benefits. Without the ability to communicate nonverbally, feelings that are usually left tacit must be communicated over real words at the surface level. You can use over-communication to your advantage.
Over the last two weeks, colleagues have typed phrases like âNot trying to challenge your decision, Iâm curious where youâre coming from,â or âI feel like Iâm bombarding you with questions, but I am very curious about this matter,â phrases they might not have verbalized before, but rather would have conveyed through nonverbal signals which can be misinterpreted. The over-communication is a clear way of addressing previously implied issues.
Additionally, people explain concepts like bugs a lot more clearly over step-wise bullet points, because there is no ability to explain to the person ad hoc at their desk. Use this written documentation to your advantage because it is scalable and can bring more relevant people into context faster by being added to channels, rather than having to explain 1:1 at opportune times.
And remember â emojis go a long way in establishing a kind tone đ. If you feel youâre coming across the wrong way, remember thereâs a human behind the avatar youâre chatting with, and embrace the opportunity of being able to type what you think and feel without nonverbal cues.
And if things escalate â realize the limits of remoteness and jump on a call; people are still human at the end of the day â and itâs easier to have empathy when you can see a human on the other end of the line.
Taking that realization one step further, I do recommend making a regular video sync with key people you work with. Our Product Lead created a mandatory video-standup for our squad every day, and while some still mildly protest that their looks are too disheveled for a video call, this simple 10-minute sync with actual face time makes people remember that we are not all in isolation, but working as a unit. (Plus, seeing people in their natural habitats is its own type of team bonding!)
4. No more commutes
If you had a one hour commute before, your commute time is now one minute, or as fast as it takes for you to open your laptop. That is a 98% reduction!!
You have so much more time in the day.
Before it gets filled up with useless noisy things that people are so good at doing, use the time to develop a new habit â you can finally read those product books or fiction novels that have been on your shelf for a while, or take up a new hobby, or work out (i.e. âwork in,â safely inside your home). Or maybe it means appreciating the (albeit now required) time with family more.
Being inside all day can seem like a prison sometimes, and, of course, mental health comes first. Just donât forget that in a lot of cases, you have more of that one precious thing that we always wanted more of before â time.
What skillset can you pick up that youâve always wanted to have (especially if itâs something that can be learned from an online course), or what indoor hobby have you always wanted to try? After this WFH period is over, youâll feel so proud of yourself for using that newfound time that everyone is generally âtoo busyâ to find.
Personally, Iâm using the extra time to blog more.
5. No more non-intentional hangouts
Thought WFH stands for Work-From-Home? Well on Friday evenings, it actually means Wine-From-Home for the product team.
Hanging out with people has never been so intentional. Instead of a party where you just stop by and chat around with people, you need to make intentional efforts to talk.
While in the product team weâre still figuring out how to all hang-out on a 15 person call together since you canât break off into natural chat-sustainable groups like at a bar, weâve discovered a fun Google hangouts feature that allows you to mute other people and we have randomly adapted this into a game. Also a âvirtual talking stickâ has come up as a suggestion. We likely wonât find a way to have sustainable small-group conversations over one big video call, but syncing altogether is another form of connecting, and weâre embracing the advantages of talking one at a time. When all you have is the ability to talk, people start listening more. Also popular during these wine nights: adopting snap filters and playing games, like âContact.â (Highly recommend!)
Parting Thoughts
Indefinite WFH isnât something anyone at Bumble expected to be doing, but now that weâre in this giant social experiment, there are several learnings we can take to improve our lives â both now, and when life is back to ânormal.â Embracing the benefits of remoteness is highly likely to make communication and self-awareness more effective in the long-run. Letâs use the remoteness to our advantage.
Niki is Product Manager at Bumble, a social networking app based in London. Want to chat? You can slide into her DMs on insta @goodbad_ux.