The Single Habit That Will Solve Remote Work
How streaming culture can rescue tech production
On a Tuesday at 8 a.m., one friend texts another: “ready to join.” He opens Zoom, and they both appear on the screen. After catching up, they choose some instrumental music and stop talking. They each become a little square in the upper right corner of the other’s screen. They only chat briefly every half hour or so, but the call lasts all morning. They are each working on something different, but together; they keep each other company even though they’re twenty-five miles apart. This is an example of something that happened a lot through 2020 and 2021, when people couldn’t meet due to COVID restrictions. Those friends, along with many others, didn’t know they were involved in a practice that we now believe will become key to the culture of work. It could save tech production, a field currently in crisis.
Even before the pandemic, working from home was one of the fastest-growing employment relationships. As the trend was accelerated thanks to COVID-related government restrictions, it taught people new ways to be productive. In the tech industry, however, we can point to a few problems these changes are bringing, especially in the balance between worker needs and company dynamics.
These days, particularly in the tech industry, more and more people want to work from home. Remote work has brought new flexibility and standards of comfort to tech workers, including spending more time with their families or even moving away from big cities to become digital nomads. This setup isn’t always the best for employers, though. Big companies like Apple are trying to go back to offices as a general policy, and others are on the same path, even saying remote employment doesn’t work. What’s the real story? Are these differences insurmountable?
Do streamers have the answer?
It seems that companies’ main argument for demanding in-office work is that they don’t have the proper tools to monitor productivity. Although many have decided to go back to the office and try to reinstate old dynamics, other managers and workers are figuring out how to assure remote productivity. This could even be a limiting factor for companies struggling to adapt to a change that does not seem to be temporary.
Meanwhile, another closely related culture is growing. Earlier, we mentioned two friends keeping each other company during a work day. This practice is becoming more and more common. On streaming platforms like Twitch, there are co-working channels where streamers film themselves working on something, with a schedule of breaks and music in the background. They only talk to the chat on the breaks and don’t always share what they’re working on. These streams are a niche hit in areas like design, tech, and academia.
We can find some insights on this practice in a Reddit thread from nine months ago. “I was doing it mostly for myself to keep myself accountable,” said one streamer about how he started his channel. As time went on, he found that more and more people were following him live. He tried to understand the phenomenon, and after doing a few surveys, he concluded: “They still have work to be done and they still have a need for company. They find in coworking streams a good combination between those two needs.” According to another user,“The point of a co-working stream is working alongside someone and being productive together and getting motivated.” This shows a lot of similarities to co-working spaces that emerged a few years ago. It might have its roots in those childhood moments when we hung out with friends and just did nothing. It may work in the same way as a “body double” for productivity, a recent coaching trend. But we think it goes beyond that.
People need people, and the need to work is deeply related to others. When we work, we are building worlds, perhaps in quite abstract ways. Indeed, the more abstract our relationship to the production objective, the more difficult it is for us to feel engaged while we’re carrying out daily tasks. That’s when we need another person’s presence to remind us of the collective project we’re participating in.
A middle management crisis and a cultural solution
There’s a middle management crisis happening now in companies that don’t understand how remote work is being done or how people are meeting their objectives. Different strategies are coming into play, including the creation of new roles in the corporate hierarchy. But we might argue that these problems are related to a lack of “productive ceremonies.. These are ways in which people can relate to their work objectives by meeting one another, keeping each other company, and taking part in simple ceremonies like hanging out, sharing music, helping, and being helped.
One user of co-working streams said that in their favorite stream “they asked the chat what they were working on before they started and had a list of what everyone was working up on stream for everyone to see.” Through that simple action, the audience became a productive community with explicit tasks to tackle and many victories to share at the end of the day. They could even meet colleagues and trade knowledge or ideas. As the user said, “you get to know very interesting people doing the same things as you while having a nice place to hang out a little during the long working/studying hours.”
Remote work needs deeper meaning, and companies need workers who are driven to reach their objectives. All that’s lacking are more spaces for us to carry out our ceremonies. We are on the verge of a new collaborative culture. We are shaping it, along with a new world for ourselves within it. All we have to do is find the right platforms.
