Collaborating Remotely and Globally
Working remotely with a team that’s located around the world is hard.
Because I’m in the Western US, while my mentors and the other interns are in the Eastern US or India, everyone’s usually disappeared by the time I’m getting ready for lunch. All of our meetings are first thing in the morning for me. By the time I’m running into issues, everyone’s long gone for the day. Obviously, I do my best to prepare any questions for the meetings in the morning, but it makes meaningful collaboration a lot trickier. And it gets a little lonely.
Our communication is mostly through Slack. Slack is a terrible way to get questions answered. It’s so easy for things to get lost in the chatter. Especially when questions begin to pile up because of that pesky time zone issue.
I always have an minor panic attack when I have to post something in Slack. I have a question, so do I put it in the #questions channel? But it’s about a particular project, should it go in that channel instead? But really, is it a question that anyone cares about or should I just DM someone? Or maybe I should just guess at the answer instead of putting myself through the public humiliation of posting on Slack and getting no response from the void.
Our meetings are through either Google Video or Zoom. Both are great communication tools, when they’re working. Sometimes we end up in a meeting where one poor soul can’t use their mic and has to awkwardly comment in the chat. Which no one’s ever actually looking at, so by the time someone seems the comment, the context is completely forgotten.
The most ridiculous situation is when someone tries to show everyone an example during a video call. At that point everyone’s swiping through every possible tool to find a link. Is it in Slack? The video chat? The google doc where we’re collaborating on the meeting notes? Is the person screen sharing? Did they start screen sharing after you left the page to check all of the other webpages?
Despite its issues, working remotely is amazing.
In the morning, I roll out of bed, get the kids ready and out the door and sit down to start working. This week I took a long lunch so I could attend my preschooler’s Valentine’s Day party. At 5:00, I close my laptop and walk 15 feet to my kitchen so I can start dinner. No dress code and no commute, my ideal.
Working globally is something everyone should experience.
Working with people from around the globe reminds me to always consider how content will be read by people from various cultures, who speak various language. It means that we work even harder to ensure that all of our processes are concisely written without confusing idioms.
