This post continues the book club discussion of Remote: Office Not Required. See also: Remote – Part 1
Here are my notes for the second section, “Dealing with Excuses.”
- Houston thought some of the arguments in this section were cherry-picked for the book and don’t really stand well on their own. Geoff had similar concerns about the previous section, so we expect more of that to follow.
- In the “magic only happens when we’re all in a room” topic, it almost sounded like they were advocating for the opposite (i.e., getting everyone together in a room is a bad idea). Geoff had a less smug title for this topic: “magic can happen anywhere, not just in person.”
- We all agreed with the statement that management lacking trust (i.e., if I don’t see them working, are they working?) is an issue. Jameson said that the statement about people living down to low expectations is true; for example, this article. Managers are not babysitters.
- People need fulfilling work to keep them from being distracted by things in their remote office.
- We thought the topic about security was dated; most of the tools are secure by default now.
- Our previous meeting touched on a topic in this chapter… jealousy. How about offer the ability to work remotely to everyone? If people don’t want to work remotely, they can come in to the office.
- If your company is remote-first, why is culture a problem?
- Spending money on the company office is handled like a sunk cost. Jameson experienced this at a previous employer where the company refurbished a building (which no one asked for) and used that as justification for why they couldn’t give raises.
- Some offices have distractions at work, too. Houston’s current employer has a PlayStation in the break room. This turned into a side conversation about how much leeway you can take with unspoken aspects of culture (e.g., unlimited PTO, games at work).
- In the “I need an answer now!” topic, the authors outlined a good way to work in general (remote or otherwise)… Use email, chat, texting, calling (in that order from least urgent to most urgent) for getting questions answered.
- We discussed the “fear of losing control” issue, and that doing a small pilot (e.g., remote on Wednesdays) could help. Jameson suggested that remote work in that case should be quantifiably better. Full remote may be difficult to achieve if you don’t have buy-in from the top.
- Jameson had some questions about the last section’s data (i.e., companies that support remote work). Is this full remote? The option to work remote if needed? Partially remote? Contractors (like outsourced HR)? Ability to check email to work offsite?