While I was reading/watching various resources (basecamp) about working remotely, and being a remote software engineer for years, here are some of the tips:
- Video meetings: only require people who need to be in the meeting, as few as possible
- Video meetings are only used for debating/discussion when typing cannot resolve or conclude
- Trust people even if you don’t see them, and they will trust you back. Trust is a feeling and this should be set at the hiring process
- Managers should be able to evaluate the quality of the works being done in the team and by each individual. If you don’t know how, learn it!
- Estimate progress with time for prioritizing. Example: XX feature estimates for 3 weeks, then use these 3 weeks to build the best of this feature (budgeting). tl;dr; Set resource, people, time, but leave scope flexible.
- make a channel that people can share their life, what they did on the weekend or what did they eat, so we get to know their life outside of work, feel more connected.
- Let’s not do a zoom meeting where we turn on our camera and work and see each other work just to feel like we’re in the office. (But if you really admire someone and you want to do that. Go ahead!)
- don’t expect people to reply immediately, let them have their time to reply. (especially managers!). If it’s an emergency, call!
- if you can, try not to reserve meetings on other’s calendar, but “request” for it, so people will have control over their day, prioritize their tasks.
- Once a while (a month?), pull few random people from different team, host a meeting that doesn’t talk about work, but about their personal life so they’ll know each other more.
