Let's talk remote work for a minute.

I work for myself now (from home). But I worked for other companies remotely for ~6 years previous to that.

There's a huge trap that gives power to the business over the remote worker that is so easy to fall into.

(thread)

Any changes will always favor the business's interests unless the workers in the business can push for their own needs. We see that in the new studies showing that the commute time has not been gained by the workers. It has been eaten up by meetings.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/data-shows-remote-work-really-does-mean-longer-days-and-more-meetings/

The answer to the power imbalance is to unite. The workers need to talk in backchannels to align their efforts. It's not just to get their own time back. It's also to work more effectively in your role.

Let me tell a personal story to make this more concrete...

I worked for a startup where the "business team" (sales and the CEO) worked in a small office. The developers (about the same # as biz team) were all remote. We worked for about a year before we all met at a company retreat.

The dev team had a lot of problems. But we realized that our main one was that we were not able to act as a group. The biz team defaulted to acting as a group because they had high-bandwidth& frequent communication, just because they were in the same room ...

The devs needed to explicitly call a meeting, call into Skype, and deal with the low-bandwidth, turn-taking conference call. Once we got into a room together, we could finally discuss our problems and decide on solutions.

There were many problems, but one of them was also related to our isolation: the CEO could call any of us at any time and wheedle us to start a task not in the sprint. If he failed with one dev, he could just ask the next. And none of us knew he was doing it.

If we had been in the same room, we would have known immediately. But remotely, he got away with it for a year. It wasn't just annoying. It was gumming up the works for the whole company and making us slower.

By the next year, because we were remote, we were way better organized (read "kicking ass") than the biz team. Their processes were all incidental, which worked in one room for year 1 but not year 2, as the office grew and things got more complicated.

The lesson is that you should organize with the other remote workers at your company. Provide a unified front for things you don't like. You may be used to giving each other glances during meetings to share a quick look of surprise or "that's bad". That can't happen on Zoom.

Further, I think you should organize privately. That means not using company email / Slack / Zoom accounts. A private discussion in the coffee room, even on company property, won't be recorded and won't look suspicious. Don't give the company any information to use against you.

Remote gives the company a very tempting divide-and-conquer-by-default move.

For managers, Zoom meetings are work, while the makers (devs), in their focused time, get zero context that isn't shared explicitly. This favors the managers.

Well, I guess that's as good as I can get these thoughts right now :) Take care of yourselves!