5 Things that Suck about Remote Work
The Pitfalls of Remote Work + Proposed Solutions
We live in an age where remote work is taking off. Company after company is allowing their workforce to switch to a remote work style, and when people hear that you get to work from home, eyebrows go up. Though I love my remote work job, it’s not without issue. There’s no way to know the pitfalls unless they’re mapped out by a traveler who’s face-planted into all of them. For your edification, or perhaps morbid amusement, here are the five suckiest things about remote work. If your gut stirs as you read these complaints, then fear not; I’ve added suggested solutions paired with each.
1. People Don’t Comprehend Remote Work
Every movie, TV show, and book has people commuting to work. The concepts of working in an office are ingrained and ubiquitous. All these mainstream stories prepare people who have never worked in these environments a day of their lives. While popular media skips the fact that offices aren’t a very good idea, people understand when others say “commute to work” or “cubicle etiquette”. Knowledge about the day to day of a remote worker is faint in comparison.
When people don’t understand your day, it can suck. — Me
Here’s a real quote from last week:
“What do you mean, the dogs don’t get to play during the day? Doesn’t Gant work from home?”
When people hear “work from home” they apparently don’t hear the “work” part. Family will unapologetically ruin your workday (like our BBC friend in the graphic above). Dogs will throw up, people will stop by, and you’ll find yourself giving rides to the airport because “you can”. However, it’s important to remember it’s not their fault. You’ll need to rebuff these whimsical ideals with a calm tone — and a hard line. After all, you’re probably lumped in with some other person they know who didn’t do anything when they worked from home. Family, friends, and even other companies are bewildered at how remote work works.
Some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten was to overuse the word “boss” (thanks, Todd Werth). Because even if people can’t understand working from home, they will understand you can’t do something because of your “boss”. Communicating your deadlines, structure, and boss’s needs helps to communicate in a vernacular everyone understands. “I have a meeting with my boss” will effectively portray that you can’t take the afternoon off to help Aunt Lulu with her garden.
Remember that if you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will. — Greg McKeown
2. Comparing Grass
Remote work is different, and it’s easy to forget that the grass is always greener after a while of being so lucky as to work remote. You’ve heard of first world problems, right? Things like, “Ugh, I have to make sangria without any honey crisp apples?” Every so often you’ll have someone show you what they’re doing at work, and realizing that your remote job doesn’t have the same opportunities, you may get a jealous ache.
Here are a few “office only” perks:
Office Parties: I’m not just talking about Xmas, though that’s always a big one. There’s also simple celebrations for launches, birthdays, or even the annual mini-golf tournament. Company functions seem effortless and fun.
Office Food: Not everyone is lucky enough, but some offices provide free food, snacks, and deluxe coffee and tea. There’s also the occasional provided breakfast/lunch/dinner.
Office Equipment: Need a jump drive? Need to print something? Need a foosball table? Offices are replete with professional equipment, and even some not-so-professional equipment. When you work from home, it doesn’t make sense to have a photocopier and a dart board. Your space is limited, while an office has the extra room to spare.
The Office Door: When you walk in, you’re “at work”. I’ve seen people applauded for their “hard work” because they come in early, and leave late (or immediately after the boss leaves). Ignoring the fact that those people watched videos all day at their desk, they were perceived as working. When they left “late”, they were expected to stop working. For remote workers, you’re only visible as much as you’re actually working, and it’s surprisingly hard to stop working when the office is part of your house and you haven’t delivered what you wanted to for that day.
So how do you combat this? It’s important to remember that though an office has its perks, they come with strings attached… or more like ropes attached. That office party is popular because people are eager to do anything different in their workday. It’s like recess or taking off a tight pair of shoes. Office food sounds terrific until you’re trying to find out where you can fit your lunch in the shared fridge or today’s the day they’re out of breakfast bars. Office equipment is perfect for that time you need to print thirty pages for your buddy instead of having him pay the $4 at Office Depot. Ask anyone playing table-tennis at work if they’d rather go play the same thing at that cool hangout, and I’m sure they’ll say yes. It’s up to you now, and that’s as terrifying as it is empowering. The key is to remember you’re in control and not all that glitters is not gold. The grass is always greener when you cherrypick the good parts.
3. Timezones & Twilight Zones
Remote work can sometimes mean working across timezones. Now, I’m sure I don’t have to explain how wicked timezones can be. Throw in the fact that random places will sometimes honor daylight savings time, and you may start begging for the consistency of a centralized work location. Even small agitations to our daily timetable can result in disaster.
I see it all the time: someone begins work on the east coast, and then a critical meeting gets scheduled at 4:30 Pacific Time (7:30 ET at night). Is it right to expect the east-coast worker to work late? Inevitably, their family doesn’t think so.
Also, when is lunch? People can do all they want to avoid scheduling around lunchtime, but with a wide timezone spread they really can’t schedule mid-day anytime at all. A couple of poorly timed meetings can work for the majority, but cost you sorely needed nourishment to keep your productivity going. Remote meetings are already poorly run to start.
Throw in the fact that whenever anyone says a time, they could have very well have forgotten to say a timezone or even think about it. It’s not second nature to coordinate timezones, and even with your best coordination, it’s just human nature that you’ll be out of sync.
Remote work depends on clear and concise, untangled tasks. As nerds, we like to call these “async processes”. These include tools like GitHub, Slack, and Trello. Sure, meetings have to be at a designated time (i.e. synced up), but it’s important to give control to the workers to command their schedules and so spread meetings with buffer time if it’s possible. Which allows the team to embrace essentialism (great book here), and not to feel micro-managed. Creating proper documents, channels, and even videos instead of meeting is a great way to relieve the stress of needing to coordinate meeting times. Write it up effectively in media and docs if you can, it gives everyone the power to manage their schedule efficiently. Meetings are easy to schedule and hard to turn down, but be considerate whenever it’s possible that a meeting isn’t the best plan. And ALWAYS mention the timezone. Fortunately shared calendars are good at this and help a lot!
4. Poor Circulation
The highest bandwidth you can have with a person is face to face. In that instance, you have body language, intonation, attention, volume, inflection, and so much more that we’re programmed to pick up from people. After spending some time with someone, you can almost read their typed words in their voice.
Remote is good at removing the number of connections, but that means a weaker overall signal. If unattended, this can lead to issues in various cases.
First, if some people work remote while others do not, that’s a non-100% remote workforce. These inevitably have issues. Sometimes you get similar schisms when a remote company has several employees who live in the same area. Even though the company has stipulations for sharing data electronically, backchannels can form that don’t help the company distribute information or grow.
100% remote is always on low-bandwidth communication. You can and will be misinterpreted at some point. While you should trust that your fellow workers care about you, it’s not hard not to take something personally. Since you can’t directly see the effects of your communication, any “butt of the joke”, “cold facts”, or other expected dynamic might end up interpreted as cruel and callous bullying. That’s up to you to avoid.
I’ve learned this the hard way. The inferred sarcasm, humor, or tone you might think you’re communicating is not necessarily how it’s being delivered or received. In remote work, it’s far too easy to say the wrong thing unintentionally.
Go above and beyond to communicate context. Additionally, the moment you detect a disconnect, try your best to raise the bandwidth of your conversation. If you’re in a public chat, switch to private chat. If you’re in a private chat, switch to a video call (skip phone calls). The longer something sits without proper context, the worse it becomes. This can be compounded by other issues mentioned above, so be ready to apologize when you’re wrong, and hopefully forgive when you’ve been wronged. If you don’t have trust with your team, you don’t have a team.
5. Rose Smelling… Alone
Remote work is perfect for anyone who can remember to stop and smell the roses, but it can be difficult when you’re smelling that rose alone. Offices have water-cooler chat; a feature that no one has to force-it just happens. If you’re in the same place as people you’ll socialize with them. Even in an office filled with people someone might get that bug to walk around and make small talk. You’re a social being, and having coworkers around across the world can make you feel that distance.
You don’t get accidental socialization in the digital work world. Sure you can rent a spot at the local coworking space, but socializing with your fellow employees is essential to healthy team development. Coworking spaces are filled with other companies and other teams. It’s good but it’s not the same.
The other side of this problem, and somewhat of a callback to issue one above: coworkers don’t understand that this is missing, they just feel it. A coworker who switches from regular to remote work will find themselves taking unnecessary trips and talking to random people to fill a social void.
There’s a strange emptiness when you’re in a meeting that’s gone great, and then the others in the meeting are heading out to get coffee, beers, or hit the gym, and though you’d love to continue the banter and go with them, you find yourself geographically prohibited.
Knowing is half the battle (🎶). So if you don’t get that classic socialization for free, you can do things to fix it. You need to bond with your coworkers, and not in a pairing session (i.e. working two people on a single problem)… in a completely non-work session. I know that sounds like a waste, but it’s not. After all, “teamwork makes the dream work.”
At the simplest level, a lounge/kitchen feel can be brought to remote work by simply making a place for it and encouraging its use.
More advanced interactions can happen with “lunch and learn”, online gaming sessions, and even forming your own mastermind group. You’ll find that once you put effort into building these connections, you’ve got plenty of opportunities. I look forward to my remote social events, because pajama pants, a glass of wine, and good times is where it’s at.
We at Infinite Red strongly feel that working remote is better, not perfect. It’s something we journey into every day. I’ve worked in fast food, kitchens, cubicles, private offices, and coworking spaces. Each comes with its own benefits and pitfalls. Remote work has been the best by far, but also the one for which I’ve been least prepared. Over-communicate, be disciplined, and be considerate to your team. Then you can reap the rewards of remote work.
Friends like Family
Though we only get to see each other once a year at the annual retreat (aka “All-treat”), we greet each other as a familiar family.
We want to hear your stories
If you work remote, please take a minute to add your advice, anecdotes, and warnings for others here in the comments. To kick this off, here’s one from my good friend (and coworker).
As a full time traveler and remote worker (I have no home base, no place I go back to on a regular basis), finding a work/life/play balance that works for me has been more difficult that usual. I move around to different skydiving facilities all the time and constantly have the opportunity to have fun and play with my friends in the sky. I’ve had to develop strategies over time and educate my friends who constantly come up to me and ask if I want to skydive. I do, but I can’t and I won’t when I’ve got work to do. Basically, I let my friends know that if I’m sitting with my laptop in public place and have headphones on, they should not talk to me. Headphones are my sign that I’m working. If I have them off or around my neck, feel free to talk to me. I’ll even go so far as to ignore people trying to talk to me, even if I can hear them over my music or video chat. If they persist, I’ll remove my headphones and explain the headphones to them. I pass up a lot of opportunities to have fun with my friends but it’s a sacrifice I have to make to maintain this amazing lifestyle remote work affords me. I think my friends will understand. — Mark Rickert
