DOES20

one of my favorite things is meeting everyone's pets and kids!

People seem to be working more. Have to make sure that everyone is setting boundaries to make sure that they aren't over doing it.

More meetings but shorter meetings. Not sure if that is a good thing or not

We've had one of our managers dress up in costume every day since the pandemic started. She'll pop into people's conference calls and brighten everyone's day

There's more pressure to handle issues asynchronously, which is GREAT. Most things don't need a meeting!

The chat tools are more important. Before the chat tools were engineers only - managers sent email. That culture changed fast.

It's much easier to let meetings run long--nobody's knocking on the conference room door. That can be a good and a bad thing.

Managing a large number of multiple distributed teams I've found I know most of my team members better now

Remote work has been a great leveler. Everyone globally is same! This enables everyone to contribute their best!

@indfo Unless you have kids. ;-)

Also mixed teams with people in the UK and US has become more viable

That's super interesting, @mickfeech — there's some amazing data from GitHub about how OSS contributions are up, more commits, faster pull request merges, etc. cc @nicolefv

@paula_thrasher We've used that extra time not "in meetings" just to converse like we would if were in the office during the "hallway" coversations.

@davidstanke Kids too have become part of the team now. They show up as guests in many meetings

@davidstanke my neighbour has 5 kids under 10 include twins at 2 years old. Working from home isn't viable for some

I'm also stunned by the fact of how easily our entire day can be spent in online meetings. @jonsmart jokes that his entire day is wake up, Zoom calls, eat, Zoom calls, eat, sleep. Repeat. :)

The transaction cost has gone up AND down. We can communicate asynchronously with all kinds of tools, lowering the transaction cost. But video conferencing raises the interaction cost, as we fail to capture the non-verbal fidelity of in-person interactions.

I usually distinguish between distributed teams and remote workers. Remote implies that there are in and out groups. Distributed teams means we're all equal, which can be a strange feeling for people used to interacting with those who are "remote"!

@realMattKParker So true. The complicated math of finding the mode of interactions required to achieve goals.

On the upside, it is easier to meet with a range of people, from a range of locations, more easily, with fewer carbon emissions!

I think it's great that expectations have changed. I hope that gone are the days of hopping on a plane from UK to Switzerland for a one hour meeting...

My team was already working from home. Our challenge has been replicating the energy of the offsites we previously had where everyone came together a couple times a year. We've been doing them virtually which has helped.

@mickfeech I've found that the "meeting all the time" leaves out chat time, so I explicitly make time for old fashioned 1:1 more often

It's weirdo, but with all this situation and staying physically apart to each other, I feel more connected with most of my colleagues.

@wonderchook I was blown away that people were able to replicate the energy of offsites in a distributed setting. The amount of thought people put in was incredible! https://t.co/QGkNwKcktQ?amp=1

@davemangot we had a great virtual offsite last week for my team. Some of the feedback was "it didn't even feel like a work week, but we got so much done." We even ended playing a game online together

Be Present, Be Honest, and Be True to Themselves

Clear goals and context are more important than ever. Leadership sets the vision

Be open to new ideas, experimentation, and respect each ones individual needs.

Providing more opportunities for asynchronous work. Tooling has been super important for us, Slack has been an amazing enabler for us.

its made lots of things easier. Most meetings were difficult to collaborate properly with half the group in the room and half on VC. Now, no-one has an excuse and everyone can contribute

in office work is generally synchronous, but the best distributed teams learn to work asynchronously. That's why things like Slack work so well. Sync work still has it's place, but teams need to learn to "loosely coupled" collaboration!

It's always good to remember that its not a simple "remote work" situation, but in the middle of a pandemic with so many other things to handle and worry.

There is new opportunity to collaborate - teams are no longer geography defined, and for many organizations equalizing that silo has helped

Listen to them. Front-line software makers are facing a whole new world of challenges. Work life and family life have collided like never before, and support for them begins with empathy.

on thing I didn't expect, people have become a lot more punctual - can't blame the traffic ;-)

Connecting the right people in the right way. We do a lot of pair programming, small group sync-ups, breakout slack channels. These are useful in ordinary times, but particularly so noow.

@Ben_Grinnell at the same time, we need to allow them to be LESS punctual, because lord knows what some people are going through at home with children, pets, etc.

clear outcomes. Ensure that regular 'wellness breaks' are being built in, to step away from a day of Zoom. And regular check ins esp. with those in less fortunate circumstances, for example living and working from one room

@Ben_Grinnell I agree - everyone remote is actually tenfold easier than half and half (or worse - everyone in person and one on the phone)

Thanks for having us, looking forward to it

Very excited to be here today!

Hi Ben!

@mickfeech Hi Chris!

Looking forward to it

hi there!

hi there!