As of this month, I’ve been working remotely for ten years. My overall opinion is that it is good and I like it! Here are some random thoughts:

• It’s just really cool to have worked with people from so many different cities and countries.
• Honestly, I don’t particularly care about cost savings or productivity. Sometimes remote work is slower and more expensive… and it’s still worth doing.
• I don’t want to wear shoes when I work.
• Remote work requires trusting your team and that’s something you can choose to do at any time.
• It’s totally possible to create deep, meaningful relationships with people remotely. I sure have. Also, being together in person has a truly unique magic.
• A very generous monthly stipend for food delivery is one of the best perks I’ve received.
• Because his company went remote in 2020, my husband was able to spend about 5,500 more hours with our senior pups at the end of their lives. I think about that a lot now that they are making him return to the office this year.
• Not driving every day is tops. I like having one car instead of two.
• Remote/hybrid events are hard, but the bar is lower so just a little extra effort and empathy go a long way.
• Timezones are hard! I get why teams limit which timezones they’ll hire in. I also get why that is infuriating for people outside those timezones—usually folks not in the U.S.
• Related, you can be a remote company and not be an asynchronous company. Clarity of expecations is key.
• I like that I have not had to move to Washington, San Francisco, or Utah (as much as I love the people who live there).
• Going to the cinema in the middle of a weekday is a thing I like to do.
• A good test of a “remote-first” company is what they plan for team members who can’t make it to in-person events.
• If you’re bringing team members together somewhere to do an in-person work session, but some people are still participating remotely, buy a dang microphone for the in-person side.
• Fun gifs and custom emojis in team chat really do improve my mood.
• Coworking spaces never clicked for me, despite a lot of trying.
• A lot of people feel uncomfortable being in charge of a remote/hybrid setup. There will be hiccups and we’re all sensitive about wasting people’s time. A good guideline is that any time spent making things more accessible or more inclusive is always time well spent. Like, just a random example, it would be the right decision to delay an in-person All-Hands a few minutes in order to restart the livestream so captions are enabled for remote attendees.
• Video recordings of every meeting doesn’t feel super effective to me. Good note-taking is underrated and should be a shared responsibility.
• It can be lonely working remotely. The quiet stillness after closing a video call can be rough.
• Location-based pay feels like bullshit, but is also—probably for the worst—something I will concede.
• I love sending things to people in the mail and being on a remote team provides a lot of fun opportunities for that. Get someone on your team who loves to curate a care package.
• I’ve seen execs point to a super productive off-site as proof that in-person is better. But in reality it showed what the team could do when they’re able to focus on one thing, uninterrupted, and with the usual decision blockers removed.
• Regularly a walk, a shower, a nap, or a distracted cleaning session is what it takes to unblock my brain.
• I sometimes think I actually would like being in an office again. It would have to be less than a mile from my house though so I probably won’t.
• The best encapsulation of my feelings about remote work is this quote from Cheryl Broetje, oft-repeated during my time at &yet: “Living in the place you belong, with the people you love, doing the work that’s yours, on purpose.”