Things I Wish I Knew Before Going Remote

Marla Brizel Zeschin

Marla Brizel Zeschin

1 talk

Things I Wish I Knew Before Going Remote

by Marla Brizel Zeschin

In her talk at RailsConf 2019, Marla Brizel Zeschin discusses the challenges and lessons learned after transitioning to remote work. The presentation, titled "Things I Wish I Knew Before Going Remote," highlights the difficulties one can face when moving from an office environment to a home office, emphasizing that remote work is not simply advantageous due to the absence of a commute but presents its own set of challenges requiring new skills and a mindset shift.

Key points discussed include:
- Initial Excitement vs. Reality: Marla shares her initial enthusiasm about remote work, valuing the absence of a long commute and the flexibility it offered. However, this ideal quickly faded as she began to grapple with social isolation, blurred boundaries between work and personal life, and the pressure of self-management.
- Work-Life Balance: She emphasizes the difficulty of maintaining separation between work and home life when both take place in the same space. Creating dedicated physical workspaces and setting defined work hours were strategies she implemented to restore that balance.
- Social Isolation: Marla reflects on how remote work led to reduced social interactions, noting that while blessed with a dog for companionship, she missed human interactions vital for emotional wellbeing. To combat this, she made a commitment to schedule regular social events, thereby ensuring some form of regular interaction outside of work tasks.
- Communication Challenges: The importance of clear and frequent communication grows in a remote setting, where visibility is limited. Marla illustrates how she adapted by over-communicating updates and nurturing informal communications to foster relationships with her colleagues.
- Mindset Shift: Ultimately, Marla discusses how remote work necessitates a personal reflection on work habits and environments, requiring individuals to define their own work needs and adapt their strategies accordingly.

In conclusion, Marla encourages remote workers to acknowledge the unique challenges that come with remote work as part of the learning curve involved in becoming successful in this arrangement. She emphasizes that struggling with remote work does not signify a failure but rather a crucial skill that must be developed over time, urging everyone that they are not alone in facing these difficulties and that there is always a path forward for improvement.

00:00:20.869 Cool, so I expect that we'll have some more people trickle in, which is fine, but we'll go ahead and get started. DHH is certainly a tough act to follow, but I'm going to do my best here.

00:00:33.030 This is "Things I Wish I Knew Before Going Remote." I know there are a lot of other awesome sessions going on right now, so I appreciate you choosing to join me here today. I just want to introduce myself. My name is Marla Brizel Zeschin; I use she/her pronouns.

00:00:47.670 Some of you may know me as Marla Brazil, and I recently changed my last name. In the words of one of the many government officials I interacted with during this process, going from Brazil to Zeschin was really a lateral move. I don't expect you to pronounce either of those names, so you're off the hook—just don't call me Maria, please.

00:01:04.199 I live in Colorado, so my idea of fun may not be your idea of fun. I like to backcountry ski in the wintertime and run in the summer. When I'm not doing those things, I work for a company called Testable. For those of you who aren't familiar, Testable is a remote, distributed consultancy dedicated to improving the way the world writes software.

00:01:21.390 If this is something my company could help you with, come chat with me afterwards! Likewise, if you're thinking, 'Hmm, I would like to do this all day instead of working for my company,' come talk to me, because we are hiring too. Being fully remote and distributed, we actually have folks in 23 U.S. states and Canadian provinces, which is pretty cool.

00:01:48.090 We are all across North America. Much to Justin's disappointment, even though I'm not here today to plug Testable, I am here to talk about remote work. We'll discuss the good, the bad, the ugly, and all of the feelings that can accompany that. Specifically, I'll share my story of going remote—it’s your classic hero's journey. It has a buildup, a letdown, and finally, this redemption at the end; and, yes, the heroine of this story is me.

00:02:31.409 Given that it's a talk about remote work, we'll start off by exploring how my arrangement actually came to be. At first, things were really great; I loved remote and was thrilled that I could pull on a pair of leggings in the morning without worrying about whether I was dressed appropriately.

00:02:49.770 Everything was awesome, but, as they say, all good things must eventually come to an end, and this story is no different. Next, we'll talk about how I eventually began to struggle with things like not having left my house in a week, not seeing many other people on a daily basis, communication problems, and the challenges that can accompany those.

00:03:36.900 For me, this eventually led to a breaking point, forcing me to get it together. The redemption arc in this story comes with finding balance and figuring out how to make the less glamorous parts of remote work into an opportunity to discover more about myself and my own needs. So, without further ado, let’s take it from the beginning.

00:04:17.130 Our story today starts in 2016, when I took a job at an election tech company based out of Brooklyn, New York. This company had a partial development team in Denver. That team shrunk over time; a few people moved on to other opportunities, and a couple more left Denver for reasons that honestly escape me.

00:04:30.840 In the end, it was just me and one other person sharing a tiny WeWork office in downtown Denver. I also started to work from home one to two days per week. Eventually, it was time for me to move on to my next opportunity, and at the end of 2017, I joined Testable as a fully remote employee—also the only person in the state of Colorado.

00:05:21.060 While we’ve had a few others join us in the Denver area since then, we all still work from our respective homes, and occasionally we try to get together to catch up. Since I made that transition gradually from part-time remote to full-time, my attitude was basically, 'Whoops, how hard can this be? I've already done this remote thing, and it's not going to be that hard.' And you know, now I didn't have to worry about all the things I hated about WeWork.

00:06:01.560 At first, it really wasn't actually that bad. I was in a honeymoon period of sorts and was loving that I was no longer bound by a lot of the constraints of working from an office. For example, I no longer had to wait for the bus in the morning, which is super unreliable in Denver. This was fantastic! I also regained all of the time I had previously devoted to my commute.

00:06:54.300 I no longer had to worry about packing a lunch in the morning and then leaving it on the counter as I rushed to catch the bus. I got to eat instead at the cheapest restaurant in the world—my kitchen! I could even privately and comfortably manage some health issues without my coworkers being any the wiser. For anyone else here who manages a chronic health condition, you know this alone is a Holy Grail: to not have to talk about it with anyone else and just deal with it yourself.

00:07:33.990 I had amazing flexibility to handle life tasks with little to no impact on my workday. Previously, if I had a contractor coming over to the house, I'd have to take off half a day of work to deal with that, but now I could let them in and be back at my desk in the time it took for a normal bathroom break. I won’t lie—there are a lot of upsides to working remotely, and that's part of why we're all here, right? I found that a flexible work schedule really is all that it’s cracked up to be.

00:08:25.890 But of course, I started to get used to the shininess. It wasn't quite as shiny as it had once been, and the lure of leggings began to wear off. At this point, I found myself caught off guard as reality began to take hold. So, I’m curious, how many of you have some kind of morning routine?

00:09:08.500 Just about everybody? Chances are it probably goes something like this: you wake up, maybe get a little exercise or hop straight in the shower, then make breakfast or get kids ready for their day. Shortly thereafter, you’re out the door.

00:09:48.720 Mine's pretty similar, except instead of putting on shoes at the end of the day, I throw on a pair of slippers and head back upstairs to my office, where I tend to stay. Once I get settled in, I suspect I might be a lot like many of you here. Once we're in the groove, we start coding and solving problems, and before we know it, time has flown by, and we’ve been at it most of the day.

00:10:29.820 Because I was just going down the hall instead of out the door for a commute, I found it really easy for this to turn into being home for days on end. Since I no longer had to go outside to transition from the place I slept to the place where I worked, interesting things started to happen.

00:11:02.060 First, I noticed that work and home began to blend together to the point where the distinction wasn't as clear as it should have been. Similarly, because there was no physical separation between work and the rest of my life, I found that there wasn’t much conceptual separation either. The temptation to grab my phone and check my email before I'd even sat up in bed or said good morning to my husband was really high, and it was something I couldn't resist.

00:12:04.000 In addition, because I didn’t have an office to leave behind at the end of the day, I was having trouble knowing when to cut it off. If you're a high achiever like me—or perhaps an overachiever—you might even feel a little guilt about leaving some work unfinished for the next day. After all, how hard is it really to refactor one more method or write one more test?

00:12:44.760 Because there was no distinction between my work environment and my personal life, time started to slip by unnoticed. One day, I realized I had no idea where my house keys were and could only deduce I’d last seen them somewhere between Monday and Thursday, which was quite surprising.

00:13:22.310 After all, one touted benefit of remote work is that you should be able to work from anywhere. If you need a change of scenery, pick up your stuff and hit the local coffee shop—no big deal, right? However, sometimes my local coffee shop had sketchy Wi-Fi and the regular who liked to shout loudly about politics in the corner. I needed to be on important client calls, where background noise wasn't an option.

00:14:08.650 I was finding that while working from anywhere is a nice trope, the reality was that there were far fewer places conducive to what I needed to accomplish during the day. Thus, as I felt limited in places where I could effectively work, my interactions with other people also dwindled.

00:14:50.700 When I worked in an office or co-working space, bumping into people was common. I saw coworkers and friends in the hallway, and since my office was typically downtown near my friends' offices, it was easy to catch up over lunch or make last-minute plans. But since my office was now my home, I found myself mostly interacting with Pearle, my dog.

00:15:35.580 There was no getting around it—the social isolation that comes from working from home was becoming increasingly intense, especially on days where I wasn’t pairing much or didn’t have other collaboration opportunities. Even though I was struggling with a lack of social interaction, I also felt guilt over taking time for it. I often wondered if it was okay to get up from my desk and step away from work for a few moments.

00:16:27.000 This meant leaving my house, and if you're like me, sometimes you feel you need to ask permission to do these kinds of things. This made it nerve-racking, because asking for something implies there’s a chance you might not be allowed to do it.

00:17:10.330 Theoretically, remote work is supposed to liberate people from needing to ask for permission to handle the minutia of their day. It’s supposed to do away with the idea of 'butts in seats' as a measure of output or productivity. While that may be accurate, in reality, it seems more nuanced.

00:17:56.490 There have been days when I'm not a hundred percent on my game. Perhaps I’m struggling with Docker all day and don’t manage to write meaningful code until the last 90 minutes of my workday, or maybe I just had a terrible night's sleep that prevented me from being productive.

00:18:42.170 When I worked in an office and faced days like these, I felt okay about it, because I was still at work all day. People could see that my butt was in a chair, doing something. But at home, I felt immense guilt and anxiety on those days when I didn’t have much to show for my efforts.

00:19:31.610 I struggled with how to demonstrate my value and productivity. That leads me to the last thing I struggled with while going remote: communication. Good communication is, of course, essential in every job, and it’s something we talk about a lot as developers. However, it becomes even more critical when no one can see you or your work.

00:20:25.290 Sometimes, it’s easy to wonder, 'If you can’t see me, do I even work here at all? Do I even exist?' Furthermore, the lack of face-to-face interaction in remote jobs means that good written communication suddenly becomes crucial. The constant high volume of high-quality communication required in a remote job is mentally taxing, even for those of us who don’t have to practice extensively.

00:21:14.650 Tired people eventually start to make mistakes. If you've ever sent something via Slack or email that wasn't understood due to poor wording, and lacked the accompanying nonverbal cues to clarify or rectify the situation, you understand how critical good communication is.

00:22:02.290 I was starting to feel pressure, and with the combination of a lack of work-life balance, social isolation, and communication challenges, that honeymoon period from earlier began to fade. I found myself in a situation where I was truly unhappy with my day-to-day, to the point where others started to comment on my demeanor.

00:22:53.540 People began questioning whether everything was okay far more often than felt appropriate. I knew, deep down, that remote work was a significant factor in my growing unhappiness. But I wasn't really sure how I was supposed to feel about this; after all, remote work had been sold to me as a magic elixir—a narrative I had bought into.

00:23:37.780 I was really nervous to admit that I was feeling this way, as it began to feel more like a poison pill. This left me wondering what was wrong with me, given that my feelings didn't align with what I thought remote work was supposed to be like.

00:24:13.520 I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to reconcile feelings of loneliness, guilt, and anxiety. Whenever I told people I worked remotely, their responses were always filled with jealousy or longing. People would say things like, 'Oh, I would love to be able to do that someday,' or 'You must be so happy!' or 'I’m really jealous—you’re living my dream!'

00:25:04.790 I started to question if I was living somebody else's dream. Maybe I just wasn’t cut out for remote work. This spiraled for a little while until I finally got over myself a bit and recognized that I was fortunate to have some wonderful, empathetic coworkers.

00:25:56.320 I confided in a few trusted colleagues, and I was surprised to learn that many of them struggled with similar feelings. This wasn’t what I had expected, but it was quite interesting to discover. This got my wheels turning a bit more. How was it that, for most of us, we could agree this was the best job we’d ever had?

00:26:47.600 We tackle challenging technical problems, work with wonderful people, and are growing a lot. Yet, at the same time, many of us were struggling with varying degrees of anxiety over being by ourselves. And then, I had a lightbulb moment.

00:27:34.510 I realized that in all of my previous jobs, there had always been a structure provided by the physical environment. This structure gave me cues on how I was supposed to work. While I've always known some superficial things about my work style—like how I like to take notes or how my desk should be set up—I hadn’t evaluated work on a deeper, fundamental level.

00:28:24.040 This was exactly what I needed to do: examine the things that were previously offered by a physical work environment, assess what worked for me, and figure out how to bring those elements into my new life, where I was in charge of establishing my work environment.

00:29:16.120 This big epiphany was followed by an immediate question: what do I do now? Let’s revisit some of the challenges I faced while working remotely and see if we can find answers for them.

00:30:12.470 The first challenge was figuring out how to separate work and life when they take place in the same space. For me, creating strong boundaries was essential. I established a dedicated physical workspace in my home. For me, that meant converting a room in my house into my office.

00:30:56.270 I worked exclusively from there during the day, and when the workday was over, I shut the door and didn’t go in. Not everyone has a house, so for some, this could be a corner of an apartment or, even, a symbolic walk around the block to signify transitioning from work to everything else.

00:31:30.320 The second challenge was setting appropriate temporal boundaries around work—not starting too early and not ending too late. In other words, I needed to create non-physical barriers to establish work-life separation. For me, that meant getting dressed and putting on a little makeup every morning, just as I would if I were heading to a physical office.

00:32:02.790 Now, I'm not suggesting everyone must wear lipstick, though I think it would be fun! But most people hold themselves to some standard of presentation. Moreover, I wouldn’t roll into the office without brushing my teeth or having breakfast. I’m a hangry person, as my coworkers can attest, so I need to take care of myself before I can dive into work tasks.

00:32:47.750 Indeed, establishing a solid habit or routine that I could rely on much like a physical barrier is essential. Temporal challenges can be extra tough when working across time zones, as is often the case in a distributed setting. I realized I needed to accept that part of my day would overlap with colleagues on either coast and part would not.

00:33:40.390 I communicated my availability clearly to clients and coworkers and also set a very aggressive do-not-disturb schedule on Slack to avoid the temptation of responding to things at inappropriate times. You may need to be just as assertive setting boundaries at home as you'd be in a physical office. If your boss asked you to be at work every day from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., you’d probably say 'sayonara' and start looking for a new job.

00:34:32.000 So it's an appropriate expectation to hold yourself to at home, just because your kitchen is now only 20 feet away. The third challenge I faced was the social isolation that stems from working from home, which meant far fewer serendipitous encounters with people. While Pearle gives wonderful dog hugs, she doesn’t quite replace human conversation.

00:35:12.860 I set a goal to schedule at least one social interaction per week, whether that was attending a meetup, scheduling a happy hour with friends, or just getting a manicure during lunch so that I could get away from home a bit.

00:36:03.850 To hold myself accountable, I also made this a goal with my manager. I’d often put my credit card down at the salon or make a reservation at my name, which ensured that I’d show up. I made sure to schedule outings in places that had good Wi-Fi so I could still manage work while socializing.

00:36:47.540 Lastly, I needed to address the feelings of guilt associated with breaks. I reminded myself that these are activities I would do on a lunch break or after work if I were in an office. It's perfectly okay to go outside and engage in these kinds of things. I doubt anyone here feels guilty when a coworker suggests a quick coffee run, right? Besides, you're not going to be at your most productive if you treat work as a marathon.

00:37:24.090 Taking breaks is not only acceptable; it's healthy! Now, let's circle back to the challenge of communication. Without face-to-face interaction, communicating with others can be challenging. I needed to find a way to excel in both casual informal communication with colleagues and formal communication with clients.

00:38:05.060 On the casual side, one helpful practice has been setting up times for water-cooler chats with colleagues. At Testable, we have something we call 'coffee time,' where you're randomly matched with a colleague each week to schedule about thirty minutes to talk about whatever you like. I’ve discussed gardening, pets, programming—anything goes.

00:38:59.700 However, if your company doesn't have a formal structure for this, you can simply reach out to someone and see if they want to chat at the beginning or end of the day. This not only helps you get to know your coworkers but also enhances your understanding of their communication styles, which proves helpful for more formal interactions.

00:39:43.960 There’s a concept in communication known as high bandwidth versus low bandwidth exchanges. High bandwidth is more involved, utilizing multiple senses to convey messages and capture intent. In contrast, remote communication typically lacks these cues, leaving us with mostly typed messages on Slack and perhaps an emoji at best.

00:40:35.730 Thus, we need to be more explicit about our messages and over-communicate information that might otherwise be taken for granted in a co-located environment. This includes everything from project status to how we’re feeling. I had to adopt a more thoughtful communication strategy to ensure that what I said was valuable while also demonstrating my output throughout the day.

00:41:29.030 A renewed focus on communication required me to voice any issues with my employer as well. I’d be remiss not to emphasize the importance of collaboration with a supportive manager, which has contributed largely to my positive experience.

00:42:14.630 What if you don’t work in that kind of environment? Remote work is exploding in popularity, and I'm guessing many of you are pioneers in your organizations’ remote journeys. If your company is still figuring it out, there are steps you can take to ensure you don’t get overwhelmed in the process.

00:43:02.240 First, it may help to evaluate your workplace culture. One thing remote work can expose is whether a culture values busyness or outcomes. Ideally, we should prize outcomes—after all, we are paid to produce results, not just occupy a chair. However, that is not always the case.

00:43:48.640 If your workplace culture isn’t enlightened yet, you may have to work harder to bridge that gap. Overcommunicate your status and achievements to showcase your contributions. While it may feel odd to herald your own successes, relative isolation necessitates some level of self-advocacy, especially when 'out of sight, out of mind' can be a real issue.

00:44:35.810 Secondly, make establishing your new remote work habits part of your broader goal-setting process. Setting goals allows you to hold yourself accountable and establish a support system if your workplace lacks one. It also underscores that remote work is legitimate work, deserving of focus and attention.

00:45:24.870 Finally, don't hesitate to confide in others. Remote work can feel isolating, and these feelings can spiral out of control if we convince ourselves we’re truly alone. I regret not speaking up sooner and holding back my feelings for so long. If I had confided earlier, perhaps things wouldn't have gone downhill as fast.

00:46:13.870 Sharing with trusted colleagues or friends can ease feelings of isolation, and others provide excellent sources of advice and tips. To recap, we’ve covered several challenges of working from home: the lack of work-life balance in both physical and conceptual senses, social isolation, and communication hurdles.

00:46:58.060 We also explored solutions to these issues. Keep in mind, these are just the main challenges I faced; maybe you're experiencing something different or have unique solutions that work for you, and that’s perfectly fine! Throughout this talk, you may have noticed that none of these concerns exist in a vacuum.

00:48:05.560 Remote work is like a puzzle. You can rearrange these pieces however you like until you find a solution that fits you. However, the common thread in all these challenges is that they reflect a shift in mindset regarding how we perceive work. For me, this shift involved shifting from relying on a structure provided by someone else's work environment to defining my own requirements and values and discovering how to create them myself.

00:48:57.170 What’s truly liberating about remote work is that once you begin to understand this part, it grants you the freedom to work on your own terms in a way that makes sense for your life. However, we need to stop treating remote work as a privilege that must be earned by a select few or reserved for senior employees.

00:49:47.540 Doing so only highlights the upsides of remote work, neglecting the challenges individuals face when trying to adapt to this model. It doesn’t foster a necessary culture of support around something inherently challenging. Acknowledging that remote work is a skill unto itself is crucial.

00:50:36.110 Just like anything else at work, nobody is born knowing how to work remotely. It’s a skill learned over time and refined through practice. After all, there's no one right way to work remotely, which is likely why many of us are drawn to this flexible model.

00:51:24.950 But since it’s deeply individual, it requires effort to determine what personal remote working toolset works best for you. I had to realize that figuring out how to work remotely is a challenge in itself. It's important to know that struggling with these adjustments doesn’t mean there's something inherently wrong with you.

00:52:07.780 If you feel overwhelmed by remote work’s challenges, I want you to know that you are not alone, and there is a path forward. Thank you!

RailsConf 2019