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It doesn’t make sense to mandate that I sit in the same building as
you to work on things somewhat related to the things you work on. By
recognizing this fact, both employers and employees now have a great
deal of freedom (for some value of the word “freedom”). Employers can
hire people from across the globe, and employees can live anywhere on
said globe. When I tell people I work from home I rarely get any sympathy, but
the fact is that working remotely is harder than working in an office
for millions of little reasons. The in-office workplace is the default –
if you’ve ever had a job chances are you went to a building some place
to do that job with other folks that did a slightly different job who
were (at least nominally) working towards the same goals as you. And
oooh the things you took for granted in your cushy IRL job! That meeting that was loosely scheduled for 4pm? I’ve got some time
now, what if we just scrap project Foo? Work for you? Cool.
Remote companies cannot be this lazy. It’s not just that remote work is lonely (it is). It’s not just that
it’s hard to find a good place to work when you’re remote (it is hard).
It’s a million little things – documenting the little decisions so that
when someone on the other side of the world wakes up, they don’t have
questions (because you won’t be around to answer them), keeping the
office wiki up-to-date, making sure to post big changes to the mailing
list. Being “remote friendly” is not a thing, having a remote culture is.
Remote culture is something that everyone has to cultivate
constantly. The Wikimedia Foundation strives for a remote culture. There are
constant and seemingly innumerable challenges – both big and small, both
technical and cultural. A couple of months ago there was an email thread on the staff mailing
list that attempted to assail one of the remaining bastions of privilege
exclusive to the physical, IRL office-worker: seeing people’s desks! Walking around a physical office you see people’s personalities laid
out in physical space. You may discover that you have similar interests
or hobbies, you may learn about a new topic, or you may discover the
very key to existence simply by craning your neck slightly to take a
good, long, hard look at another person’s pile of accumulated doo-dads
and brick-a-brack. Filled with this understanding, we shared our desks, and the things
on them. This is what my desk looked like in September of 2016. Some of the the things on my desk, and some of the reasons for some
of the things on it (in no order):Remote Culture
A rant
{{done}}. No one updated their calendars. No one likely
bothered to update the documentation for the project Foo. I can just
walk down the hall and talk to Jan faster than I can update the office
wiki which is always hopelessly out-of-date anyway. Nobody checks the
mailing list, everyone knows if there are project Foo questions, they
can just ask me. Problem. Solved.Remote Desks
My Desk
Posted
