Tips for staying in the loop as the only remote engineer?
Posted by TheStatusPoe@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 17 comments
A little background: Nearly two years ago I was t-boned by a cop on my way into the office. Over the past two years I've struggled to be in office as much as I'm supposed to due to injuries as a result of that accident (I've got a spine surgery coming up soon, and already had surgery for my shoulder). My manager has been more than understanding about my situation and has allowed me to work from home as I need.
I have noticed a difference between my time when I'm in the office vs working from home. When I'm in office there's a lot more little side conversations that I get involved in. I'm responsible for large portions of the "library"/"framework" code used by the rest of the team and was heavily involved in some of the changes in architectural direction. As an example, I overheard some coworkers discussing a schema for a new table and asked about what indexes and constraints they were planning based off some other work that I had been doing. There's still meetings scheduled to discuss those kinds of concerns, but I do feel like I'm missing out when I have to stay home vs when I'm able to be in office. Other small things like not being able to easily whiteboard out an idea have also been frustrations.
Previously I worked for a fully remote company and figured out some ways to address issues like these (keeping a slack huddle going for impromptu conversations, digital team events, etc). It's been difficult to do these kinds of things when I'm the only one remote. Being responsible for maintaining a cohesive technical direction has been especially difficult. Has anyone else been in a situation where they are in a senior position for a team when they are the only person working remote and has any suggestions?
atangzer@reddit
sorry to hear about your accident, although i'm glad to see that your manager/workplace has been accommodating to you.
do you have regular 1:1s with each of your members and have you brought this up with your manager? i think its totally okay to bring this up with your teammates as well - proactively asking them to loop you in on discussions that would normally happen in person. when you’re the only remote person, a lot of this isn’t intentional either. people just default to whoever’s physically around them.
it shouldn’t be entirely on you to compensate for being remote. if your manager is supportive, it’s worth explicitly asking how the team can make information flow more inclusive.
TheStatusPoe@reddit (OP)
Thanks! And my manager has been accommodating, the company less so unfortunately. Even getting wheeled out of the office by EMS hasn't been enough to convince my company that I need some of the accommodations I've been asking for.
I don't have 1:1s with the team. One of the discussions I've had with my manager is that even in office there's been problems with knowledge silos. I've tried introducing ADRs, project post mortems, and other similar "processes" to try and get some of those discussions captured and shared with the team. I haven't pushed for any "formal" process, just a quick confluence doc along the lines of "X and I talked about Y. We talked about these options but decided to go with Z because reasons". It has not been too successful. I'm not sure if trying to formalize it would be better or if the extra "process" is the friction keeping it from working (especially since those hallway conversations are the antithesis of process). My manager at one point wanted almost all decisions to be reviewed by me, but that wasn't scalable for the amount of work going on across the team.
rv5742@reddit
In general, this is going to be hard, for all the reasons you've outlined. Perhaps one small tip would be to always make sure your camera is always turned on in meetings. Your coworkers need to remember your face, and just being a black screen makes you even more forgettable.
TheStatusPoe@reddit (OP)
I just wanted to say thank you for this suggestion! I had my camera on for stand up this morning and I felt like I was more involved.
roger_ducky@reddit
Over-communicate like crazy.
Metworld@reddit
Being annoying doesn't solve the problem.
roger_ducky@reddit
Point is to be extremely helpful while leaving a visible trail. Even with that amount of interaction you’re gonna be forgotten about 50% of the time.
The constant forgetting is why you won’t seem annoying. If you do that much at the office then yeah, I agree. Though, most “multi-office” teams, you’d still benefit from doing that to the people at the other office.
Smok3dSalmon@reddit
Sounds like a tough situation. Imo, if you have the bandwidth to take on more work asking others “how can I help” is often really effective at starting interesting conversations about work problems… but be ready to potentially take on extra work.
TheStatusPoe@reddit (OP)
Unfortunately I'm already stretched a little thin leading two major projects. That does give me an idea though. Some of the work I've been doing recently is supporting one project but has implications for the rest of the team since it touches key systems. I could ask some of the team that's on other unrelated projects if there's any pain points I may be able to easily knock out while I'm digging around there. Thanks for the idea!
Smok3dSalmon@reddit
When people sincerely ask that question, it makes the other devs week/month/life. Hahah
engineered_academic@reddit
I've never had any problems being effective on hybrid teams. There is some extra legwork to make sure you stay abreast of communications and syncing but generally you can still have an outsized impact BECAUSE you don't have people interrupting you every 5 minutes with whatever office drivel that is distracting you. You could plan some time to go into the office as your injury allows. There is somethi g to be said for face time, but it should be limited and focused on purpose.
jdgordon@reddit
Good luck is all I can say. I left a job where I was the only remote member after COVID finished and the office opened up again. I was being overlooked for promotions and was obviously missing out on those hallway conversations which is really important (both for social and for technical reasons).
I don't see how a always open slack huddle helps, as you say, it's those conversations you overhear which are the important ones to get your input in.
TheStatusPoe@reddit (OP)
Thanks! And yeah, I know my management has been supportive but it does feel like it's negatively impacting my career.
People kept an eye on it and would see when others joined. When certain people joined together it was usually a good sign that I should join as well. More than anything though it was probably more a cultural thing where the team/management was encouraging each other to hop on calls for small things.
AnnoyedVelociraptor@reddit
My recommendation is to find a fully remote job in a fully remote team.
TheStatusPoe@reddit (OP)
I've considered it. I don't want to deal with changing medical insurance with upcoming surgery and recovery. Plus I do genuinely enjoy the work I do and I like the people I work with.
eemamedo@reddit
I started commuting to another city for that particular reason. It's very easy to become invinsible when you are fully remote. This is something that is completely overlooked when people talk about "remote vs. in-office" setup.
teerre@reddit
That's a very common setup for C levels. Not necessarily "from home", but certainly "not in the same place as the team". Usually this works by focusing on written communication and, of course, top-down meetings that people are simply required to attend and prepare
Of course, that requires you to have enough power to enforce everyone to adapt to your schedule, which is not very common for senior engineers. Unfortunately I don't see how you could unilaterally fix this problem. Communication is necessarily cultural