Out of Office: Experiences to Guide Success for Remote Work — Vivan

Remote work unexpectedly became standard in 2020. While working remotely can be empowering and productive, without the right infrastructure or approach, it can also be terrible. These interviews explore individual remote work experiences in the hopes that through sharing what works and what doesn’t you can find new ideas to try out for yourself or your team.

Vivan (she/her) is a Product Manager at a large global company. This interview is being shared anonymously, which will happen with some of these interviews. It’s great when I can share a company for context, but Vivian’s experience and insights stand on their own and I think you’ll enjoy reading them.

I’ve had a love fest with working remote. I found the right company at the right time (pre-pandemic) and it checked all the boxes I had put together for what I needed… Vivian was not looking to work remote, she’s still not in love with working remote. She looks at our remote work lives with clear vision instead of the rose tinted glasses I sometimes wear. But that’s why she is a great interview. If we really want to explore what works and what doesn’t, she’s exactly who I should be talking to.

Vivian’s transition into remote work came with the Covid pandemic after a move to New York City. She also became a first-time Mom while navigating remote work during the pandemic.

Topics we cover:

• How strong team relationships transition to remote
• The impact of commuting on families
• Hybrid work options being the right balance
• The importance of team time as we move towards more in-person

“I didn’t love the idea of being remote because I do think I thrive on collaboration. My role is quite collaborative and so the idea of not being able to like see people ever wasn’t that appealing.”

Tell me about your role and how location plays into it.

I’m a product manager at [redacted]. So most product teams will have a product manager and then about five to ten engineers. There will also be a cross-functional team, like product designers, content designers, as well as our product marketer, data science and data engineering. So all those roles tend to make up a full product team, around 10 to 15 people. The tech side tends to be really collocated. Collocation is a big thing, and product teams previously, were always collocated. And so even when I moved, I actually moved from San Francisco to New York and I had to move teams because I couldn’t stay with my team given that I was in a new location.

Your move to New York City was to be closer to family and future life plans right? You were looking for a role in that location versus moving to NYC for a role?

Exactly. And so I felt like for professional or personal reasons, I had less choice of products and teams I wanted to work on. But for personal reasons, it made sense for us to [move].

Working at a tech company, there are certain stereotypes, but product teams are very diverse in terms of how people communicate. And we’ve always had a very supportive culture where meetings are a portion of how we get things done, but a lot of it is actually internal communication systems, like chatting/direct message. It’s mostly chatting.

Can you remember having any sort of preconceived ideas about what working remote?

My partner works remotely and so I had some ideas. I definitely felt like it seemed pretty isolating. But also freeing in terms of not having to be set in a schedule the same way that you do when you have to commute at a certain time. It seemed like they had more opportunity to have a flexible schedule and go out for lunch or pick something up. Whereas I think being in the office kind of mandates a more rigorous kind of schedule.

So COVID happens, you go remote, even with all the resources and technology within your company, that’s a big adjustment. For your first six months of working remote, what do you feel went well?

As a product manager mostly in meetings, actually finding conference room… [they have] always been very spread out. So it takes, you know, 10 minutes to walk from one side of campus to the other… Or an elevator in the building, you have to get in an elevator, when everyone’s getting in the elevator at the same time. I was spending a lot of time being late to meetings and trying to run around and get a conference room. And so during the first six months, it was actually really refreshing that I could be on time to meetings, and not have to run around campus. Of course, you know, for my health and the ability to move around it was not as good, much more stationary. Other than that I did enjoy not having to kind of frantically run around for a conference room.

Since I already had built strong relationships with the team I was on I felt like that continued to go really well. In fact, we onboarded a new engineering manager who was new to the company altogether and we were able to build a really strong relationship just completely, virtually. So I feel like because I had a solid relationship with the team already, the transition to virtual work wasn’t that hard.

Was there anywhere that you feel like things didn’t start off great, things you learned, lessons or learned systems that you needed to pivot?

I think, a lot of coordination in the home space. Everybody suddenly had to figure out how to work with someone else in their apartment, most likely also coworking in a very, like we live in New York, there’s not a lot of space. And so I think it was more of a challenge to coordinate with my partner about what space to use. The physical space challenge was pretty significant from a lot of people I spoke to in New York.

Did anything significant change in your communication methods or style as working remotely went on?

We chat a lot and I think that is probably the preferred method of communication and everyone can easily respond pretty quickly. What I do think we’ve done a good job with is actually in moving towards video conferencing, we’ve also allowed space for people turning the camera off. I think people are comfortable turning off their camera when they need to, and turning it on when you want to speak. But I think that making space for people to turn off the camera has also been a really important part of shifting towards more sustainable working from home.

That is a struggle for me, I still pretty much always have my camera on. I know it makes me more tired and I try to create more space for not having it on, but it is hard to train yourself, especially when you’re in a lot of calls.

Yeah, it’s tiring or, like, I’m eating or whatever. 20 people don’t need to see me eat.

Or maybe you’re just not feeling that great and you don’t want to deal with your facial expression on camera…

Yeah, I appreciate space for that. And I hope more company cultures do.

Compared to a lot of teams and industries it seems like yours more seamlessly than most transitioned from being fully in-person to fully remote.

I think it helped that while teams were co-located, as such a large company, we always were on meetings with other people in other campuses. I think probably more than most, it was pretty seamless. Our communication wasn’t actually that different in going to work, just a lot more people dialing in. Whereas previously, you only have three screens at most dialing in, now there’s like 10.

What do you feel like you have learned as a team leader adjusting to remote work?

I do think being together is still pretty important and I think it’s pretty hard to beat that in-person relationship. Despite a lot of effort that we tend use to create teams and we do a lot of team bonding events virtually, I think it’s still pretty hard to form relationships completely online. At some point, I’m looking forward to eventually come back to the office. Pre-Omnicom variant, I was going in twice a week, optionally. I really enjoyed the space of not having to work at home full-time, but also having the flexibility to go into the office when I need to, when I want to.

I would love to be hybrid, I don’t think any mandating of schedules quite makes sense. But I do think it’s important for the team to agree to spend time together. I think if teams in the future can say, okay, these are the days that we’ll work in the office, we’ll work in the office at least twice a week, I think that would be really nice for people.

Why don’t mandated work schedules in-office work based on your experience?

I think it’s that mandated five days don’t work. Because the commute is brutal for lots of people, especially in the Bay Area, we’re spending at least 90 minutes a day one-way commuting. That’s a huge drain on your time, your productivity, no one’s doing anything on that bus. It’s a huge drain on human energy. Giving people back that time, I think will be much more productive, but also just having the freedom to go in and out when you need to, I think will be helpful. I get to set my own time and so when I go to the office, I try and go when there’s less people on the train. So that means I head in around 10 and I can leave slightly early or after the rush hour traffic. But for me [right now], it’s really important if I’m going into the office and not going into a rush hour, because it still doesn’t feel quite safe. I think the flexibility is what is key, whether it’s hours of the day, or whether it’s the actual days that you go in, I think that’s the flexibility that people will be looking for going forward. I don’t think anybody’s truly interested in going in to a nine to five, five days a week job.

Leading a team, especially during the pandemic, it’s heavy, because when your team isn’t doing well, nothing is going well. How have you grown through this as a people manager?

I think the pandemic has made everyone more thoughtful about each other’s personal and family lives. I think everyone needs to be aware of each other’s challenges. I think it actually has opened up more discussion on personal relationships. I think people have become more open to sharing where you didn’t get a glimpse of someone’s home that often and now you do. You get the glimpse every day and it starts this conversation, like, ‘Oh, that’s a plant. That’s your dog. So, where are you? What are you doing?’ There’s just a lot more personal discussions, which I think it’s great. And I think one of the benefits of the pandemic is really opening up a window to people’s life outside of work, which you wouldn’t necessarily have always had access to, as readily prior to that.

Speaking of windows into personal life, I’d love to talk about the experience of working remotely with a pregnant partner. I had two tough pregnancies and my husband and I both worked the whole time. I was on my own all day to get by the best I could with maybe some support from coworkers. But with the pandemic and being home, all of a sudden there was more connection and opportunity to be present for that. How was that for you?

There were definitely some things I couldn’t do, right, like going to the doctor’s office, unfortunately not something I could do during COVID. But we were able to spend all of our time together. So we could go out for walks in the morning and then come back home and start working, which is probably not something I would do if I had to rush to the office to commute. We could have breakfast, we could have lunch, I think having a shared meal each day to break up the day or night, even if we didn’t have time to share a meal at least I can make the meal and she could have food. So I do think there were a lot of benefits to just being there. [I was] more able to be there physically and also just in terms of all the day to day; running out to get stuff, making food, taking care of other things, errands, like all those things I could do. Just be more present, that like even now as a parent I can’t imagine being able to be as present as I have been if the pandemic hadn’t happened. I do think in moving to the future, I’d love to still be able to work half-time from home because I do think it allows me to spend more time with my family.

As much as we talk about how difficult covid has been on parents, which it has been extremely, extremely difficult, there’s also been some magic. I got to see my daughter learn how to walk, every step to jumping to dancing to running. Things like that, that we’re used to getting in snapshots if we’re lucky.

I was there for first words, I was there for first food, I was there for all the firsts which has been probably the most wonderful thing about the pandemic.

A huge perk for a lot of families with remote work is they don’t have to factor in commutes.

Right? That’s three hours a day for some people.

What do you think people should plan for to set remote teams up for success?

I think there definitely still needs to be some social events. I would imagine in my ideal role, maybe once a quarter the team can come together for off-site, and only a small portion of that time should actually be spent on work. The value of having an in-person meeting should really be around building relationships with each other and connecting, rather than kind of actually doing any work itself. My ideal going forward, we allow for flexibility, there are certain days where everyone is strongly encouraged to come together in the office, if they do live nearby. And that would allow for some regular interactions with each other and then, you know, at least once a quarter, if the team can be in person, I think that would be really valuable for people just getting to know each other and having fun with each other

I’ve had my fair share of virtual happy hours, they’re fun, they’re necessary, like having a regular social virtual event, it’s necessary. But at the same time, it just isn’t a replacement for in person.

Any advice on virtual events?

Making them inclusive. I’m also guilty of this, I tend to lean into happy hours. That’s not inclusive for people who need to commute or need to go home early. And so setting up an event that anyone can attend, the lunches are much more preferred than, you know, a six o’clock happy hour, because that’s going to limit a lot of people who need to get home to their family, or in this case, if everyone’s working remote, go into care for kids. Maintaining work life balance is already a challenge, I think making sure that we don’t intrude more into people’s life is important.

This piece was edited down from its original interview by Jenna Hasenkampf and approved by Vivian prior to publication.

Jenna Hasenkampf (She/Her) is (currently) a Massachusetts-based writer, Mom, and Managing Director for MKG Marketing, a remote digital marketing agency. She’s worked in in-person creative agencies in San Francisco and New Orleans and is now all about that Remote life.

If you’re interested in sharing your experience with remote work or leading a remote team please reach out.