Notes from Twitter Spaces on Community and Remote Work
Tags: codenewie, remotework
Published: 2021-06-28 17:15:11

---
title: Notes from Twitter Spaces on Community and Remote Work
published: true
date: 2021-06-28 00:00:00 UTC
tags: codenewie, remoteWork
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---

My notes from the last two weeks of Twitter spaces I hosted. These are not all my ideas, and I might not agree with them all. But, I wanted to share what we talked about.

# Community + Career

## Why should you be a part of a community?\*

- Helps with career guidance
- Supports you as you grow
- Allows for networking opportunities
- Creates a safe space for exploring new ideas and industries
- Provides opportunities to help others

- As always, this depends on the community you join. Not all experiences will be the same for all people.

## Find the community that supports its members

When you’re looking to join a community, here are some signs that the community supports its members:

- Authentic and vulnerable relationships and interactions,
- Investment in helping each other to grow -> look at how people are answering questions or if help and support posts are mostly answered,
- Openness to new ideas and experiences -> are members testing out new ideas or actions? Do you see people saying they’ve done something for the first time as part of that group?
- Supportive communities can provide a space for you to try new things. For example, maybe you’re interested in speaking at a conference, but you’re afraid. If you have a supportive community, it’s easier to try out the experience. Give your presentation to the community and ask for feedback. When you have a supportive community, it’s easier to be open to feedback, to learn from the experience, and to work towards your goal of giving a presentation.

## How to find the right communities

- Make sure they have a code of conduct, esp if you’re part of an under-represented group
- They all you to be a passive member of a community -> soak up the knowledge and experience

## Signs of a positive community

- There’s a Code of Conduct
- For non-discord platforms, when people use their real names
- Members of under-represented groups

# Remote Work

- Some companies did even better when they were forced to go remote
- You can do the same thing from home that you can do in the office
- PPl are forming networks and relationships outside of the office as a result. There’s less glue, holding you to stick in the current position.
- You don’t have the opportunities to network outside of the office
- Remote and COVID-remote are two very different things. There are a lot of extra outside stressors. Remote was being thrust on ppl rather than a decision people made.

## Why work in a physical office?

- Some people prefer to work in the office
- Extrovert!
- Clear physical lines of communication: You can walk to the person’s office if you have a question.
- Sometimes a challenge of getting work done
- There’s a different type of productivity -> talking with the people around you allows you to develop relationships more quickly.
- You build teams much quicker in the office
- Community building is easier.

### Positives of working remotely

- Flexibility, especially for parents
- Allows parents to take breaks and spend time with their kids
- Don’t have to commute
- Allows for productive breaks -> You can start the laundry, dinner, do errands

### Navigating challenges of working remotely

- If you don’t have a designated office space, it can be a challenge, but if you set boundaries
- Set rules for yourself: when to log off. Turn off the computer and don’t touch it
- Do a full shutdown every night
- Separate work and “home” computer, so there’s no drive to work after work hours
- Set a hard limit for work hours
- Dealing with stress and the easy access to food

## Miscellaneous

- Normalize kid noises in the back of every meeting
- Productivity: there’s kind of no middle ground. There’s ppl who are super productive and not productive at all. This might speak to the type of office-environment that works best for you.
- We shouldn’t be micromanaging. Daily standup, project tracking, and milestones are enough to evaluated the productivity of the team.
- Forcing extra steps to force ppl to report progress, that’s toxic.
- If there’s an issue with a person, approach it as “How can we support you? Is there a challenge I can help you with?”
- Developers should have autonomy and support
- Over-communication > under-communication
- Don’t do remote work on vacation!!!
- Team-building remotely: Depending on the team, turn on the cameras, hear the voice of the other person
- Whole set of problems returning to office spaces now with mice, etc.

## Bonus

- blog post idea: how to structure your team to be productive